June 13-26, 2016

Newsletter

June 13, 2016

Faculty News

Research:

GW’s Office of the Vice President for Research has awarded four Cross Disciplinary Research Fund (CDRF) grants to SEAS faculty:

  • Prof. James Hahn (CS) and Dr. John Philbeck (Department of Psychology) received a two-year, $90,000 grant for a pilot project that will involve the Children's National Health Systems. Prof. Hahn is the principal investigator (PI) and Dr. Philbeck is the co-PI on the project titled “Automated assessment and analysis of neonatal endotracheal intubation using an augmented reality simulation system.” The project aims to bridge the gap between training and clinical practice by using quantitative assessment tools and technology-enhanced simulation to improve endotracheal intubation (ETI) performance prior to patient care.
  • Prof. Chung Hyuk Park (BME) received a one-year, $44,798 grant for “Using Robots to Prime Neuropredictive Brain Circuits in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.”
  • Prof. Saniya LeBlanc (MAE) received a one-year, $44,978 grant for “Inkjet-printed flexible electronics with carbon nanomaterials.”
  • Prof. Kausik Sarkar (MAE), along with Prof. Lijjie Grace Zhang (MAE) and Dr. Raj Rao (Department of Orthopaedic Surgery), were awarded a one-year, $45,000 grant for their project, “Low intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) and microbubbles for cartilage regeneration in 3D printed nanostructutred scaffolds.”

Prof. Howie Huang (ECE) has received a $150,000 research grant from Raytheon. His project develops a high-performance computing system that utilizes Big Data techniques to understand complex structures in large social networks and produces new knowledge that can be put into action.

Media Mentions:

CNN (online) quoted Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE) in the June 2 article “'This is my nightmare': UCLA shooting rattles educators across the country.’’

Reproducible and replicable CFD: it’s harder than you think,” the submitted paper by Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE) and her doctoral student Olivier Mesnard, was covered by the UK’s The Register in the May 23 article “The underbelly of simulation science: replicating the results.”

Federal News Radio (online) quoted Dr. Costis Toregas (CS, lead research scientist) in the article “Feds lack confidence in agency cyber defenses, understanding.”

Publications:

Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) and his students have published the article “The strong anti-glioblastoma capacity of the plasma-stimulated lysine-rich medium” in the Journal of Physics D. The article also was highlighted by the journal and featured in its blog last week. The article citation is: D. Yan, N. Nourmohammadi, A. Talbot, J. H. Sherman, and M. Keidar. “The strong anti-glioblastoma capacity of the plasma-stimulated lysine-rich medium,” Journal of Physics D, Vol. 49, No. 27.

Prof. Claire Monteloni (CS) and her doctoral student Cheng Tang have published the following paper: C. Tang and C. Monteleoni. “On Lloyd’s Algorithm: New Theoretical Insights for Clustering in Practice,” Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, pp. 1280–1289, 2016.

Conferences & Presentations:

On May 30, Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE) gave the opening keynote at the Python Conference (PyCon), held in Portland, OR. The video is now available on: https://youtu.be/ckW1xuGVpug? t=32m1s . On June 3, she gave the second-day keynote at the Emerging Technology Conference (EMiT 2016), held in Barcelona, Spain.

Prof. Evan Drumwright (CS) participated in the 41st Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy and was quoted in the AAAS online article “ Artificial Intelligence Requires Thoughtful Policymaking, Experts Say .”

Other News

The National Science Foundation I-Corps program awarded SEAS alumnus Ben Holmes (MS 13, PhD, ’16) the Best Entrepreneurial Lead among all 20 teams within the I-Corp’s Arlington cohort. Ben serves as one of the entrepreneurial leads for Team Nanochon. The team’s other members include: Prof. Lijie Grace Zhang (principal investigator), Nathan Castro (entrepreneurial lead), and Dick Fogel (mentor). The goal of the NSF I-Corps program is to foster entrepreneurship that will lead to the commercialization of technology that has been supported previously by NSF-funded research.

The SEAS Development team is pleased to announce the arrival of Antoinette Griffin, our new administrative assistant. Antoinette is a native Washingtonian and comes to SEAS with more than 25 years of experience working in corporate America, higher education, and the DC Public School system. She will play a vital role in helping SEAS reach our fundraising goal for Making History: The Campaign for GW.