Research:
A $1.2 million cooperative agreement that GW has had with the Naval Research Laboratory since 2010 has been extended to 2016 and the value has been increased to $2.5 million. Prof. David Nagel (ECE) is the principal investigator on the agreement, “Photovoltaic Material and Device Research and Development.” Thus far, the program has employed two research scientists, three postdoctoral scientists, and two students.
Prof. Murray Snyder (MAE) has received an Office of Naval Research award for "Flight Test Measurement of Airwake Disturbances for Validation of Virtual Dynamic Interface Simulations." This will be a collaborative research effort among GW, the U.S. Naval Academy, Pennsylvania State University, Naval Air Systems Command, and Barron Associates. The total award is $752,000 over three years; Prof. Snyder's portion in $180,000, which will be split between GW and the Naval Academy. The purpose of the research is to develop a methodology to identify air wake gust disturbances with small unmanned aerial vehicles, where identified gust data will be used to validate couple air wake flow fields for helicopter and ship dynamic interface simulations.
Media Mentions:
Prof. Michael Clarkson (CS) was quoted in the June 22 New York Times article “Data Security Is a Classroom Worry, Too."
Publications:
Prof. Tianshu Li (CEE) has published the following paper: T. Anh Pham, Tianshu Li, Huy-Viet Nguyen, Sadasivan Shankar, Francois Gygi, and Giulia Galli, "Band offsets and dielectric properties of the amorphous Si3N4/Si(100) interface: A first-principles study," Applied Physics Letters 102, 241603 (2013)
In June, Wiley-ISTE published Proportionate-type Normalized Least Mean Square Algorithms within the Focus Series in Digital Signal and Image Processing. The book was co-authored by Kevin Wagner (Naval Research Laboratory, former ECE doctoral student) and Prof. Milos Doroslovacki (ECE).
Prof. Emeritus Robert Waters (EMSE) authored the chapter “Evolutionary Economics - A framework for organizational decision-making” (pp.287-301) in the recently published book, Interdisciplinary Economics: Kenneth E. Boulding's Engagement in the Sciences (London & New York: Routledge).
Conferences & Presentations:
Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) and his recently graduated doctoral student Paul Moubarak published and presented a peer-reviewed conference paper (full article with full review) at the proceedings of the 2013 American Control Conference. The paper citation is: Moubarak, P., Ben-Tzvi, P., “Globally Converging MIMO Optimal Controller for Adaptive Manipulation of Mobile Robots with Redundant Arms,” Proceedings of the 2013 American Control Conference, Washington, DC, June 17–19, 2013, pp. 5729–5734.
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) presented the invited talk “Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster for Nanosatellite Propulsion” at the IEEE 40th International Conference on Plasma Science & Pulsed Power Plasma Conference, held June 16-21 in San Francisco CA. Prof. Keidar served as a chair of the session on non-equilibrium plasma applications and also presented two posters with collaborators and students: 1) A. Shashurin, T. Zhuang, G. Teel, M. Keidar, M. Kundrapu, J. Loverich, I. Beilis, “Laboratory Modeling of Hypersonic Flight Conditions,” and 2) A. Shashurin, M. Keidar, “Method for Graphene Production in Anodic Arc.”
Prof. Taeyoung Lee (MAE) and his graduate student Tse-Huai Wu presented the following papers at the American Control Conference, held June 17-19 in Washington, DC: “Spacecraft Relative Attitude Formation Tracking on SO(3) Based on Line-of-Sight Measurements,” and “Robust Global Exponential Attitude Tracking Controls.” Prof. Lee also served as the co-chair of the session titled “Algebraic and Geometric Methods.”
Prof. Tianshu Li (CEE) gave an invited talk, titled "Nucleation in aqueous solution: ice and hydrates," at the third coordination meeting of the CMCSN (Computational Materials and Chemical Sciences Network): Structure and Dynamics of Water and Aqueous Solutions in Material Science, held June 24-26 at University of California, Davis.
On June 24, Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE) and two of his doctoral students attended the 43rd AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference and Exhibit, held in San Diego, CA. They published two AIAA papers, and Prof. Liang chaired a technical session on high-order computational fluid dynamics methods. Doctoral student Junfeng Wang contributed to a presentation of the following paper: Junfeng Wang, Chunlei Liang, Mark Miesch, “Fully compressible flow model of solar convection zone and high-order numerical simulation of convection and differential rotation in a spherical shell.” The third author, Mark Miesch, is a scientist at University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Center (UCAR).
On June 4, Prof. Greg Shaw (EMSE) presented and led a discussion on the evolution of emergency management in the United States to a group of international dignitaries from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, and Vietnam. The presentation was in support of the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. On June 11, Prof. Shaw led a workshop on developing critical success factors for business continuity preparedness and response at the monthly Mid-Atlantic Association of Contingency Managers meeting in Washington, DC.
On June 26, Prof. Timothy Wood (CS) presented "Adaptive Performance-Aware Distributed Memory Caching" at the International Conference on Autonomic Computing, held in San Jose, CA. The work was done with doctoral student Jinho Hwang, who is currently on an internship at AT&T Research.
The EMSE Department sent a delegation to the annual Technology Management and Policy (TMP) Consortium conference, held June 16-18 at MIT. TMP is a student-only presentation conference that includes participation from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge, TUDelft, and a selection of others that vary by year. Profs. Rene van Dorp and Zoe Szajnfarber attended as faculty mentor/judges. Sylvan Motycka (advised by Prof. Duffey) and Ademir Vrolijk (advised by Prof. Szajnfarber) each made an oral presentation, and Amine El Haimar (advised by Prof. Santos) and Ife Nduka (advised by Prof. van Dorp) each presented a poster. Ademir Vrolijk received the Best Paper Award in the masters-level category for his presentation "Decomposition and its effects on space instrumentation research in the European context."
Other News:
Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) was in Hong Kong June 17-19, invited by the University Grants Council to serve as a member of the Engineering Panel of the Research Grants Council (similar to NSF) in the selection of unsolicited research proposals from universities in Hong Kong. About one-third of the proposals were funded. Quite a few proposals have co-PIs from American universities. Prof. Chong also made a side trip to give a seminar on structural mechanics and sustainability at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou. While there, he toured the modern labs and the new control systems for wind and earthquakes at the Canton TV Tower, the second tallest TV tower in the world.
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) was elected secretary of the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society in June.
Student News
MAE graduate students Zhang Bohua, Farhad Goodarzi, Evan Kaufman, Zhou Ma, Paul Moubarak, Ambrish Patel, and Tse-Huai Wu participated in the American Control Conference as student volunteers. The conference was held June 17-19 in Washington, DC.
ECE doctoral students Hatem ElBidweihy and Christopher Burgy, and Prof. Edward Della Torre of GW’s Institute for Magnetics Research have had the paper “Stress-associated changes in the magnetic properties of high strength steels” published in Physica B: Condensed Matter.
On June 24, CS doctoral student Sundaresan Rajasekaran (advised by Prof. Timothy Wood) presented a paper for the Workshop on Architectures and Systems for Big Data, held in Tel Aviv, Israel. The paper was co-authored with Prof. Wood and Wei Zhang, and was titled “Big Data in the Background: Maximizing Productivity While Minimizing Virtual Machine Interference.” The workshop was co-located with ISCA 2013, one of the premier computer architecture conferences.