Faculty News
Research:
GW is part of a university consortium led by Howard University that recently won the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT) award to manage the corresponding transportation research program for five years (i.e., the “Transportation Research and Program Management” proposal). Prof. Samer Hamdar (CEE) is the PI from GW, and Profs. Pedro Silva and Azim Eskandarian are the co-PIs.
Media Mentions:
Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE) was quoted in the June 5 Chronicle of Higher Education article “ Amid Fast Change, Group Seems Slow to Enhance Colleges’ Control of Online Courses .” The article covers Unizin, a project intended to help colleges gain more control of their online course platforms.
Aljazeera America interviewed Trey Herr (senior research associate, Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute) on June 17 about Syria’s cyber warfare. ( Video)
Prof. Shelly Heller (CS) commented on the Tim Hunt comments on women in the lab in the June 11 Elsevier SciTech Connect article “ Response to Tim Hunt: Why More Women Need to be in Science.”
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) was featured in the June 15 GW Today article “ GW Researchers’ Plasma Thruster Reaches Space.”
Prof. Yongsheng Leng’s (MAE) research was mentioned in the Chemical and Engineering News article “ Molecular Device Simulations Spring Up .”
Publications:
Prof. Samer Hamdar (CEE) and his colleagues have published their work in the Transportation Research Part B: Methodological Journal, the most prestigious journal in the transportation research community. The citation is: S. H. Hamdar, H.S. Mahmassani, and M. Treiber. “From Behavioral Psychology to Acceleration Modeling: Calibration, Validation, and Exploration of Drivers’ Cognitive and Safety Parameters in a Risk-Taking Environment,” Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 78, pp. 32-53, 2015 (doi:10.1016/j.trb.2015.03. 011). Separately, Prof. Hamdar and his doctoral students, Claire Silverstein and Justin Schorr, published their research work in the Journal of Transportation Safety and Security. The citation is: C. Silverstein, J. P. Schorr, and S. H. Hamdar. “Work Zones vs. Non-Work Zones: Risk Factors Leading to Rear-End and Sideswipe Collisions,” Journal of Transportation Safety and Security (doi: 10.1080/19439962.2015.1036332) .
Prof. Ergun Simsek (ECE) has published the following paper: B. Mukherjee, W. S. Leong, Y. Li, H. Gong, L. Sun, Z. X. Shen, E. Simsek, and J. T. L. Thong. “Raman analysis of gold on WSe2 single crystal film,” Materials Research Express, Vol. 2, 065009 (2015). This publication is the second outcome of his his collaboration with the National University of Singapore.
Conferences & Presentations:
On July 26, Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE) will give a keynote titled “Data-driven Education and the Quantified Student” at the PyData Seattle 2015 Conference.
Prof. Erica Gralla (EMSE) and her students presented three talks at the 2015 Industrial and Systems Engineering Conference (ISERC), held May 30 – June 2 in Nashville, TN: 1) A. Azhar and E. Gralla (2015). “Analyzing the Representativeness of Disaster Response Test Cases,” 2) B. Greenberg and E. Gralla (2015). “The Purposes of Information for Disaster Decision Makers in Management/Coordination Roles,” and 3) E. Gralla, J. Goentzel, and C. Fine (2015). Problem formulation and solution in humanitarian logistics.”
On June 11, Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) gave an invited talk titled “Plasma Medicine” at the World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, held in Toronto, Canada.
On June 15, Prof. Claire Monteleoni (CS) gave an invited keynote titled “Climate Informatics: Recent Advances and Challenge Problems for Machine Learning in Climate Science” at the University of Paris-Saclay Center for Data Science. On June 16, she co-presented a data science hackathon. She and her doctoral student, Mahesh Mohan, and climate scientists at George Mason University provided a climate informatics challenge problem and data set for the competition, and she gave the introductory talk to launch the event.
Prof. Danmeng Shuai (CEE) and his graduate students attended the 2015 meeting of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), held June 14-16 at Yale University. Doctoral student Tao Ye presented his work in a poster session on electrospun carbon nanofiber supported Pd for nitrite removal, and Master’s student Qinmin Zheng delivered an oral presentation on using graphitic carbon nitride to remove persistent organic contaminants with visible light irradiation.
On June 6, Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE) gave an invited talk titled “2-D Materials for strong light-matter-interaction and photo conversion devices” at the Energy Materials Nanotechnology 2015 conference, held in Cancun, Mexico. His results showed how a rolled spiral cell of stacked 2D materials is able to form a plasmon nanocavity that allows for high (90%) photo-absorption toward designing novel solar cells. Prof. Sorger also gave an invited talk on June 18 at the AFOSR Young Investigator Review Meeting 2015, held in Arlington, VA. His talk was titled “Light-Matter-Interaction for Advanced Opto-Electronic Devices: Electro-Optic Modulation and Switching,” and in it he summarized his recent publications and research breakthroughs, such as the first plasmon-enhanced Graphene-based electro-optic modulator.
Other News:
Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) was in Hong Kong June 15-16, invited by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council to serve as an engineering panelist and assist in the review and selection of research proposals. About 40% of the proposals will be funded, and some of the successful proposals involved collaboration with U.S. co-PIs. Prof. Chong also served as a member of the International Advisory Committee of the 6th International Symposium on Innovation & Sustainability of Structures, which will be held in Beijing, July 26-27.
Prof. Rachael Jonassen (visiting scholar and part-time faculty, EMSE and CPS) and three colleagues from NOAA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center will convene a session at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in December on the topic “Exploring a Permafrost Forecast System.” Potential participants are invited to submit an abstract before the August 5 deadline.
Student News
On June 2, EMSE doctoral student Vivek Taneja gave a presentation titled “A System Dynamics Approach to PII Data Management in U.S. Hospital Systems” at the IIE Annual Conference, held in Nashville, TN. The paper’s co-authors are Drs. Timothy Eveleigh, Shahryar Sarkani, and Thomas Holzer.
SEAS Events
Free Workshop: COMSOL Multiphysics®, Heat Transfer Simulations and Fluid Flow Simulations
Tuesday, June 23
Program:
9:15 – 9:30 am: Registration
9:30 – 10:30 am: Intro to COMSOL Multiphysics & App Builder
10:30 – 10:45 am: Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:00 pm: Hands-on Tutorial
12:00 – 1:00 pm: Lunch Break
1:00 – 2:30 pm: Heat Transfer Simulations
2:30 – 2:45 pm: Coffee Break
2:45 – 4:00 pm: Fluid Flow Simulations
CEE Seminar: “Ocean Energy”
Presenter: Dr. Philip Vitale, Director, Ocean Engineering, Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC)
Monday, June 29
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
SEH 2000B
Lecture: “Bose-Einstein Condensation of Confined Magnons in Nanostructures: The First 30 Years”
Presenter: Prof. Larry Bennett (ECE) (Note: Chidubem Nwokoye will discuss recent experiments.)
Tuesday, June 30
1:30 – 3:00 pm
VSTC: 20101 Academic Way (Exploration Hall, Auditorium)