August 11-24, 2014

Newsletter

August 11, 2014

Faculty News

Research:


Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) has received a six-month, $24,623 grant from Yonsei University (South Korea) to develop a micro-cathode arc thruster for nano satellites. The project is being done in collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Prof. Murray Snyder (MAE) has received a $50,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to develop and teach an interdisciplinary SEAS and Elliott School of International Affairs course in nuclear weapons technology and policy. Prof. Snyder is a retired US Navy Captain who previously commanded USS NEVADA (SSBN 733), a Trident ballistic missile submarine.

Media Mentions:


Allan Friedman (research scientist, Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute) discussed USB device vulnerabilities with WTOP radio on July 31. On July 29, he discussed Apple security and private firm concerns with CCTV (China); and on July 28, his topic was plagiarism and anti-plagiarism technology in an interview with Al Jazeera America.

Publications:


Mechanics of Groundwater in Porous Media , a book authored by Prof. Muhammad Haque (CEE), has recently been published by CRC press.

Prof. Taeyoung Lee (MAE) has recently published the following papers: 1) T. Lee. "Optimal control of partitioned hybrid systems via discrete-time Hamilton–Jacobi theory," Automatica, Vol. 50, No. 8, 2014, pp. 2062-2069; and 2) T. Lee, M. Leok, and N. H. McClamroch. "High-fidelity numerical simulation of complex dynamics of tethered spacecraft," Acta Astronautica, Vol. 99, 2014, pp. 215-230.

Prof. Lijie Grace Zhang (MAE) has published the following papers in Tissue Engineering: 1) B. Holmes, W. Zhu, J. Li, J. D. Lee, and L. G. Zhang. "Development of Novel 3D Printed Scaffolds for Osteochondral Regeneration," Tissue Engineering Part A. doi:10.1089/ten.TEA.2014.0138; and 2) C. O'Brien, B. Holmes, S. Faucett, and L. G. Zhang. "3D Printing of Nanomaterial Scaffolds for Complex Tissue Regeneration," Tissue Engineering Part B. doi:10.1089/ten.TEB.2014.0168. Prof. James Lee (MAE) collaborated with Prof. Zhang on the first paper.

Conferences & Presentations:


Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) gave a tutorial talk titled "Plasma Engineering" at the 4th Summer School on Complex Plasmas, held July 31 at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ.

Ray Renner (CS part time faculty) gave a keynote speech, "Big Data - A Systems Integrator's Perspective," on August 4 at the Com.Big Data 2014 conference held in Washington, DC. At the conference, he also chaired a panel titled "Big Data and Geospatial Computing."

Prof. Kausik Sarkar (MAE) attended the DynaCaps2014: Dynamics of Capsules, Vesicles and Cells in Flow conference, which was held July 15-18 at the Universite de Technologie, Compiegne (France). He chaired one session and gave two invited talks, "Wall Induced Migration of Drops and Capsules: Effects of Inclination and Viscoelasticity," and "Modeling Encapsulated Microbubbles: From Echocardiography to Noninvasive Blood Pressure Monitoring to Drug Delivery."

On July 14, Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE) gave a talk presenting the latest results from the publication "Strong ITO index Modulation for Switching Devices" at the Integrated Photonics Research (IPR) Optical Society of America (OSA) conference in San Diego, CA. On July 15, he was invited to a leadership panel debating and assessing the limits and application range of "plasmonics." Prof. Sorger also founded a new sub-committee on emerging materials for nanophotoncis and was nominated for the committee chair in 2015. His talks at the conference showcased the latest results from his nanophotonics group here at GW, focusing on high-performance graphene and ITO-based modulators and switches.

Prof. Zoe Szajnfarber (EMSE) and two of her students attended the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space Conference, held August 4-7 in San Diego, CA. They presented the following three papers: 1) A. Burg and Z. Szajnfarber. "A Modeling Approach to Untangling the Complexity of Space R&D Portfolio Management Decisions," 2) M. Dwyer, D. Selva, I. del Portillo, M. Sanchez-Net, B. Cameron, Z. Szajnfarber, and E. Crawley. "Exploring the Tradeoffs of Aggregated vs. Disaggregated Architectures for Environmental Monitoring from Low-Earth Orbit," and 3) M. Dwyer, Z. Szajnfarber, D. Selva, and E. Crawley. "The Cost of Jointness and How to Manage it."

Other News:


SEAS is launching its first MOOC (massive open online course), led by Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE). The course is called "Practical Numerical Methods with Python" and will run in conjunction with a regular course on campus (MAE 6286). Registration is open in the new GW Open edX platform. This initiative has funding from the Office of the Vice-Provost for Online Learning and Academic Innovation and SEAS, and sponsorship from Nvidia Corp. and Amazon AWS.

On August 4, the president of the American Society of Civil Engineer (ASCE) appointed Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) to serve for a three-year term as a member of the organization's Membership Application Review Committee. The appointment has been voted on and approved by the ASCE Board of Direction. The committee meets at the ASCE headquarters regularly to review special membership applications for specific membership grades.

Prof. Claire Monteleoni (CS) is co-organizing the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 2014 Workshop on Data Science for Social Good, which will be held August 24 at the Bloomberg Headquarters in New York City. It is part of the KDD 2014 Conference and is coordinated with the Bloomberg@KDD event, Unleash Data: Accelerate Impact. In addition to the data science focus, the workshop will include policy perspectives; members of government, foundations, and non-profits will be in attendance. Prof. Monteleoni encourages members of the GW community to attend.

Student News

On July 21, Mr. Zidong Yang (MAE doctoral student) presented his research, titled "Objectivity in Molecular Dynamics Simulation," at the 11th World Congress on Computational Mechanics, held in Barcelona, Spain. He won a travel award from the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics to present at the conference. Zidong Yang is advised by Profs. James Lee (MAE) and Azim Eskandarian (CEE).

Other News

Hatem ElBidweihy, a recent Ph.D. graduate of Prof. Edward Della Torre (ECE) and GW's Institute for Magnetics Research (IMR), will join the United States Naval Academy as a tenure-track assistant professor in fall 2014.

SEAS Events

MAE Seminar: "Recent progress in numerical prediction of cavitating flows with special emphasis on unsteady loads and on erosive collapse events"
Speaker: Steffen J. Schmidt, Head of Gas Dynamics Research Group at the Institute of Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics, Technical University of Munich
Tuesday, September 9
2:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall