Announcements
GW RESPONSE TO COVID-19
University updates and information about COVID-19 are posted on the GW website. Please continue to monitor the webpage for updates and information.
COVID-19: SEAS Instructional Continuity
SEAS faculty, staff and students should visit the SEAS Instructional Continuity Resources page to find online instruction resources and related messages from Dean Lach.
COVID-19: Other Faculty and Staff Information
This week's issue of the HR Corner includes information about a live-answer GW Information Line and about faculty and staff services that are impacted by COVID-19-related closures and changes on campus, including: HR service delivery; I-9 processing; mail and package updates; and GW parking garages.
Starting Fall 2020, SEAS will offer select admitted master’s degree students the ability to start their MS degree program online through our Flex-Start program. The Flex-Start program is ideal for admitted students who may be impacted by travel restrictions or visa delays. More information is available on the Flex-Start program page.
Some happy news: US News & World Report rankings: On March 17, US News released its 2021 Graduate Schools rankings. GW ranked #67 on the list of Best Engineering Schools, rising 25 spots in four years. Dean John Lach noted, “What is so significant about this news is that it reflects the very real trajectory of the school in recent years. First and foremost, it shows that the investments GW and SEAS have made in our faculty hiring, staff support, and facilities are paying off in very noticeable ways, and that our reputation is beginning to catch up to our successes in both education and research.”
Other COVID-19-related News
George Hacks, a GW student-led organization that catalyzes innovation in healthcare, is helping facilitate solutions to corona virus-related problems. If you would like to submit a corona virus-related problem for George Hacks to make available for students to work on, please do so through the George Hacks problem statement form. Current George Hacks projects are featured on the group’s projects page.
Dr. Roger Kaufman (emeritus professor, MAE) shared a link to a video he created, showing the steps involved in making a DIY face mask for protection against corona virus. Dr. Kaufman includes a disclaimer that the face mask is intended to be a help, but is not a guarantee of protection.
Faculty News
Research:
Dr. Gina Adam (ECE) has received a two-year $175,000 CRII grant from the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). CISE’s directorate Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) program supports early-career faculty to undertake exploratory investigations and recruit graduate students. The project aims to develop distributed neuromorphic computing solutions that could be reliably embedded with existing sensor and actuator organ conformal platforms. The overarching goal of the project is to develop hardware-mappable algorithms that can distinguish cardiac electrical storms from normal electrical wave patterns, then design compact and energy efficient memristor-based technology to prototype these algorithms in hardware. This work will benefit from the use of cardiac animal and human data for testing, thanks to Dr. Efimov’s group in the BME Department.
With assistance from Dr. Jerry Comanescu (GW's Technology Commercialization Office) who facilitated the prosecution of the patent application, several SEAS faculty members recently received US patents for their work:
On March 17, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Patent No. US 10,593,349 to Dr. Chung Hyuk Park (BME) for “Emotional Interaction Apparatus.”
On February 28, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Patent No. US 10, 564,512 to Dr. Shuai Sun, Dr. Volker Sorger (ECE), Dr. Tarek El-Ghazawi (ECE), and Dr. Vikram Narayana for “Hybrid Photonic Plasmonic Non-Blocking Wide Spectrum WDM On-Chip Router.”
Publications:
Dr. Ahmed Louri (ECE) and his Ph.D. student Yuan Li have published the following refereed journal paper: Y. Li and A. Louri. “ALPHA: A Learning-Enabled High-Performance Network-on-Chip Router Design for Heterogeneous Manycore Architectures,” IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, March 17, 2020. The work exploits the use of machine learning and presents a router design to meet the stringent on-chip communication demands of future computing chips with heterogeneous cores. This research is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Media Mentions:
Forbes featured research conducted by Dr. Adam Aviv (CS) in the March 11 article “This $99 Robot Built from LEGO Bricks Can Scan iPhones For PIN Codes.” The research was subsequently covered in the March 14 Forbes article “Warning: Are You Using One Of These 20 Dangerous Smartphone PINs?”
CBS Newspath recently spoke to Dr. John Helveston (EMSE) about the temporary positive environmental side-effects of the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19. Dr. Helveston appeared in this KTAB news segment.
On March 11, Dr. Jigar Shah, formerly the executive director of the Institute of Industrial Productivity and now a visiting scholar with the SEAS Environmental and Energy Management Institute, published the article “Sound investments to decarbonize the world’s industries” in GreenBiz. Dr. Shah’s article sets forth important information relevant to addressing the critically important worldwide problem of global climate change.
SEAS Computing Facility
MATLAB Online Office Hours: SEAS CF will continue to hold MATLAB open office hours throughout the Spring semester, but they will be offered online. Office hours are: Sundays (2:00 – 4:00 pm), Tuesdays (6:00 – 10:00 pm), and Fridays (1:00 – 5:00 pm). Please email us to schedule a tutoring appointment. The workshops and tutoring will be hosted by SEAS senior Emilie Lemieux. MATLAB and many other helpful programs are available to be downloaded onto any personal computer. For a complete list of applications, please visit the SEAS Computing Facility website.
Upcoming SEAS Events
Please note that all SEAS and GW in-person events are canceled through the end of the Spring 2020 semester.
CSPRI Talk (webinar): “DoD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and The Risk Management Framework (RMF) in Support of Government Agencies”
Speaker: Chakib Jaber, CTO at Spin Systems Inc. (SpinSys)
Thursday, March 26
12:00 noon EST
This event will be held as a webinar through Webex. Please RSVP to Dr. Hurriyet Ok to register for the talk. Registrants will receive the Webex video conference details from Dr. Ok.
Dissertation Defenses
Student’s Name: Yuxin Ren
Dissertation Title: “System Support for Scalable Coordination in Multi-core Platforms”
Advisor: Dr. Gabriel Parmer (CS)
Wednesday, April 1
1:00 – 3:00 pm
This dissertation defense will be held online.
Human Resources News
This week's issue of the HR Corner includes information about a live-answer GW Information Line and about faculty and staff services that are impacted by COVID-19-related closures and changes on campus, including: HR service delivery; I-9 processing; mail and package updates; and GW parking garages.