Faculty News
Research:
Dr. Zhenyu Li (BME) has received a one year, $151,525 research grant from Johnson & Johnson Vision for “Microfluidic Devices for Evaluating Tear Deposition on Contact Lenses.” Biomolecules in tears such as lipids and proteins can interact with contact lenses and form deposits, which may cause discomfort, inflammation, and even corneal damage. However due to the small volumes of tears, no instrument exists that can study the interactions of real human tears with contact lens materials in a quantitative and reproducible manner. This project aims to use microfluidics technology to build a tear analysis platform capable of quantifying the molecular depositions on contact lens.
On November 27, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Dr. Mona Zaghloul (ECE) US Patent #10139382 for “Device having an array of sensors on a single chip.” The abstract for the patent reads: “A nanostructure sensing device comprises a semiconductor nanostructure having an outer surface, and at least one of metal or metal-oxide nanoparticle clusters functionalizing the outer surface of the nanostructure and forming a photoconductive nanostructure/nanocluster hybrid sensor enabling light-assisted sensing of a target analyte.”
Conferences & Presentations:
Dr. Igor Efimov (BME) recently gave the following two presentations: 1) the 7th Burton E. Sobel Lecture “Mechanisms of Arrhythmogenesis in the Human Heart” at Cardiovascular Research Day, held November 29 at Washington University in St. Louis, MO; and 2) the Rita Kicher endowed lecture “New Approaches to Treatment of Atrial Fibrillation: Organ Conformal Electronics,” at the Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute Conferences, held November 8 at the University Hospitals, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.
Dr. Emilia Entcheva (BME) was an invited speaker on the topic of cardiac optogenetics as part of the symposium “Frontiers in Cardiac Tissue Engineering,” held November 29 at Boston University. The symposium was organized by the BU Photonics Center and the National Science Foundation-funded Engineering Research Center CELL-MET. Separately, Dr. Entcheva co-organized and moderated the session “Arrhythmia Research Summit: Organizing Chaos: Learning from Fibrillation” during the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, which were held November 10, in Chicago, IL.
Dr. Russell Hemley (CEE) presented the lecture “New Findings in Materials in Extreme Environments” at three universities during the month of November. He spoke at Iowa State University on November 9, at Georgetown University on November 27, and at the University of California, San Diego on November 29. The lecture highlighted his group's discovery of room-temperature superconductivity under pressure.
Dr. Michael Plesniak (MAE) attended the 71st Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics, held November 18-20 in Atlanta GA, where he chaired Session A15: Wakes and Separation Bubbles. He co-authored three presentations with his students and collaborators, who included MAE faculty Dr. Elias Balaras, Dr. Kartik Bulusu, and Dr. Lijie Grace Zhang; MAE researcher Dr. Nikolaos Beratlis; Ph.D. students Ian Carr and Reza Najjari; and undergraduate researchers Samantha Racan, Isaac Finberg, and Maoxi Wang. The MAE participants made the following presentations: A15.00001 The wake of a bluff body in highly pulsatile flow: effects of freestream inflow frequency; A23.00002 Hydrodynamic investigation of polymeric scaffold degradation for bone regeneration applications; and L17.00012 On the formation of vortices under transient and pulsatile inflow conditions in a curved pipe. At the conference, Dr. Plesniak also presented an update to the Division of Fluid Dynamics Executive Committee on plans for GW to host the conference in Washington, DC in 2023.
Dr. Kelly Scanlon (senior research scientist, Environmental and Energy Management Institute) led a course on life cycle impact and cost assessment for the Department of Defense at the annual SERDP-ESTCP Symposium, held November 27-29 in Washington, DC. SERDP and ESTCP are the DoD's environmental research programs, harnessing the latest science and technology to improve the DoD’s environmental performance, reduce costs, and enhance and sustain mission capabilities.
Dr. Suresh Subramaniam (ECE) hosted the Mid-Atlantic Regional ECE Department Heads meeting in the SEH on December 1. The meeting was attended by more than 15 department heads from DC, MD, NJ, and PA, and it featured talks by a few ECE faculty members, as well as a keynote talk by Dr. Anthony Kuh of the National Science Foundation.
On November 19, Dr. Rene van Dorp (EMSE) gave a seminar presentation titled “Dependent PERT, A Bayes Network Approach” to the department Métodos Cuantiyativos para la Economia y la Empresa at Granada University, Spain. On November 20, he gave the seminar presentation “Three Point Life Time Distribution Elicitation for Preventive Maintenance Optimization in a Bayesian Context” to the department Métodos Cuantitativos para la Economía y la Empres at Almeria University, Spain.
Publications:
Dr. Igor Efimov (BME) has published the following recent articles: 1) K. Aras, B. Cathey, N. R. Faye, and I. R. Efimov. “Critical Volume of Human Myocardium Necessary to Maintain Ventricular Fibrillation,” Circulation: Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology, Vol. 11, No. 11: e006692; 2) E. L. Kessler, L. van Stuijvenberg, J. J. A. van Bavel, J. van Bennekom, A. Zwartsen, M. R. Rivauda, A. Vink, I. R. Efimov, A. V. Postma, J. P. van Tintelen, C. A. Remme, M. A. Vos, A. Banning, T. P. de Boer, R. Tikkanen, and T. A. B. van Veen. “Flotillins in the intercalated disc are potential modulators of cardiac excitability,” Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, 126 (2019) 86–95; and 3) B. Cathey, S. Obaid, A. Zolotarev, R. Pryamonosov, R. Syunyaev, S. George, and I. R. Efimov. “Open-Source Multiparametric Optocardiography,” Scientific Reports, 2018 (in press).
Working in collaboration with Dr. David Christini’s lab at Cornell University, Dr. Emilia Entcheva (BME) has published the following paper: B. Quach, T. Krogh-Madsen, E. Entcheva, and D. Christini. “Light-Activated Dynamic Clamp Using iPSC-Derived Cardiomyocytes,” Biophysical Journal, Vol. 115, Issue 11. This is the first attempt to develop optical technology to replace the traditional contact-requiring voltage-clamp approach with an optogenetically-mediated method. The paper was featured in “New and Notable” and was highlighted in a commentary by Teun DeBoer, “Using Light to Endow Stem-Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes With Virtual IK1 Conductances."
Dr. Tim Wood (CS), CS doctoral student Guyue Liu, and collaborators from University of Riverside published the paper “REINFORCE: Achieving Efficient Failure Resiliency for Network Function Virtualization based Services” at the ACM Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT), held December 4-7 in Heraklion/Crete, Greece. The paper explores approaches for providing strong reliability guarantees to high throughput, low-latency network services.
Media Mentions:
Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE) was quoted in the December 5 Motherboard article “We Asked 105 Experts What Scares and Inspires Them Most About the Future.”
Other News:
Dr. Kelly Scanlon (senior research scientist, Environmental and Energy Management Institute) has received a one-year extension to her assignment with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment arranged under the provisions of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act. Dr. Scanlon will provide scientific and policy support for the Chemical and Material Risk Management Program.
Student News
CS senior Samsara Counts presented the paper “Characterizing the Visual Social Media Environment of Eating Disorders” at the 47th Annual IEEE Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop, held October 9-11 in Washington, DC. The paper, which was co-authored by Samsara, CS master’s student Justine Manning, and Dr. Robert Pless (CS), was awarded the Best Student Paper Presentation at the workshop.
CS doctoral student Pedram Hosseini, working with Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE), presented the talk “Spread of Coherent Stories on Social Media” at the 2nd North American Social Networks conference, held November 27-30 in Washington, DC. In his talk, Pedram discussed the correlation between the degree to which fake/real news articles are semantically or causally coherent and their spread on Twitter.
On December 4, EMSE doctoral candidate Deniz Marti presented the poster “Risk Perception of NASA Engineers, a Fuzzy Trace Theory Approach” at the Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA. The poster was co-authored with her advisor, Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE).
External Events
Association of Energy Engineers: National Capital Chapter Annual Awards & Holiday Party
Wednesday, December 12
5:00 – 10:00 pm
Register
SEH, Lehman Auditorium and common space near Green Wall
The party is open to both AEE members and non-members. The cost to AEE student chapter members is $10; the cost for non-members is $40. Non-member students may register for a $15 student membership, if they wish.
Entrepreneurship News & Events
New SEAS Course: Social Impact Design Thinking
SEAS 4800.80 (CRN: 48682)/SEAS 6800.80 (CRN: 48683)
Spring 2019: Tuesdays 6:10 – 8:40 pm
SEH, 1450
Innovation starts with humans. Join an interdisciplinary social impact innovation class that puts human experience at the forefront of problem-solving and triple bottom line venture creation. Design thinking and human centered design are proven and repeatable problem solving methodologies that any discipline, profession, business, or social venture can employ to create social impact and value and achieve results. Interdisciplinary student teams apply design thinking to local challenges they research ethnographically, while facilitating partnerships with public and private Washington DC-based organizations. This class is a first of it its kind at GW in combining social innovation, design thinking, gear up, and business model creation.
GW is now offering a new interdisciplinary minor in creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. The minor will give full-time, undergraduate students an opportunity to explore and integrate programs/courses from SEAS, CCAS, and ESIA. The choice of two field electives allows students to tailor the minor to match their interests in creativity, fine arts, design, media, environment, social impact, health care, and/or technology. Students may add this minor to their degree by bringing the minor form to their home school advising office.
Health Hackathon: This is a half-day hackathon to be held on March 29, 2019. It is sponsored by the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National (CTSICN), a partnership between Children’s National Medical Center and GW. The purpose of the hackathon is to develop the requirements and prototype user interface for medical or public health software applications. There is no restriction on submission, but the entry should be an idea that could lead to a useful medical or public health software application. It can be extremely generic or highly specialized. Potential areas of interest include (but are not limited to): self-care, medical wellness, exercise physiology, clinical applications, public health, etc. The idea submission deadline is January 4, 2019. Submit your app idea via this simple form. Contact Sara Alyamani with any questions.
Go ALL IN on your sustainable idea: The GW New Venture Competition is one of the largest collegiate entrepreneurship competitions in the country, and we are looking for environmental and sustainable ideas and businesses. GW students like you will be vying for over $300,000 in cash and prizes, including a clean energy prize worth $10,000. We know that each student’s idea has incredible potential, especially those working in sustainability. Even if you’re not sure where to begin, the competition process is designed to help anyone take their idea and make it a reality. Contact us to talk about your idea, or better yet, talk to one of our mentors and coaches. They will give you the inside scoop.
VentureWell’s E-Team Grant Program: VentureWell is looking for student-led teams with inventions that have the potential to positively impact the world. Teams can receive an E-Team grant and get training through VentureWell’s early-stage innovator training program. The program provides peer networking, expert coaching, national recognition, and hands-on workshops to move your innovation forward. The deadline to apply is February 6, 2019. Workshops will be held April 25-27 and May 9-11 in Boston, MA. To learn more, attend a webinar or office hour.