At a Glance

Six departments one common goal: Producing outstanding graduates and research
Six departments, one common goal: producing outstanding graduates and research


Getting an overview of each of our six departments takes only a moment. Find out about our academic programs, research, and accomplishments and see what we are doing to produce outstanding graduates and research.

Biomedical Engineering

Quick Facts

  • Full-time faculty: 9
  • Affiliated faculty: 9 
  • Undergraduate students: 228
  • Graduate students: 49
  • Annual research expenditures: $1.2 million

Degrees and Programs

 

 

 

Research Areas

  • Biofluid dynamics
  • Bioinformatics
  • Biomaterials
  • Biomechanics
  • Biomedical signal processing and signal analysis
  • Biosensors
  • Cancer detection and therapy
  • Computational fluid dynamics
  • Diagnostic and surgical computer support
  • Disease and pathogen detection
  • Drug delivery
  • Electrophysiology (cardiac and neural)
  • Health care delivery systems
  • Heart disease and heart failure
  • Medical imaging and image analysis
  • Micro/nanotechnology
  • Physiological flows
  • Robotics and actuators
  • Simulation and modeling
  • Therapeutic ultrasound
  • Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

Points of Pride

  • Professor Matthew Kay received a prestigious National Institutes of Health R-01 grant for his work to better understand cardiac arrhythmias, an irregular rhythm of the heart.
  • Professor Jason Zara has received a patent for his work on an imaging probe used to detect cancer in mucosal tissues. More than 90% of all cancers originate in the body’s mucosal tissues, and these cancers tend to be very treatable if found early.
  • Professor Vesna Zderic is conducting pioneering research on the effects of therapeutic ultrasound on drug delivery to the eye and other applications.  This includes strong collaborative work with the FDA.
  • Professor Zhenyu Li and his colleagues have successfully integrated all three components of lab-on-a-chip technology—microfluidics, optical sensors, and electronics—into a complete micro-system.
  • Professor Murray Loew has been working with the National Gallery of Art to develop imaging spectroscopy to digitally peel back the layers of paint on some of the world’s great art and look beneath the surface to help better understand and conserve these masterpieces.
  • All of our undergraduates participate in a three-semester senior design course that gives them real-world design experience. This gives them a competitive advantage in starting their careers over engineering graduates from most other universities.
  • Our undergraduates and graduate students conduct internships and research experiences at places like the NIH, NASA and the FDA as well as private industry including Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and St. Jude Medical.  This provides cutting-edge real world experience that often leads to job offers at the places where students intern.

Research Laboratories

  • Bioengineering Laboratory for Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering
  • Biofluid Dynamics Lab
  • Biofluids and Ultrasonics Lab
  • Cardiac Ischemia Research Laboratory 
  • Laboratory for Applications of MEMS in Medical Imaging
  • Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Mechanics
  • Medical Image Analysis Laboratory (Loew)
  • Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Lab (MpNL)
  • Optofluidics Laboratory
  • Therapeutic Ultrasound Lab

 

Civil & Environmental Engineering

Quick Facts

Full-time faculty: 13
Undergraduate students: 83
Graduate students: 49
Annual research expenditures: $551,000

Degrees and Programs

Research Areas

  • Environmental Engineering
  • Geotechnical Engineering
  • Mechanics and Materials
  • Structural Engineering
  • Transportation Safety Engineering
  • Water Resources Engineering

Points of Pride

  • Researchers at the Traffic and Networks Research Laboratory are working to make driving safer and less frustrating by helping develop intelligent transportation systems that will allow more vehicles to pass through a single lane while reducing accidents. By better understanding traffic flow theory, driver/pedestrian behavior, and evacuation modeling, the difficulties of driving on our increasingly congested road will be eased.
  • Environmental engineering faculty and students use one of the world's largest wastewater treatment plants as a real-world laboratory to improve the water quality of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  They also investigate techniques and processes to create beneficial rescue of wastewater.
  • Faculty and student researchers are using GW's earthquake simulator to study how buildings and bridges react to earthquakes of various magnitudes.  By combining analytical and experimental investigation, they provide important test data to validate and calibrate analytical tools that will be used by engineers to improve the design of future structures.
  • Students in the department helped form a GW chapter of Engineers Without Borders, which works to address basic human needs by providing clean water, power, sanitation, and education.  The GW team has worked on projects both domestically and in La Pena, El Salvador, giving students real-world engineering experiences.

Labs, Centers & Institutes

  • Center for Intelligent Systems Research
  • Traffic & Networks Research Lab
  • Driving Simulation Lab
  • Truck Driving Simulation Lab
  • Virtual Reality Lab
  • Cooperative Vehicle Systems Lab
  • Earthquake Engineering & Structures Lab
  • Environmental Engineering Lab
  • Fluid Mechanics & Hydraulics Lab
  • Soil Mechanics Lab
  • Structural Testing & Material Science Lab

 

Computer Science

Quick Facts

Full-time faculty: 15
Undergraduate students: 187
Graduate students: 445
Annual research expenditures: $3.7 million

Degrees and Programs

Research Areas

  • Algorithms and Theory
  • Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
  • Bioinformatics and Biomedical Computing
  • Computer Security and InformationAssurance
  • Data Science
  • Digital Media
  • Networking and Mobile Computing
  • Pervasive Computing and Embedded Systems
  • Software Engineering and Systems

Points of Pride

  • We have become increasingly reliant on cryptography and secure systems to provide privacy and security in many of our activities, such as protecting credit card numbers and personal information from unauthorized online access. A number of faculty across the department conduct research to design and analyze new protocols and systems for stronger cyber security. In one example of developing stronger cyber security systems, Professor Poorvi Vora and her GW students co-developed Scantegrity, an electronic voting system that has been used twice by Takoma Park, MD, in its municipal elections.
  • For more accurate medical procedures, Professor James Hahn and his team are developing imaging algorithms for computer-assisted surgeries.
  • Professor Lance Hoffman was named to the National Cyber Security Hall of Fame in 2016 for his achievement in developing the nation's first regularly offered university course on computer security.
  • Professor Mona Diab’s research team works on converting unstructured data to functional knowledge, a critical research area in the natural language processing and “Big Data” field.
  • Using machine learning, Professor Claire Monteleoni has co-founded the field of climate informatics to help scientists better predict and track climate patterns.
  • To store and process vast amounts of data at low cost, businesses increasingly rely on cloud computing. Professor Timothy Wood's research seeks to improve the reliability and efficiency of cloud platforms, and Professor Gabriel Parmer works on developing better operating systems.
  • GW’s federally funded CyberCorps program has placed 68 graduates in cyber security positions in 30 federal agencies since its inception in 2003.

Labs, Centers & Institutes

  • GW Cloud Systems Lab
  • Cyberspace Security and Policy Research Institute
  • GW Center for Networks Research
  • Human-Computer Interaction Group
  • Institute for Computer Graphics
  • Motion Capture and Analysis Laboratory

 

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Quick Facts

Full-time faculty: 21
Undergraduate students: 87
Graduate students: 265
Annual research expenditures: $2.5 million

 

Degrees and Programs

 

Research Areas 

  • Computer Architecture and High-Performance Computing
  • Communications and Networks
  • Electric Power and Energy
  • Electromagnetics, Radiation Systems and Microwave Engineering
  • Microelectronics, VLSI Systems and MEMS
  • Signal and Image Processing, Systems and Controls

 

Points of Pride

  • Professors Tian Lan, Howie Huang, and Suresh Subramaniam are developing algorithms to optimize resource allocation and pricing in cloud computing. Once the team publishes its results, providers such as AT&T, Amazon, Google, and others will be free to use the algorithms in their data centers.
  • GW is a founding member of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing(CHREC). CHREC is comprised of more than 30 leading organizations in the academic, industrial, and government sectors working on reconfigurable, adaptive computing for a broad range of missions, from satellites to supercomputers.
  • Professors Lawrence Bennett and Edward Della Torre discovered a phenomenon that extends a fundamental law of physics to magnetic nanostructures. These findings have practical applications for manufacturers of products using magnetic materials, such as the next generation of high-density computer hard drives.
  • Professor Guru Venkatarami received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER grant for his research to develop an integrated hardware-software approach to overcome performance bottlenecks in multi-core processors and to improve their efficiency.
  • Professor Volker Sorger received a Young Investigator Program award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to test the hypothesis that strong light-matter- interactions in electro-optic modulators and switches result in a significant performance boost for opto-electronic devices beyond classically known limits.
  • Professor Tarek El-Ghazawi was awarded a 2013 Humboldt Research Award for his high-performance computing research. This prestigious international research award is given each year to academics whose discoveries have had a significant impact on their own disciplines.

Centers & Institutes

  • NSF Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing
  • Institute for Massively Parallel Applications and Computing Technologies (IMPACT)
  • Institute for Magnetics Research
  • Institute for MEMS and VLSI Technology
Engineering Management & Systems Engineering

Quick Facts

Full-time faculty: 12
Undergraduate students: 102
Graduate students: 402
Annual research expenditures: $1.1 million

 

Degrees and Programs

 

Research Areas 

  • Engineering and Technology Management
  • Systems Engineering 
  • Environmental and Energy Management
  • Information Assurance
  • Crisis, Emergency and Risk Management
  • Operations Research
  • Economics, Finance and Cost Engineering
  • Knowledge and Information Management

 

Points of Pride

  • One of the largest engineering management and systems engineering programs in the U.S. is right here in GW’s Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering.
  • Professor Joseph Barbera, an EMSE faculty member and emergency room physician, serves as an emergency medical responder to search and rescue missions and public health emergencies around the world and has helped create a national preparedness strategy to coordinate healthcare resources during emergencies.
  • Professor David Broniatowski was awarded a prestigious R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health for his survey research on attitudes about vaccines.  Using new tools such as Twitter to complement data gathered from traditional survey methods, Professor Broniatowski and his research partners are collecting valuable data that can be used to help public health officials better develop and target education materials and strategies.
  • Professor Royce Francis conducts research to vastly improve water distribution system asset management by allowing asset management decision-making to consider both asset risk and reliability and the public health impacts of asset management.
  • NASA’s mission is to push the limits of the possible, which requires the continuous development of new, better, and more precise technologies, subsystems and systems. To better understand how new technology development can be encouraged in the unique market structure of NASA, Professor Zoe Szajnfarber works to develop new R&D evaluation metrics and to identify feasible institutional levers to encourage innovation.
  • Professor Joost Santos develops disaster risk analysis and systems engineering models that are used in disaster scenarios, such as hurricanes and influenza pandemics. His models study interdependent infrastructure and economic systems and track the flow of goods and services across a regional economy during disasters.

Centers & Institutes

  • Institute for Crises, Disaster and Risk Management
  • Crisis, Emergency and Risk Management Lab
  • Decision Support Lab
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Quick Facts

Full-time faculty: 23
Undergraduate students: 249
Graduate students: 152
Annual research expenditures: $4.3 million

 

Degrees and Programs

Research Areas

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Design and Manufacturing of Mechanical and Aerospace Systems
  • Fluid Mechanics, Thermal Science and Energy
  • Mechantronics, Robotics and Controls
  • Solid Mechanics and Materials Science

Points of Pride

  • The Department is home to one of the nation’s leading fluid dynamics research programs. Fluid dynamics research impacts transportation, energy, medicine, weather prediction, and many other fields.
  • Professor Lijie Grace Zhang received a prestigious National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award for her work with 3D bioprinted, smart, vascularized nano tissue, which aims to find a solution for treating large tissue defects in patients.
  • Professor Michael Keidar is using plasmas to create new micro-propulsion devices called micro-vacuum arc thrusters, which provide small forces that can be used to correct or sustain satellites in their orbits. NASA has accepted a proposal from Dr. Keidar to launch GW’s Cube satellite as part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.
  • An expert in computational fluid dynamics, Professor Elias Balaras is using high performance parallel computing to conduct research on cardiovascular blood flow mechanics and hemodynamics of biomedical devices. His research aims to improve understanding of cardiovascular disease and develop tools for surgical planning such as one that would allow surgeons to do virtual surgery and optimize the procedure for each patient before performing the actual operation.
  • Professor Kausik Sarkar is collaborating with a colleague from Boston University to develop new ultrasound-based molecular imaging of diseases. The project aims to engineer tiny lipid-coated bubbles that are targeted to specific diseases and can be injected into a patient; once injected, the bubbles will attach themselves to the diseased part of the body and show up in the ultrasound image.
  • Professor Megan Leftwich is working with the Smithsonian National Zoo to study the sea lion’s swimming techniques for possible applications to the design of underwater vehicles.

Labs, Centers, & Institutes 

  • Biofluid Dynamics Laboratory
  • Bioengineering Laboratory for Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering
  • Center for Biomimetics and Bioinspired Engineering
  • Computational Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics Laboratory
  • Computational Materials Science and Molecular Modeling Group
  • Flight Dynamics and Controls Laboratory
  • GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering
  • GW Institute for Nanotechnology
  • Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory
  • Multiscale Computational Mechanics Laboratory

Quick Facts

Full-time faculty: 23
Undergraduate students: 249
Graduate students: 152
Annual research expenditures: $4.3 million

Degrees And Programs

Undergraduate
Mechanical Engineering (B.S., 5-year B.S./M.S.)

  • with options in aerospace; biomechanical engineering; patent law; medical-prep; and robotics

Graduate
Mechanical Engineering (M.S., Ph.D., Appl. Scientist, Eng)

  • with focus areas in aerospace; industrial engineering; design of mechanical engineering systems; fluid mechanics, thermal science, and energy; solid mechanics and materials science; structures and dynamics; and robotics, mechatronics, and controls

Certificate Programs
Computer-Integrated Design
Energy Engineering and Management

Research Areas

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Design and Manufacturing of Mechanical and Aerospace Systems
  • Fluid Mechanics, Thermal Science and Energy
  • Mechantronics, Robotics and Controls
  • Solid Mechanics and Materials Science

Points Of Pride

  • The Department is home to one of the nation’s leading fluid dynamics research programs. Fluid dynamics research impacts transportation, energy, medicine, weather prediction, and many other fields.
  • Professor Lijie Grace Zhang received a prestigious National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award for her work with 3D bioprinted, smart, vascularized nano tissue, which aims to find a solution for treating large tissue defects in patients.
  • Professor Michael Keidar is using plasmas to create new micro-propulsion devices called micro-vacuum arc thrusters, which provide small forces that can be used to correct or sustain satellites in their orbits. NASA has accepted a proposal from Dr. Keidar to launch GW’s Cube satellite as part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.
  • An expert in computational fluid dynamics, Professor Elias Balaras is using high performance parallel computing to conduct research on cardiovascular blood flow mechanics and hemodynamics of biomedical devices. His research aims to improve understanding of cardiovascular disease and develop tools for surgical planning such as one that would allow surgeons to do virtual surgery and optimize the procedure for each patient before performing the actual operation.
  • Professor Kausik Sarkar is collaborating with a colleague from Boston University to develop new ultrasound-based molecular imaging of diseases. The project aims to engineer tiny lipid-coated bubbles that are targeted to specific diseases and can be injected into a patient; once injected, the bubbles will attach themselves to the diseased part of the body and show up in the ultrasound image.
  • Professor Megan Leftwich is working with the Smithsonian National Zoo to study the sea lion’s swimming techniques for possible applications to the design of underwater vehicles.

Labs, Centers & Institutes

  • Biofluid Dynamics Laboratory
  • Bioengineering Laboratory for Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering
  • Center for Biomimetics and Bioinspired Engineering
  • Computational Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics Laboratory
  • Computational Materials Science and Molecular Modeling Group
  • Flight Dynamics and Controls Laboratory
  • GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering
  • GW Institute for Nanotechnology
  • Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory
  • Multiscale Computational Mechanics Laboratory