July 29 - August 11, 2013

Newsletter

July 29, 2013

FACULTY NEWS

Awards & Honors:
Prof. Azim Eskandarian (CEE) has been elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).  He is active in ASME's Dynamic Systems and Control Division and its various technical committees, such as the Automotive and Transportation Systems (ATS) Committee and the Mechatronics Committee.

 

Research:
Prof. Tianshu Li (CEE) has received a three-year $281,242 NSF grant titled "Unveiling Nucleation Mechanisms of Natural Gas Hydrates Under Realistic Conditions."  The proposed research will employ a new computational strategy to investigate the formation mechanism of natural gas hydrates, an important potential energy source as well as a type of hazardous compounds in oil/gas pipeline.

 

Publications:
Prof. Michael Clarkson's (CS) paper, "Belief Semantics of Authorization Logic" has been accepted at a top-ranked security conference, ACM's flagship Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS).  The paper is about how to reason, precisely and mathematically, about what security policies allow--for example, whether human agents are permitted to take actions, or whether computer systems are permitted to execute programs. 

Prof. Kausik Sarkar (MAE), with his graduate student Swarnajay Mukherjee, has published the following article: "Effects of matrix viscoelasticity on the lateral migration of a deformable drop in a wall-bounded shear," Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 727, 318-345.

Profs. Shahram Sarkani and Thomas Mazzuchi (both of EMSE) have published the following recent articles:

P. Hendrickson, S. Sarkani, and T. A. Mazzuchi. “Benchmark requirement decision making tool to optimize effectiveness of weapon system modifications,” International Journal of Defense Acquisition Management, Vol. 5, 2013, pp. 1-19. 

E. A. Bjorkman, S. Sarkani, and T. A. Mazzuchi. “Test and Evaluation Resource Allocation Using Uncertainty Reduction as a Measure of Test Value,” IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Vol. 60, No. 3, 2013, pp. 541-551.

E. A. Bjorkman, S. Sarkani, and T. A. Mazzuchi. “Systems test optimization using monte carlo simulation.” ITEA Journal, Vol. 34, No 2, 2013, pp.178-188.

W. J. Kosmann, S. Sarkani, and T. A. Mazzuchi. "Optimization of space system development resources," Acta Astronautica, Vol. 87, 2013, pp. 48–63

 

Conferences & Presentations:
On July 11, Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) gave a keynote talk, "New Developments in Nano-mechanics and Smart Materials," at the SPIE International Conference on Smart Materials and Nanotechnology, which was held in Gold Coast, Australia.  While there, he also visited the new campus of University of Southern Queensland at Springfield.

Prof. Erica Gralla (EMSE) gave an invited talk at the Transportation Research Board's Summer Conference, held in Washington, DC, July 18-19. She spoke on a panel titled "Freight Sector Trends with an Emphasis on Resiliency/Contingency Planning," and her talk was titled "Supply Chains for Disaster Response and Resiliency: an Academic Perspective."

Prof. Taeyoung Lee (MAE) gave a presentation, titled "Geometric Mechanics and Control on Nonlinear Manifolds for Complex Aerospace Systems," at the Air Force Research Laboratory of the Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque NM on July 23.

Prof. Michael Plesniak (MAE) attended the 2013 ASME Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting in Lake Tahoe, NV on July 7-11, 2013.   He was a co-organizer of Track 4 - 4th Symposium on Bio-inspired Fluid Mechanics and chaired Session 4-2: Bio-Inspired Fluid Mechanics II.  Prof. Plesniak also participated in the meeting of the Fluid Mechanics Technical Committee.

On July 19, Prof. Kausik Sarkar (MAE) gave an invited talk, titled "Encapsulated Microbubbles: From Echocardiography to Noninvasive Blood Pressure Monitoring and Targeted Drug Delivery," at the Indian Institute of Technology, located in Bombay, India.

Prof. Ergun Simsek (ECE) gave a talk at the 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI National Radio Science Meeting, held July 7-12 in Orlando, FL.  The title of his talk was "Graphene: A Two Dimensional Material in Three Dimensional Structures."

On July 3, Prof. Adam Wickenheiser (MAE) gave a plenary lecture titled "Broadband Vibration-Based Energy Harvesting: Model Reduction and Frequency Up-Conversion" at the 11th International Conference on Recent Advances in Structural Dynamics, held in Pisa, Italy.  On July 10, he gave a seminar at the University of Florida/Air Force Research Lab in Shalimar, FL.  The title of his seminar was "Gust Alleviation at Low Reynolds Number Through Controlling Semi-Active Wing Deformation."

 

Other News:
Prof. Taeyoung Lee (MAE) has been elected to the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society, which manages the technical program of prestigious control conferences organized by IEEE, including the American Control Conference and the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.