Faculty News
Awards & Honors:
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics - National Capital Section has selected Prof. Michael Plesniak (MAE chair) as the 2011 Engineer of the Year. He will be honored at the June 9 Honors and Awards Banquet. His citation will read: "For service and contributions to Fluid Dynamics and Public Policy via AIAA, program leadership at the National Science Foundation, and computational fluid dynamics research of contaminants in aircraft cabins."
Books & Papers:
Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) and his doctoral student William Rone have published the following article: Ben-Tzvi, P., Rone, W., "Tiny Robots, Massive Potential," IEEE Nanotechnology Newsletter, pp. 4-7, March 2011.
Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE), together with his colleagues at Stanford and Princeton Universities, published the journal paper: A. S. Chan, P. A. Dewey, A. Jameson, C. Liang and A. J. Smits. "Vortex suppression and drag reduction in the wake of counter-rotating cylinders," Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2011.
Conferences & Presentations:
Prof. Martha Pardavi-Horvath (ECE) chaired a session on hysteresis in microwires at the 8th International Symposium on Hysteresis Modeling and Micromagnetics, held at Levico Terme in Italy. She gave two presentations on her research: "Angular dependence of the magnetic structure in permalloy nanoellipses," by M. Pardavi-Horvath, C. A. Ross; and "Modeling of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Magnetic Nanostructures," by M. Pardavi-Horvath, G. S. Makeeva, and O.A. Golovanov.
Other:
Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) has just completed a ten-day lecture tour in China, visiting Tsinghua University in Beijing, Dalian University of Technology, and Shandong University. He delivered a total of four lectures in mechanics covering nano, bio, sustainability and multi-scale areas. At Tsinghua University he was appointed a guest professor for a three-year term to act as an advisor for the Tsien Advanced Mechanics program. At Dalian University, besides giving lectures, he visited State Key Labs, deans, and the president, discussing research topics and other areas of mutual interest. Both Tsinghua and Dalian universities are considered among the top engineering and science universities in China. There may be possibilities of exchanges or collaborations with GW in the future.
Prof. Jonathan Deason (EMSE) and doctoral student Steven Burns were quoted in the May 23 issue of the Argus U.S. Carbon newsletter (Vol. 4, No. 21) about their Solar Institute-funded research project, which is investigating the potential for large-scale build out of a national transmission network to accommodate major increases in solar power. Burns and Deason have developed a model useful for forecasting possibilities for large-scale build out under a variety of scenarios, taking into account myriad constraints relevant to the problem.
Prof. Tarek El-Ghazawi (ECE) announces the arrival of IMPACT's (Institute for Massively Parallel Applications and Computing Technologies) new state-of-the-art supercomputer, George. It contains all the powerful features of the nearly 1400 processor system and delivers roughly 11 trillion calculations per second at its peak performance. The system has passed the acceptance testing. More software is still being installed and some early research has been moved to this system for more vigorous testing. The system runs Cray's implementation of UPC, a language for programming supercomputers for which GW/SEAS has been a major contributor and a technical leader. This system was made possible through an NSF MRI grant to IMPACT faculty in recognition of the wide array of important science conducted by faculty across SEAS and CCAS. NSF MRI grants require cost-sharing, which in this case was provided from the Academic Signature Program in HPC.
Student News
Katherine Farley (CEE - graduating senior) has been awarded a scholarship from the American Society of Highway Engineers (Potomac Section). ASHE awards scholarships to undergraduate students who have demonstrated a strong interest in transportation engineering and hope to make future contributions to the transportation industry. Katherine was nominated by Prof. Sameh Badie. Katherine is planning to continue her studies in the CEE Department through the five-year program.
Raminder Singh (CEE - rising junior) has also been selected to receive a $1,000 scholarship from the American Society of Highway Engineers (Potomac Section) for 2011.
Shutao Wang (ECE - doctoral candidate) has been selected as the winner of the second annual PZFlex Student Innovation Competition. Shutao will perform research on modeling of focused ultrasound enhanced drug delivery into retinoblastomas. The competition, which is open to students at all academic institutions worldwide, is designed to inspire novel uses for the PZFlex ultrasound simulation software (Weidlinger Associates, Inc.) in solving today's complex engineering problems. Prof. Vesna Zderic is Shutao's advisor.