Faculty News
Research:
The National Crash Analysis Center has received $419,000 in funding from the German automotive manufacturer consortium Working Group AK 251 “Accident Analysis,” comprised of BMW, Audi, Daimler, VW, and Porsche. The objective is to assess the real world safety trade-offs of the belted vs. unbelted occupant testing requirements of FMVSS 208, the U.S. standard on occupant crash protection in frontal crashes. In addition to performing a review of recent studies, the GW team will conduct analyses of the national accident databases in North America, with analytical methods focused on the strengths of each data collection system. Crash involvement, in contrast to vehicle registrations, will be the focus as the exposure metrics for this study. GW plans to analyze the Canadian National Collision DataBase (NCDB) in addition to the U.S. databases. The PIs on the project are Randa Samaha and Ken Digges.
Honors & Awards:
Dr. Carl Landwehr, lead research scientist at GWs Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute(CSPRI), has been named an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow. He is being recognized for contributions to cybersecurity. Dr. Landwehr's research achievements include contributions to security modeling and vulnerability characterization. Over the past decade, he initiated, guided, and managed major research programs for the NSF, IARPA, and DARPA. Dr. Landwehr joined CSPRI last spring.
Publications:
Profs. Tom Mazzuchi and Shahram Sarkani (both of EMSE) and their graduate students have published the following articles:
1. T. F. Bersson, T. A. Mazzuchi, and S. Sarkani. “A framework for application of system engineering process models to sustainable design of high performance buildings,” The Journal of Green Building, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2012, pp. 171-192.
2. L. Koc, T. A. Mazzuchi, and S. Sarkani. “A network intrusion detection system based on a hidden Naive Bayes multiclass classifier,” Expert Systems With Applications, Vol. 39, Issue 18, 2012, pp. 13492-13500.
3. M. Yaqub, S. Sarkani, T. A. Mazzuchi. “Feasibility analysis of solar photovoltaic commercial power generation in California,“ Engineering Management Journal, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2012, pp. 36-49.
Conferences and Presentations:
Prof. Tian Lan (ECE) gave an invited talk at the Florham Park Mathematics Research Colloquium at AT&T Labs on November 30. The talk was titled "An Axiomatic Theory of Fairness for Resource Allocation" and focused on how to quantify the notion of fairness when there are multiple types of resources and users request different ratios of the different resources.
Prof. Costis Toregas (CSPRI associate director) gave the invited keynote address, “Public Private Partnerships as a Bridge to Economic Activity and Security,” at the “Europeone” - eGovernment Conference, held in in Nicosia, Cyprus, on December 3-4. He also participated in the Local & Regional eGovernment session at the conference.
Prof. Poorvi Vora (CS) participated in a panel on Voting Technology at the National Council of State Legislators (NCSL) Fall meeting on December 6. The panel was moderated by Kimball Brace, Al Gore's voting expert in 2000. Other panel participants included Doug Chapin of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration, Minnesota, and Prof. Charles Stewart of MIT.
Prof. Lijie Grace Zhang (MAE) gave the following presentation at the 2012 IEEE EMBS Micro and Nanotechnology in Medicine Conference, held December 3-7 in Maui, HI A. Childs; N. J. Castro; H. Fenniri, T.J. Webster and L. Zhang, “Biologically Inspired Rosette Nanotube Nanocomposites for Cartilage Tissue Engineering.”
Other News:
Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) was appointed by the chairman of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council as a member of the Engineering Panel for a two-year term ending November 2014. He will be traveling to Hong Kong once or twice a year to assist in the selection of competitive research proposals for funding based on peer reviews that are similar to the NSF process. He also will be involved in site visits of universities for center-type proposals. For possible opportunities of international collaboration between the U.S. and Hong Kong, please see the website link above.
Student News:
Prof. Lijie Grace Zhang’s graduate student Benjamin Holmes (MAE) gave the following presentation at the 2012 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall meeting, held November 25-30 in Boston, MA:Â B. Holmes, N. Castro, and L. Zhang, “Novel Biologically Inspired Nanostructured Scaffolds for Directing Osteogenic and Chondrogenic Differentiation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells.”
Miss Der-you Kao, doctoral student of Prof. James Lee (MAE), made the following presentation at the 2012 MRS (Materials Research Society) Fall Meeting and Exhibit, November 25-30, in Boston, MA: Der-you Kao and James D. Lee, "Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Multiphysics in Pyrochlore Oxides."
Other News:
GW's Institute for Biomedical Engineering is pleased to announce the call for this year's GWIBE Biomedical Engineering/Science Undergraduate Research Fellowship. The deadline to apply is February 1, 2013.
Congratulations to the SEAS undergraduates, alumni, and faculty members who contributed significant time and effort to the 2012 Siemens competition hosted by GW last week. SEASPAN mentors(upperclassmen) "hosted" the students who were competing in the competition, including having dinner with them on Saturday, showing them around campus, and talking to them about studying engineering. Earlier that afternoon Prof. Gabe Sibley gave a presentation on robotics, and a panel of SEAS alumni-which included graduates from each of the SEAS departments-talked to the students about their experiences in engineering school and about engineering as a career. In addition, SEAS undergraduates made SEAS proud during their outstanding research session for a packed (and overflowing) audience in the Marvin Center's amphitheater. The session included 15 presentations and was followed by a poster session. Kudos to Prof. Shahrokh Ahmadi for organizing the session and for getting more than 15 students to come present their work on a Sunday afternoon. More information on the competition and the winners is available in this GW Today article.
Guest Vignette:
Surfaces are designed to be smooth, isotropic in roughness, and hopefully homogeneous in surface energy and other attributes. This is desirable for machine parts assembly and joining. At the same time, technologies have evolved that demand directionality and controlled depth to make devices work, such as laser textured bumps on magnetic hard disks to control stiction and adhesion; surfaces in many MEMS devices such as digital mirrors and interlocking control devices need controlled directionality and textures to function properly. In each of these instances, specific designs are developed to solve the specific problems, but a generalized theory and practice of surface design, fabrication, and performance prediction is lacking. We have been working to provide such a foundation.
One of the projects we are working on is to develop surface texture designs to reduce the friction of engine parts to improve the fuel economy of cars and trucks. Using NIST Nanofab and Howard University Nanofab facilities, we have developed soft large area masks that can wrap around bearing steel surfaces and fabricated complex surface textures and dimples using electrochemical etching. The process is scalable and low cost and can be applied to a wide variety of materials. This provides a platform for us to focus on the theory and designs to control a wide variety of surface properties, such as friction, wear, hydrophobicity, fluid residence time, heat transfer, etc. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Stephen Hsu of the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering)
SEAS Events:
MAE Seminar: “Inductive Pulsed Plasma Thruster Research and Development at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center”
Dr. Kurt Polzin, NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
Tuesday, January 15
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
Entrepreneurship Events:
$60,000 GW Business Plan Competition:
$10,000 - Best Undergrad Business Plan
$5,000 - Older Adult-Focused Innovation category, thanks to AARP Foundation
$4,000 - Best Sustainable Technology Award
$1,000 - Audience Choice Award
Application deadline: January 28, 2013.