Faculty News
Awards & Honors:
The National Science Foundation has awarded Prof. Guru Venkataramani (ECE) a five-year, $400,157 CAREER grant for his project, "CAREER: An Introspective Architecture for Manycore Performance and Power Debugging." His research proposal involves developing an integrated hardware-software approach to overcoming the bottlenecks in performance that develop when more cores are added to a computing system.
Research:
Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE) has been awarded a three-year, $120,000 research grant from the Office of Naval Research. His research proposal title was "Development of a Novel Spectral Difference Method for Large Eddy Simulation of a Coupled Rotor/Stator System." The goal of this project is to develop a massively parallel predictive tool using the high-order spectral difference method on sliding and deforming meshes for simulating turbulent flow in a ducted marine propulsor.
Books and Papers:
Prof. Azim Eskandarian (CEE) is the chief editor and author/co-author of five chapters in Handbook of Intelligent Vehicles, a new and unique reference book published by Springer. This handbook has the most up-to-date and comprehensive coverage of the subject in 1,675 pages, with 600 illustrations in two volumes. It is available both electronically and in hard-copy.
Conferences and Presentations:
Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) gave an invited research seminar at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on March 5. The seminar covered his ongoing research, "Symbiosis of Mobile Robotic Locomotion and Manipulation - Towards Modular and Reconfigurable Mobile Robotics on Rough Terrain."
Prof. Azim Eskandarian (CEE) delivered an invited keynote talk, titled "Active Systems to Semi-autonomous Driving for Vehicle Safety," at the Indo-US Seminar on Preventing Road Crash Injury Through Vehicle Safety Design, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, March 6-7. On March 8, Prof. Eskandarian delivered an invited talk, titled "Active Systems to Semi-autonomous Driving for Vehicle Safety," at the Channabasaveshwara Institute of Technology (CIT), Gubbi, Tumkur, India.
Prof. David Nagel (ECE) opened the Conference on Future Energy on February 29 at the University of Maryland, College Park with a plenary lecture titled "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions: Science and Business."
Other News
A recent SEAS graduate, Dr. James Chen (MAE '11), advised by Profs. James Lee and Chunlei Liang (both of MAE), has been offered an assistant professor of mechanical engineering position by The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College. He will assume this position with Penn State Altoona in the coming fall semester after finishing his current position as a visiting assistant professor of mechanical engineering technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW).
SEAS is a sponsor of the 2012 USA Science and Engineering Festival (April 27-29), a collaborative effort of the global STEM community to re-invigorate the interest of our nation's youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). As part of the Festival, SEAS will host a FREE, one-of-a-kind panel discussion and book signing with best-selling science author-pioneer, Robin Cook; Wolfram Mathematica co-founder and pictorial periodic table pioneer, Theodore Gray; engineer and practical pyromaniac, William Gurstelle; retired rocket scientist and author of October Sky, Homer Hickam; award-winning history and science storyteller, Joy Hakim; and physician, philanthropist, and writer, Pendred Noyce. Shawn Lawrence Otto will moderate the discussion. The discussion and book signing will take place on April 28, from 7:30 to 10:00 pm. To learn more details about the event and to register, please visit: http://bookfairevening.eventbrite.com/.
Guest Vignette
Delivery of therapeutic levels of drugs inside the eye is often a challenging task, due to various eye barriers. The cornea, which is a dominant route for delivery of ophthalmic drugs, acts as a biological barrier, and usually less than 10% of the applied drug can penetrate into the front of the eye, with virtually no penetration into the back of the eye.
Professor Vesna Zderic, together with her students and collaborators from GW's Department of Ophthalmology, has been working on developing novel methods for improved ocular drug delivery that utilize ultrasound at low to moderate intensities. Specifically, they have been working on an NIH-funded project that focuses on utilization of ultrasound to transiently increase corneal permeability for enhanced delivery of antibiotics and steroids. This method may allow faster and more effective treatment of eye infections and inflammations as compared to currently used methods.
The main objective of this project is to find ultrasound parameters that can provide clinically relevant enhancement of the delivery of medications into the eye, while producing only minor and reversible changes in the eye tissues. The eventual goal of this work is to develop an inexpensive and minimally-invasive ultrasound device for ocular drug delivery that can be applied in an outpatient clinic or in a hospital setting to allow medications to penetrate into the infected eye tissues at a sufficient concentration to fight bacteria, fungi, or viruses before they produce a permanent loss in vision. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Vesna Zderic of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering)
SEAS Events
MAE Seminar: "Comparison of hp-Adaptive Finite Element Strategies"
William F. Mitchell, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Thursday, March 22
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: "Exploring Hypersonic Flow using Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence"
Dr. Paul M. Danehy, NASA Langley Research Center
Monday, March 26
2:30 pm
771 Academic Center
MAE Seminar: "Exploring Hypersonic Flow using Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence"
Dr. Paul M. Danehy, NASA Langley Research Center
Monday, March 26
2:30 pm
771 Academic Center
ECE Colloquium: "Memory System for Extreme-Scale Computing"
Professor Xian-He Sun, Illinois Institute of Technology
Friday, April 6
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture: "Why We Won't Solve the Cybersecurity Problem"
Professor Eugene Spafford, Purdue University
Wednesday, April 11
6:30 pm
B07 Media & Public Affairs Bldg
SEAS Faculty Awards Presentation
Thursday, April 12
3:00 - 5:00 pm
310 Marvin Center
MAE Seminar: "Imaging Tissue Optical Properties Using the Interaction of Light and Sound"
Ronald A. Roy, Boston University, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Thursday, April 19
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
Save the Date: SEAS Graduation Celebration
Friday, May 18
7:30 pm
Smith Center (a reception in the Marvin Center Ballrooms precedes the event)
Entrepreneurship Events
The Dolphin Tank: We Swim Alongside You
Wednesday, March 28
6:00 - 8:00 pm
108 Funger Hall
The Power of Angel Investing: Become a Mentor Capitalist
Thursday, March 29
3:00 - 7:30 pm
Virginia Science and Technology Campus, 20101 Academic Way, Ashburn, VA
Dissertation Defenses
Name of Student Defending: Brenton Duffy
Title of Dissertation: "Analytical Methods and Perturbation Theory for the Elliptic Restricted Three-Body
Problem of Astrodynamics"
Dissertation Director: David Chichka
Friday, March 23
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
Name of Student Defending: Gaetano Magnotti
Title of Dissertation: "Dual-Pump CARS Development and Application to Supersonic Combustion"
Dissertation Director: Andrew Cutler
Monday, March 26
10:30 - 11:30 am
736 Phillips Hall
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