Faculty News
Research News:
Prof. Jason Zara (ECE) has received a $28,473 contract from Imalux Corporation for a project entitled "Advanced Probes for Optical Coherence Tomography." The funds will support a doctoral student to conduct research in next generation technologies to improve Imalux's OCT scanning probes.
Conferences & Papers:
Prof. Lance Hoffman (CS) chaired a panel on "Cyberwar: Is Congress Preparing for the Common Defense?" on January 27th at the State of the Net Conference in Washington, DC.
Prof. Martha Pardavi Horvath, associate dean for academic affairs, presented two talks at the 11th Joint Magnetism Conference, held In Washington, DC, January 18th – 22nd. 1) M. Pardavi-Horvath, with co-authors G. S. Makeeva, and O. A. Golovanov of Penza State University, Russia, “Spin-wave resonances affected by skin-effect in conducting magnetic nanowire arrays at THz frequencies"; and 2) M. Pardavi-Horvath, Advait Sakhalkar, B.G. Ng, F. J. Castaño, H.S. Körner, C. Garcia, C.A. Ross, “Thickness-dependent ferromagnetic resonance and magnetization structure of thin film ellipses."
Other News:
Prof. Jonathan Deason (EMSE), along with GW Solar Institute Director Ken Zweibel, presented an overview of EMSE energy related research to a gathering of key energy executives of the Lockheed Martin Corporation on January 13th. The meeting was arranged by the GW Solar Institute.
Prof. Howard Eisner (EMSE) gave an invited presentation, entitled "Project Management Outside the Box," at the Tyson's Corner PMI Luncheon Meeting, January 26th, at the SAIC Enterprise Building, in McLean, VA.
Prof. Guru Venkataramani (ECE) has been chosen to serve as publications chair for the 43rd IEEE International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO-43). This is a premium forum for the computer architecture community to present, discuss, and debate new and innovative microarchitecture ideas and techniques for advanced computing and communication systems. The conference will be held in Atlanta, GA, December 4-8, 2010.
Prof. Jason Zara (ECE) gave an invited talk, entitled "Tools for the Detection of Epithelial Cancers with Optical Coherence Tomography," to the National Capital Section of the Optical Society of America on January 19th.
Other News
Scholarship opportunity: Current SEAS graduate students and current SEAS undergraduate seniors who will be graduate students here next year are potentially eligible for the Hyundai Scholarship. The application deadline is February 12th. The purpose of the scholarship is to enable South Korean and American scholars to pursue advanced degrees in specific fields of business administration, management science, and engineering. Awards are made annually to both South Korean and U.S. citizens. Interested applicants must be students in SEAS or the School of Business. Please visit the Hyundai Scholarshipwebsite for more information on eligibility and the application process. The award includes full tuition (fees excluded) for one academic year.
Scholarship opportunity: The application period for Computer Security and Information Assurance full scholarships for U.S. citizens is now open. (Rising) juniors, seniors, and graduate students are eligible. This year's forms and information are up the web at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/cybercorps/. The application deadline is February 1st.
Graduate Research Assistantship: Prof. Alex Li (ECE) is seeking a graduate student who is interested in research in computer architecture. The ideal candidate would have good knowledge of modern superscalar and multicore microprocessor architectures. The research project involves in-depth investigation and analysis of future parallel computer architectures and/or reliability of future billion-transistor microprocessors. Essential requirements include C/C++ programming knowledge, experience in the use of architecture simulators, and strong analytical/critical thinking skills. In addition, the preferred candidate would have knowledge in OS, compiler, and/or programming languages. One expected outcome of the research project is publications in top-tier conferences and journals in computer architecture. Priority will be given to doctoral students. Interested students should contact Prof. Alex Li, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: at [email protected] or (202) 994-7175.
VSTC ECE Team: The accelerated cohort program offered by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Virginia Science and Technology Campus continues to see an annual increase in student enrollment. This is due in large part to the “VSTC ECE Team”. For almost four years, the “VSTC ECE Team,” comprised of Dr. David Smith, director and faculty advisor; Carmen Session, senior education and marketing specialist; and John Pistole, executive coordinator, have ensured that this program continues to meet its goal. The 10-course, 30-credit hour master’s program in either electrical engineering or telecommunications and computers, is a Saturday-based accelerated cohort program. The success of the program can be attributed to, among other things, the accessibility of the ECE Team, as well as its willingness to go above and beyond what is required to make certain each student has a memorable and enjoyable experience at GW.
Guest Vignette
The problems of communication and data protection have two divergent goals. The communication theorist strives to transmit information in the presence of noise. The cryptographer's aim, on the other hand, is to prevent the adversary from obtaining any information at all. These problems are, however, also two sides of the same coin. Both problems were first formalized by Claude Shannon in seminal papers about a year apart. After more than half a century of largely independent growth, there is great interest today in how one field can contribute to the other.
Prof. Poorvi Vora of the Computer Science Department has been using the tools of communication theory for research on problems in security and privacy. In the problems of block-cipher cryptography and statistical database privacy, she has shown that an efficient adversary behaves as a coding theorist communicating over a very noisy channel. Efficient attacks correspond to error-correcting codes. This observation has led to previously unknown limits on attack efficiency. In the problem of voting system design, her doctoral student Ben Hosp has proposed an information-theoretic framework to evaluate voting systems, and successfully applied it to compare existing voting system proposals.
Additionally, solutions obtained using game-theoretic approaches also shine light on the information-theoretic nature of security and privacy problems. With Prof. Sumit Joshi of the Economics Department at GW, Prof. Vora has studied auctions where bidders know that the seller may use the bid to price the object higher. (A variant of this type of seller is observed on eBay, and was studied by Prof. Vora's doctoral student Yu-An Sun---now at Xerox Research). This is seen as a privacy problem because the seller uses information in the bid to change the rules of the game to the disadvantage of the bidder. Using a game-theoretic approach, Profs. Joshi and Vora obtain the optimal strategy for bidders, which is most simply explained in information-theoretic terms as follows. The bidder's strategy is to reduce the information contained in the bid by quantizing it. The number of quantization intervals appears to depend on the probability with which the seller tries to cheat the bidder (this is work in progress). There is no getting away from information theory! (Provided courtesy of Prof. Poorvi Vora of the Department of Computer Science)
Upcoming:
Square 54 Presentation
Speaker: James Grauberger, Clark Construction
Friday, February 5th, 9:30 – 10:00 am
630 Phillips Hall
MAE Colloquium: “Walking on Water”
Speaker: David Hu, George Tech University
Monday, February 8th, 2:00 - 3:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: “Tensor Factorization Approach to Blind Separation of Multidimensional Sources”
Speaker: Ivica Kopriva, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
Friday, February 19th, 1:00 – 2:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
CS Colloquium: “Models of Motivation”
Speaker: Glenn Becker, Unisys Corporation
Monday, February 22nd at 4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
CS Colloquium: “Technical Publications in the Age of Social Networking: The periodicals of the Computer Society”
Speaker: Prof. David Grier, GW Elliot School of International Affairs
Monday, March 8th at 4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: “Biomagnetics: An Interdisciplinary Field Where Magnetics, Biology, and Medicine Overlap”
Speaker: Dr. Shoogo Ueno, University of Tokyo/Kyushu University
Friday, April 22nd, 4:00 – 5:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
National Engineers Week: February 14-20, 2010
SEAS will celebrate “E-Week” 2010 with a number of events and activities. A partial list is included below and more will be added as they become available.
Engineers Move America (Part of National Engineers Week)
Come learn about careers in transportation
Wednesday, February 17th
8:45 – 2:00 pm (lunch provided)
Jack Morton Auditorium (Media & Public Affairs Bldg)
Phoenix Project: Rebuilding the Pentagon
Speaker: Mr. Allyn Kilsheimer (SEAS ’63), President, KCE Structural Engineers
Thursday, February 18th, 2:30 – 4:00 pm
Jack Morton Auditorium (Media & Public Affairs Bldg)
SEAS Seminar Series on Entrepreneurship:
Please join SEAS for a four-part Seminar Series on Entrepreneurship. These events are free and open to the SEAS and GW community.
Intellectual Property
Wednesday, February 17th
6:00 pm: Reception, 7:00 pm: Panel Discussion
Funger Hall, Room 103
Access to Capital
Wednesday, March 24th
6:00 pm: Reception, 7:00 pm: Panel Discussion
Funger Hall, Room 103
Product vs. Service Entrepreneurs
GW Summit on Entrepreneurship
Thursday, April 15th
10:30 – 11:30 am: Panel Discussion
Duques Hall, Room 652
Sponsored by the GW School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Engineer Alumni Association.
SEAS Seminar Series in Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century:
SEAS continues the seminar series it initiated last semester with more discussions on engineering challenges facing us. More information will soon be available. In the meantime, please mark your calendars for the following dates:
How Transparent Can Our Elections Be?
Prof. Poorvi Vora
February 9th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
640 Phillips Hall
Life in "the Cloud" – Supercomputing
Prof. Howie Huang
February 23rd
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
309 Marvin Center
Pervasive Computing and Its Integration Into Our Day-to-Day Life
Prof. Susan Cheng
March 9th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
640 Phillips Hall
Information Security and Privacy: Why, What and How
Prof. Bhagi Narahari
March 23rd
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
310 Marvin Center
Arms Control and Environmental Treaties: The Challenge for Engineers and Scientists
Nicholas Kyriakopoulos
April 6th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
414 Marvin Center
The Role of Technology in Global Security
April 20th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
101 Marvin Center
Sex, Lies and Videoclips: The Perils of Life Online
Prof. Dianne Martin
May 4th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
309 Marvin Center
SEAS Career Services Events:
SEAS Industry Expo: A Professional Networking Event
Tuesday, February 16th
1:00 – 3:00 pm at the GW Marvin Center Grand Ballroom
Sponsored by E-Council, this event is exclusively for SEAS students. Students will meet with representatives from various engineering and IT organizations to discuss their career plans, network and learn about internships and jobs.