June 14-20, 2010

Newsletter

June 14, 2010

Faculty News

Research & Grants:

Prof. Pedro Silva (CEE) has received a three-year, $190,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his proposal: “Collaborative Research: Damage Compliant Inelastic Design Parameters for Performance-Based-Seismic-Design of Slender RC Columns.”

Profs. Greg Shaw (EMSE) and Pedro Silva and Sameh Badie (both of CEE) were recently awarded funding under the GW 2010 Research Enhancement Fund (REF) Competition program for their proposal, “Cost Effective Retrofit Strategies for Single Homes Built in Caribbean Countries.”  This proposal will allocate funds to conduct joint research in the fields of seismic retrofit of structures and emergency preparedness. The research funds will mainly be used to build a ¾-scale model depicting a single family home and to test it on the Virginia Campus shake table. A schematic of the testing at the shake table testing facility is depicted above.

The impetus for this applied research is the result of the large magnitude earthquakes that devastated so many regions of the globe in 2010 and in recent decades, and the push from funding agencies to develop these two areas of research in an integrated manner.  The research also fits well within the University’s commitment to sustainability.  Dr. Walter Salazar from The Seismic Research Centre of The University of the West Indies will lend his expertise to the project regarding seismic hazards in the Caribbean region and construction practice in this region of the world, while Dr. Alkhrdaji from Structural Group will assist in selecting the retrofitting materials.

Papers:

Prof. Shelly Heller (CS) has co-authored a recently published paper on the recruitment and retention of women in STEM fields.  The citation is: “Mind the Gap: Women in STEM Career Breaks,” Catherine Mavriplis, Rachelle S. Heller, Cheryl Beil, Kim Dam, Natalya Yassinskaya, Megan Shaw, Charlene Sorensen. Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, vol. 5, no. 1 (2010), pp. 140-151.

Prof. Suresh Subramaniam (ECE) published the following journal paper with graduate students and other collaborators: "Active monitoring and alarm management for fault localization in transparent all-optical networks," IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 118-131, June 2010.

Conferences, Workshops, & Presentations:

Prof. Sameh Badie (CEE) presented "Can the Stud Spacing be Extended to 48 inches (1220 mm) for Composite Precast Bridge Deck Panel Systems?" to the  FIB (International Federation for Structural Concrete) 3rd International Congress, National Bridge Conference.  The conference was sponsored by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) and held May 29 – June 2 in Washington DC.  Prof. Badie’s paper presented the work that he conducted in the NCHRP 12-65 project, sponsored by the National Academies of Science and awarded to GW. The paper is co-authored by Kris Sriboonma, who received his doctoral degree from GW in 2008.

Associate Dean Can Korman (ECE) presented “A SAW-based liquid sensor with Identification for Wireless Application” on June 1 at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) 2010, in Paris, France.  The paper’s authors are: Farid Hassani, Shahrokh Ahmadi, Can Korman, and Mona Zaghloul. 

Associate Dean Martha Pardavi-Horvath (ECE) presented an invited talk on "Smaller and Faster: Microwave and THz Properties of Periodic Arrays of Nanomagnets" at the International Conference on Microwave Magnetics ICMM2010, which was held June 1-4 in Boston, MA.  Prof. Pardavi-Horvath also presented a contributed talk on "Interactions of Electromagnetic Waves with 3D Opal-Based Magnetophotonic Crystals at Microwave Frequencies" with co-authors  G. S. Makeeva, and O. A. Golovanov.

Prof. Suresh Subramaniam (ECE) presented "Implementing Protection Classes through p-Cycles in Impairment-Constrained Optical Networks" at the IEEE International Conference on Communications in Cape Town, South Africa, in May 2010.  His doctoral student, Arush Gadkar, presented "Connection Scheduling in Wavelength-Constrained Optical Time-Slotted Networks" at the same conference. 

Other:

Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) has been appointed by President Warren J. Baker of the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo as a member of the Engineering Dean's Advisory Council to serve a three-year term effective June 1, 2010. The objective of the Council is to "assist the College in maintaining the excellence of its various engineering programs and to continue its traditional hands-on approach to engineering education."  The Council meets twice a year in San Luis Obispo.

Prof. Tarek El-Ghazawi (ECE) hosted the mid-year workshop and industrial advisory board meeting for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing (CHREC).  CHREC is a national center with four sites at the University of Florida, GW, Virginia Tech, and Brigham Young University, and it operates under the auspices of the NSF, with more than 40 paid memberships from industrial and government entities at its four center sites, collectively. 

The meeting was held on June 2-3 at GW’s Virginia Campus of Science and Technology with 95 participants, including member organization delegates from government and industry and the four university teams, as well as NSF managers.  GW is a founding site of CHREC, which was established in December of 2006 via an NSF contract and signed membership agreements.  Prof. El-Ghazawi serves as the GW site director and a co-director for the multi-university Center.  
                                                                                       
Prof. Poorvi Vora (CS) has begun a three-year term as associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, a publication of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (the IEEE's first society). The journal is co-sponsored by the Communications, Computational Intelligence, Computer, Engineering in Medicine and Biology and Information Theory Societies.

Announcements

Looking for a place to publish or present interesting work in information security or information warfare?  Consider submitting your work to the 6th International Conference on Information Warfare and Security.  It will be held at GW in March 2011, which makes it a pretty convenient venue!  You can find out much more information about the conference at: http://www.academic-conferences.org/iciw/iciw2011/iciw11-home.htm

Dissertation Defenses

Name of Student Defending:  Suboh Suboh
Title of Dissertation: "Towards an Adaptive Interconnect for System-on-Chip”
Monday, June 21 at 1:30 pm
640 Phillips Hall

Name of Student Defending:  Stephen Arnold
Title of Dissertation: "Design, Fabrication, and Implementation of a Nano-enabled Chemical Vapor Sensor”
Thursday, June 24 at 10:00 am
640 Phillips Hall