COVID-19-related News
Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE) has received a one-year, $34,000 National Science Foundation RAPID grant for his research to use Twitter data combined with agent-based modeling to construct a model of the coupled spread of disease and fear in the context of COVID-19.
On June 1, Dr. Gurkan Kumbaroglu, a Fulbright Research Fellow with the EMSE Environmental and Energy Management Institute, was interviewed by the Turkish Heritage Organization on the topic “Impact of COVID-19 on the Energy and Economics Industry.”
Faculty News
Research:
Dr. Saniya LeBlanc (MAE) has received a four-year, $659,568 Office of Naval Research grant for the project “Energy Carrier Transport in Advanced Structural Materials for Thermal Management.” Dr. LeBlanc is the sole PI on the award from the Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics, High-Speed Propulsion and Materials program. The award will fund a project to investigate the formation of multi-scale interfaces in multifunctional materials with power generation and thermal management capabilities. The grant includes funds for an electron backscatter diffraction detector that will be installed on a scanning electron microscope in the GW Nanofabrication and Imaging Center, a facility shared across multiple GW schools.
Dr. Xitong Liu (CEE) has received a two-year, $110,000 Doctoral New Investigator grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. This project will investigate the impact of mineral geochemical heterogeneity and surface roughness on the deposition of colloidal particles relevant to oil production.
Dr. Kathryn Schunke (BME) received a one-year $50,000 grant from the NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National to study “Epigenetic Plasticity of Postnatal Sleep Apnea.” Her team will investigate the mechanism of how neonatal apnea predisposes children to cardiovascular dysfunction in adulthood, by focusing on epigenetic mechanisms of disease susceptibility.
Publications:
Dr. Adam Aviv (CS) has published the following conference proceedings on arxiv.org: R. Samuel, P. Markert, A. J. Aviv, and I. Neamtiu. “Knock, Knock. Who's There? On the Security of LG's Knock Codes.”
Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE) and EMSE PhD candidate Deniz Marti have published the following paper: D. Marti and D. A. Broniatowski. “Does gist drive NASA experts’ design decisions?” Systems Engineering. Published online June 4, 2020.
Dr. Michael Keidar (MAE), Dr. Taeyoung Lee (MAE), and their students and collaborators have published this paper: L. Lin, Z. Hou, X. Yao, Y. Liu, J. R. Sirigiri, T. Lee, and M. Keidar. “Introducing adaptive cold atmospheric plasma: The perspective of adaptive cold plasma cancer treatments based on real-time electrochemical impedance spectroscopy,” Physics of Plasmas, 27, 063501 (2020).
Dr. Luyao Lu (BME), Dr. Igor Efimov (BME), and their past and present students have published the following journal paper: Z. Chen, R. T. Yin, S. N. Obaid, J. Tian, S. W. Chen, A. N. Miniovich, N. Boyajian, I. R. Efimov, and L. Lu. “Flexible and Transparent Metal Oxide/Metal Grid Hybrid Interfaces for Electrophysiology and Optogenetics,” Advanced Materials Technologies, 2020, 2000322."
Dr. Omur Ozel (ECE) and Dr. Suresh Subramaniam (ECE) have published the following paper with graduate student Peng Zou: P. Zou, O. Ozel, and S. Subramaniam. “Waiting before serving: A companion to packet management in status update systems,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 66, No. 6, pp. 3864-3877, June 2020. The paper considers IoT systems in which the status of a monitored event must be updated in a timely manner through sending updates over a transmission link. The timeliness of updates is quantified using a recent popular metric called Age of Information. The paper provides a comprehensive analysis on instances when waiting for a later update before transmitting is beneficial for timeliness.
Media Mentions:
Dr. Lance Hoffman (CS) was mentioned in the Washington Post’s June 12 Cybersecurity 202 article, “The Cybersecurity 202: Cybersecurity experts give a thumbs up to the Apple-Google coronavirus alert system.”
GW Today featured research by Dr. Howie Huang (ECE) and his students Benjamin Bowman and Craig Laprade in the June 7 article, “CyberGraph: Mapping Cyber Threats to Prevent the Next Attack.” Dr. Huang’s team is developing an artificial intelligence system designed to work collaboratively with cybersecurity analysts to provide stronger security for enterprise networks through their startup, CyberGraph.
Conferences & Presentations:
Dr. Tarek El-Ghazawi (ECE) delivered the keynote address for the 28th IEEE International Symposium on Field Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), which was held virtually May 3-6. FCCM is the longest running major reconfigurable computing technical conference. The title of Dr. El-Ghazawi’s talk was “Reconfigurable Computing with Nanophotonics.” The talk covered post-Moore’s Law nanophotonic processors, including those for machine learning and simulations based on partial differential equations and with a focus on his federally funded collaborative research work with Dr. Volker Sorger (ECE) in nanophotonic computing.
Upcoming SEAS Events
Please note that all SEAS and GW events will be virtual events until further notice.
EEMI Webinar: “Leadership in Our Time”
Speakers: Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and András Simonyi, former Ambassador to the United States and NATO
Wednesday, June 17
1:15 – 2:15 pm
Register
The SEAS Environmental and Energy Management Institute will present this free webinar with former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former Ambassador to the United States and NATO András Simonyi. Messrs. Chertoff and Simonyi will discuss global cooperation in a post COVID-19 world in the fight against pandemics, global warming, and efforts to stop backsliding of democracies and the challenge of an ever more assertive China. The webinar is open to the public.
External Events
Webinar: “How COVID-19 Can Inform Resiliency”
Thursday, June 18
1:15 – 2:30 pm
Register
This webinar will analyze lessons learned to date from the COVID-19 pandemic as they relate to preparedness planning and business continuity and share approaches to maximize the time between potential waves to enhance capacity and capability needed to achieve comprehensive business resilience across the public and private sectors. This event is hosted by the Security and Sustainability Forum and the Cadmus Group.
The American Solar Energy Society’s annual conference, previously scheduled to be held in GW’s Marvin Center on June 23-25, has been converted to a virtual event due to COVID-19. EMSE Visiting Scholar Scott Sklar (director of renewable energy, SEAS Environmental and Energy Management Institute) will serve as the general chairman of the event, which already has over 600 registrants. More information is available on the ASES website and on its magazine website, SolarToday.
Human Resources News
This week's HR Corner includes information about GW employees' access to the Headspace mindfulness app, as well as important information regarding the paid time-off option, qualified life event changes in status, medical virtual visit costs, and other topics. Please visit the HR Corner to read these updates.