Faculty News
Research:
Prof. Xiuzhen Cheng (CS) and Wei Cheng (CS research assistant professor) have received a two-year, $299,949 NSF EAGER grant for their project "Supporting Social Applications in a Hybrid Architecture with CR-Enabled Devices." The major objective of this project is to investigate several fundamental problems over a social-aware hybrid environment by integrating the advances of cognitive radio networks and mobile ad-hoc networks so that novel real-world applications can be set for both domains.
Media Mentions:
Prof. Branimir Vojcic (ECE) was quoted in the January 25 Wall Street Journal article "Picturing Percentages." Prof. Vojcic commented on the charge on mobile device batteries at very low temperatures.
Publications:
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) has published a new paper with his collaborators at Children’s hospital. The paper deals with the application of cold plasma in vivo. The citation is: R. M. Walk, J.A. Snyder, P. Srinivasan, J. Kirsch, S. O. Diaz, F. C. Blanco, A. Shashurin, M. Keidar, A. D. Sandler. “Cold atmospheric plasma for the ablative treatment of Neuroblastoma,” Journal of Pediatric Surgery, Vo. 48, Issue 1, pp. 67-73, January 2013.
Profs. Mona Zaghloul, Zhenyu Li, and Can Korman (all of ECE), along with graduate students Bowei Zhang and Quan Dong, have published the following paper: B. Zhang, Q. Dong, C.E. Korman, Z.Y. Li and M.E. Zaghloul. "Flexible packaging of solid-state integrated circuit chips with elastomeric microfluidics," Scientific Reports (3) 1098, January 22, 2013. Scientific Reports is published by Nature Publishing Group. This work has also led to U.S. patent application No. 13/715,110, "Flexible IC/Microfluidic Integration and Packaging."
Conferences and Presentations:
On January 24, Prof. Shelly Heller (CS) gave the Pregel Colloquium talk, "We've Come Along Way in STEM and Have More To Go," on the topic of the recruitment and retention of women in STEM. She presented and discussed the 2007 and 2013 findings of the impact of the FORWARD to Professorship workshops that have been supported by three NSF grants over the last 10 years. The most recent findings support earlier ones (i.e., that such workshops have a positive impact on the confidence and ability of pre-tenured women as they move along the academic pipeline). Her next step in Slovenia will be to work with her host and her host's institution to establish the baseline data of the situation for women in academia and research in STEM fields in Slovenia. For example, while equal numbers of students are graduating from high school with a strong science background, at each juncture about 10% of the female population leaves science. Because of that, the pool of post-docs has many fewer women than men, and moving from there, the numbers decrease when we look all the way from entry positions to lab chiefs and directors of science institutions.
On January 18, Prof. Kausik Sarkar (MAE) gave an invited talk, "Modeling contrast microbubbles: from echocardiography to noninvasive blood pressure monitoring and targeted drug delivery," at the 18th European Symposium on Ultrasound Contrast Imaging, held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Prof. Murray Snyder (MAE) presented the following peer reviewed paper at the recent American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Sciences Meeting: Snyder, M.R., Kumar, A., Ben-Tzvi, P. and Kang, H.S. "Validation of Computational Ship Air Wakes for a Naval Research Vessel," AIAA Paper 2013-0959, 51st Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Grapevine, Texas, January 7-10, 2013.
Other News:
On January 23, Prof. Kim Roddis (CS) took a small group of students on a detailed tour of a state-of-the-art steel mill. Their tour included seeing the equipment used for each step of the process in turning steel scrap from junked cars and other sources into newly rolled structural steel shapes. The massive electric arc furnace is engineered for energy efficiency in providing molten steel that is poured into the continuous casting machine. The temperatures, material volumes, and rolling forces are all extreme. After seeing where the steel was made, the group toured the plant to see how the raw steel members are cut, sub-assembled, painted, and made ready for site assembly. Of particular interest to the students was seeing the actual pieces being fabricated that the students have designed as part of the Team Capitol DC Solar Decathlon (Catholic University of America, GW, and American University) project.
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:
What happens when you team up groups of students from two different universities who have never met, throw in a five-hour time difference, and assign them an engineering analysis problem in an area they know next to nothing about? Magic, of course.
In Fall 2012, Dean Dolling challenged Prof. Julie Ryan (EMSE) to explore a joint collaboration effort with University College London (UCL) in the general area of sustainability. The result of talking with the UCL faculty was that a joint project-based learning effort emerged. Ten teams of students, each team consisting of 3 GW and 3 UCL students, were given sustainability project challenges. The challenges ranged from analyzing the system impacts of home gardening to exploring the problems of digital waste. The results were amazing, mostly in a good way, but the real magic was from the unintended consequences.
What had started as a simple collaboration turned into a learning experience in how to work in a globalized environment. As stated by one of the participants, "I gained a better sense of what it means to work with people internationally [and] some useful knowledge about how to work with groups of people who face the challenge of collaborating at a distance." Another student said, "The idea of working with students from another country was something that I really loved about this project. I know I would have never been able to interact with students from another country and work together to achieve a specific outcome if it was not for this project."
Funding for this project? Zero. All it took was some initiative and a willingness to explore new avenues to provide our students with the keys to success in the world they will inherit. Because the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, efforts are underway to continue offering these types of experiences with other universities. The objective is to broaden the management, networking, and collaboration skills our students will possess when they graduate. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Julie Ryan of the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering)
SEAS Events:
CS Seminar: “Perception, Measurement, and Simulation”
Dr. James F. O’Brien, University of California, Berkeley
Thursday, February 7
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: "Head Motion Correction in Fetal MRI: Current Results and Future Challenges"
Dr. Colin Studholme, Departments of Bioengineering and Pediatrics, University of Washington
Friday, February 8
2:00 - 3:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
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
ECE Research Blitz #2, Featuring Graduate Students
Monday, February 25
3:00 - 4:30 pm
405 Marvin Center
ECE graduate students will provide five-minute descriptions of their research projects. Topics include biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer engineering. GW faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students are invited. Refreshments will be served.
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.
Entrepreneur Office Hour
Friday, February 8
2033 K Street, NW, Suite 750 (GW Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship)
1:00 - 2:00pm