Faculty News
Research:
Prof. Timothy Wood (CS) has received a five-year, $409,000 NSF CAREER award for his project "CAREER: Application-Agnostic, Distributed-Aware Cloud Platforms." The proposed research will investigate ways to design management systems for cloud computing data centers that are application-agnostic yet distributed-computing aware. These systems will improve the performance and reliability of distributed applications by automatically inferring their resource needs and data consistency requirements.
Prof. Mona Zaghloul (ECE) and Prof. Andrei Afanasev of (GW's Department of Physics), have received a $150,000 grant to work on engineering solar cells that use the unique properties of quantum dots to raise conversion efficiency of solar light into electricity. Dominion Virginia Power awarded the renewable energy research and development grant under its new R&D Partnership Program.
Publications:
Prof. Edward Della Torre and ECE doctoral students Hatem ElBidweihy and Christopher D. Burgy have had their peer-reviewed paper published in the European Physical Journal - Web of Conferences: " Hatem ElBidweihy, Christopher D. Burgy, E. Della Torre, and M. Wun-Fogle. "Modeling and experimental analysis of magnetostriction in high strength steels." The work is a collaboration between GW’s Institute for Magnetics Research, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, and the Office of Naval Research.
Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) co-authored the following January 2013 journal article with his doctoral student Rehman Akhtar: Akhtar R, Santos JR, 2012. "Risk-based input-output analysis of hurricane impacts on interdependent regional workforce systems," Natural Hazards, 65(1): 391-405.
Conferences and Presentations:
Profs. Edward Della Torre and Larry Bennett (both of ECE) and the GW Institute for Magnetic Research presented two papers at the 12th Joint MMM/INTERMAG Conference, held January 14-18 in Chicago, IL: 1) Provenzano, E. Della Torre, L.H. Bennett. "Magnetization Model for Heusler Alloys Near the Kittel Temperature;" and 2) M. Ghahremani, L.H. Bennett, E. Della Torre, M. Zou and F. Johnson. "Direct Measurement of the Hysteretic Latent Heat in a Magnetocaloric NiMnIn Heusler Alloy."
Prof. Can Korman (ECE) presented the following paper at the 12th Joint MMM/Intermag Conference in Chicago, IL: Bowei Zhang, Zhenyu Li, Can E. Korman, Mona E. Zaghloul. "Rectangular CMOS Differential MAGFET Biosensor for Magnetic Particle Detection." The MMM and Intermag are the premier conferences in magnetics of the American Institute of Physics and the IEEE Magnetics Society, respectively.
The following papers of Prof. Taeyoung Lee (MAE)were presented at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, held in December 2012 in Maui, HI: 1) T. Lee. "Discrete-time optimal feedback control via Hamilton-Jacobi theory with an application to hybrid systems;" and 2) T. Lee, M. Leok, and N. McClamroch. "Dynamics and control of a chain pendulum on a cart.
Other News:
Prof. Shelly Heller (CS) has just arrived in Slovenia, where she will be working and meeting with various groups on the issue of the recruitment and retention of women in STEM fields. She has a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship and will be stationed at the country's National Institute of Chemistry for a month.
Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE) is co-organizing a mini-symposium on high-order methods for computational fluid dynamics with colleagues from the University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, and Imperial College London. This mini-symposium is associated with the 12th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM12) to be held next July in Raleigh, NC.
Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) is currently hosting a visiting scholar (Krista Yu) from De La Salle University (DLSU), the Philippines. Krista is a faculty member of the DLSU School of Economics, and she will pursue interdisciplinary research with Prof. Santos. The collaboration is expected to generate an integrated disaster risk analysis framework comprised of computable general equilibrium (CGE) and critical infrastructure protection/resilience models. Krista began her one-year appointment on January 15.
Final reports for two EMSE research projects sponsored by the Logistics Management Institute (LMI) were delivered to LMI on January 15. Doctoral candidate Joanna Resurreccion and Prof. Joost Santos submitted a report on "Resilience Enhancement Planning for Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems," and doctoral candidate Iryna Payosova and Prof. Jonathan Deason submitted a report on "A Multiobjective 'Analysis of Alternatives' Tool for Energy Investments at Fixed-Site Installations." Oral presentations on the results of the projects will be held at the LMI headquarters building in McLean, VA on January 25. Prof. Rene van Dorp is serving as the coordinator of LMI's University Partnership program through which the research funding was provided.
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.
Guest Vignette:
The aging and outdated electrical grid in the US is being replaced with a smart(er) grid with the goals of improved reliability/resilience, increased operational efficiency, optimized asset utilization, and reduced energy costs. The main change in modernizing the current electrical grid is to provide built-in two-way flow of information among different components by using a communication infrastructure. Generally speaking, the smart grid consists of three major components: power generation, power transmission, and power distribution. Advanced technologies such as sensing, control, digital communications, and networking are integrated into the power transmission and distribution systems to effectively and intelligently control and monitor the power grid. This new development will facilitate the realization of many novel applications such as renewable-based power generation, demand-response, wide area situation awareness, and smart metering.
Despite the attractive features provided by a smart grid, many challenges confront us, especially in cybersecurity and privacy, as the smart grid subsystems have been reported to have significant security threats. This is exactly the focus of our research in smart grid. We have developed a communication architecture involving hierarchical key generation centers, smart meters, data consumers, and data repositories to secure the data communications among smart meters, utility companies, and third-party service providers by employing ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption and role-based access control to provide data confidentiality, access authorization, and message authenticity. This architecture is being extended to further consider dynamic attribute addition and deletion, real time security, and user authentication. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Xiuzhen “Susan†Cheng of the Department of Computer Science)
SEAS Events:
MAE Seminar: “Things, Which I Have Studied in the Past Years”
Satya N. Atluri, University of California, Irvine
Tuesday, January 22
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
Guest Lecture: “The Role of Technology Policy in National Security”
Dr. Mark J. Lewis, Director of the Science and Technology Policy Institute
Institute for Defense Analyses
Wednesday, January 23
4:00 - 5:00 pm
307 Marvin Center
Dr. Lewis, Sc.D. (MIT) is a former chief scientist of the US Air Force and past president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. This lecture is sponsored by the Clark Engineering Scholars Program.
Cybersecurity Lecture: “America the Cyber-Vulnerable”
Joel Brenner, former senior counsel, National Security Agency
Thursday, January 24
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
Sponsored by CS and CSPRI
CS Seminar: “Perception, Measurement, and Simulation”
Dr. James F. O’Brien, University of California, Berkeley
Thursday, February 7
2:00 pm
How Do I Become a NASA Astronaut?
Monday, February 11
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Marvin Center, Continental Ballroom
NASA astronaut and SEAS alumna Serena Aunon (BS '97) will discuss her career path from electrical engineering student at GW to NASA flight surgeon. The discussion is open to SEAS students, faculty/staff, and alumni. Registration is required.
SEAS Student R&D Showcase
Wednesday, February 20
3:00 - 6:00 pm
Marvin Center, Grand Ballroom
Related GW Events:
GW Culture Buffs: "1001 Inventions" at the National Geographic Museum
Saturday, January 26
11:30 am: Lunch at Barcode Restaurant, Bar & Lounge, followed by a visit to the exhibit This exhibit, named "Best Touring Exhibition of the Year" at the Museums and Heritage Excellence Awards, explores advances in science and technology from the 7th to 17th centuries that still impact us today. We expect to have a luncheon speaker who will elaborate on the Islamic culture that produced these innovations. After our meal, we'll walk the quarter block to the museum and enjoy the exhibit. Registration is mandatory.
Entrepreneurship Events:
GW Startup Showcase
Wednesday, January 30
4:00 - 7:00 pm
Marvin Center, first floor
Dolphin Tank
Tuesday, January 31
553 Duques Hall
5:00 - 7:00 pm
$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.