Faculty News
Publishing:
Prof. Rachael Jonassen (visiting scholar and part-time faculty, EMSE) and a colleague from the NOAA’s Climate Services Division (Dr. Marina Timofeyeva) have published a new paper, “A different kind of guidance for climate adaptation planning,” in NOAA’s Climate Prediction Science and Technology Digest Special Issue, February 2014, p. 88-89. The paper further develops ideas presented at the 38th Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop and is available online.
Conferences & Presentations:
On February 25, Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE) gave an invited talk, titled “Beyond Photonic Limits: light-matter-interaction enhanced devices,” to the Physics Colloquium at Georgetown University. The talk was followed by a discussion of physical device and material details with GU’s graduate students.
Other News:
Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) served as a co-guest editor of the 2014 special issue of Economic Systems Research (with Prof. Yasuhide Okuyama, University of Kitakyushu). Economic Systems Research, which has an impact factor of 2.1, is the flagship journal of the International Input-Output Association. The special issue brings together research articles that demonstrate the use of data analysis and economic input-output modeling techniques to enhance disaster loss assessment and management.
Student News
Other News
The SEAS Computing Facility is proud to announce the launch of its new website http://seascf.seas.gwu.edu. The site is now hosted on the university Drupal system and provides relevant information on our services and facilities, software and licenses, and general IT services and support across the University. We hope you find your new SEAS Computing Facility website useful and, as always, we welcome your comments and feedback.
Jinho Hwang, a Ph.D. graduate from CS, presented the paper "Mortar: Filling the Gaps in Data Center Memory" at the ACM International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments, held March 1-2, in Salt Lake City, UT. The work was a collaborative effort with ECE student Ahsen Uppal, and Profs. Tim Wood (CS) and Howie Huang (ECE).
Li Jiang, a 2010 Ph.D. graduate from ECE and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore, has won a three-year National Research Service Award Fellowship from the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. She will use electrophysiological recording and functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the hypothesis that motor cortex stimulation can produce long-lasting pain relief after spinal cord injury.
Guest Vignette
The exchange of heat and moisture fluxes between the land surface and the atmospheric boundary layer drives the dynamics of terrestrial systems and also weather and climate in the atmospheric system. Thus, their accurate modeling is of critical importance in a variety of hydrological and geophysical applications that involve the land and atmospheric components of the earth system. Lack of proper amount and type of data is a major shortcoming for modeling these processes. Development of remote sensing techniques in recent years has had a great impact on hydrology. Remote sensing can provide us with spatially distributed information as well as some entirely new forms of measurement—such as topography, vegetation cover distribution, plant characteristics, land surface moisture, and temperature—which are either impossible or difficult to obtain via conventional point measurements.
Prof. Leila Farhadi’s research interest is primarily focused on understanding and modeling land surface and land-atmosphere exchange processes, which are regulated by a complex web of interconnected parameters. Particularly, she is interested in quantitatively estimating these fluxes based on remotely sensed measurements without reliance oncalibration of empirical relations that are not necessarily transferable to locations outside of the calibration sites. Together with her research team, she is developing new algorithms and data assimilation techniques for more accurate estimation of important land surface components such as fluxes of heat, moisture, and carbon. The objective of their research is to understand the processes that link the terrestrial water, energy, and carbon cycles and to accurately quantify them at the regional and global scales. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Leila Farhadi of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering)
SEAS Events
CEE Seminar: “The Influence and Role of Technical Institutes in Advancing the Industry”
Speaker: William Nickas, Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute
Tuesday, March 4
2:20 – 3:35 pm
359 Duques Hall
MAE Seminar: “From Molecular Recording to Biometallurgy: Applications of Synthetic Biology”
Speaker: Dr. Bradley Zamft, Harvard Medical School & Advanced Research ProjectsAgency – Energy: US Department of Energy
Wednesday, March 5
3:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “Filtered Two-fluid Models for Fluidized Gas-particle Suspensions”
Speaker: Professor Sankaran Sundaresan, Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Princeton University
Wednesday, March 19
3:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “Statistical Analysis and Simulation of Random Shock Waves in Burgers Turbulence”
Speaker: Professor Daniele Venturi, Division of Applied Mathematics, Brown University
Monday, April 7
1:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “Modeling Inelastic Behavior of Metals at Multiple Scales for Multiple Purposes”
Speaker: Dr. David L. McDowell, Georgia Institute of Technology
Tuesday, April 8
11:00 am
736 Phillips Hall
SAVE THE DATE: Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture
Speaker: Dr. Mario Livio, Internationally Renowned Astrophysicist & Prize-Winning Author
Thursday, April 17
6:30 – 8:30 pm
Marvin Center, Continental Ballroom
More info and registration
After the lecture, Dr. Livio will be available for a book signing. Copies of his book will be available for purchase. A reception follows the lecture.
Entrepreneurship Events
Startup Career Expo
Wednesday, March 5
1:00 – 4:00 pm
Marvin Center Continental Ballroom
Entrepreneurial Session 9: Getting Your Legal House in Order
Wednesday, March 5
5:10 – 7:00 pm
353 Duques Hall
RSVP
Dissertation Defense
Name of Student Defending: Taqsim Husnain
Title of Dissertation: “Combined Forward Osmosis and Membrane Distillation System for Wastewater Treatment and Reuse”
Advisor: Prof. Rumana Riffat (CEE)
Thursday, March 6
10:00 am
736 Phillips Hall