January 26 - February 1, 2015

Newsletter

January 26, 2015

Faculty News

Media Mentions:

WTOP-FM spoke to Alan Friedman (research scientist, Cyber Security Policy Research Institute) about cybersecurity ahead of the State of the Union address on January 20. Audio

Publications:

Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE) recently published two papers. "Nano-optics gets practical - Plasmon Modulators," published in Nature Nanotechnology (doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.314), shows how nanophotonic building blocks on-chip overcome fundamental limits toward delivering ultrafast and power-efficient nanoscale photonic building blocks paving a way for photonic network-on-chips. In "Enhanced interaction strength for a square plasmon resonator embedded in photonic crystal nanobeam cavity," published in Journal Nanophotonics (doi: 10.1117/1.JNP.9.093790), Prof. Sorger shows that strong light-matter interactions of nanoscale optical resonators can outperform low-loss yet confined systems like photonic crystal cavities for efficient on-chip opto-electronics.

Conferences & Presentations:

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Prof. Johan Rene van Dorp (EMSE) participated in the Salish Sea Workshop on Vessel Traffic Risk and Management, held January 7-8 in Bellingham, WA. In the spirit of the collaborative analysis method striving for an all stakeholder participation, the following were represented: Native American tribes, Canadian First Nation tribes, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Canadian Coast Guard, industry (e.g. Kinder Morgan, BP, Alaska Tanker Company, Polar Tanker, Harley Marine, Olympic Tug and Barge, etc.), consultancies (e.g. Herbert Engineering, Cardno Entrix, etc.), Washington State Government, Canadian Government (Transport Canada), and U.S. and Canadian environmental NGO's (e.g. Friends of the Earth, Friends of the San Juans, Islands Trust, etc).

Other News

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At an awards ceremony held January 12, Profs. Lance Hoffman (CS) and Rachelle Heller (CS) accepted a certificate commemorating GW's five-year renewal award of more than $4 million to continue educating students in cybersecurity who are committed to work for the government upon graduation.

Student News

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Left to right: Connor Tobin, Stephen Preston, Tyler Miller, Geovanne Almeida and Jonas Hassan

The SEAS Mini Baja team displayed its under-construction, off-road vehicle at the Washington DC Auto Show on January 21. Mini Baja is an annual collegiate competition that requires students to design and fabricate an off-road vehicle that will then compete in a four-hour endurance test on a demanding off-road course. The SEAS Mini Baja team will compete at the upcoming competitions in Auburn, AL (April 9-12) and Baltimore, MD (May 7-10). Prof. Murray Snyder (MAE) is the faculty advisor to the Mini Baja Team.

Other News

Graduate Recruiting & Admissions: The fall application deadline has passed. Students who are still interested in applying for the fall should email [email protected]. The next online information session will be held on Wednesday, January 28 at 7:00 pm. More information about this and other recruitment events can be found at www.graduate.seas.gwu.edu.

SEAS Graduate Career Services: The GW SEAS Graduate Career Service Team is now located in SEH 2730, and SEAS graduate students can come by to schedule coaching appointments to discuss their resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, job search strategies and interview preparation with Courtney McClain on GWork. Chalvonna Smith is currently working with Stroz Friedberg and Agile Trailblazers, which are interested in hiring SEAS graduate and undergraduate students. She has also been working with the Israeli Embassy to establish a working relationship and has spoken with the World Bank to continue recruitment efforts at GW. The GW SEAS Office of Graduate Admissions and the GW SEAS Graduate Career Service Team successfully completed GW SEAS Academic Expectations Workshops welcoming all incoming SEAS graduate international students last week.

Student Career Development Information:

  • GW SEAS Career Service International Coffee Hour: January 29 from 4:00 to 5:00 pm, SEH, Room 2000B
  • 2015 Spring Career & Internship Fair: February 11 from 1:00 to 5:00 pm at the Charles E. Smith Center. Registration is now open in GWork!
  • Weekly Featured Graduate Career Services Informational Resource: How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science, NPR

Guest Vignette

Recent improvements in multi-core processors and high-speed network interface cards have enabled Network Function Virtualization (NFV), which allows traditional network hardware such as routers, firewalls, and switches to instead run on commodity servers. NFV lets the network's data processing elements run as software, making them both far cheaper and more dynamic than traditional approaches that rely on expensive hardware appliances. At the same time, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has grown in popularity as a way to more easily manage network services by centralizing control plane functions. This makes it easier for network administrators to define complex processing policies that govern individual packet flows.

Our work is exploring how the intersection of these two technologies can enable a new breed of highly dynamic network services in both wide area and data center networks. We have developed the NetVM platform, the first software framework to allow network software running in virtual machines to support speeds over 30 Gbps. Our approach uses zero-copy memory mechanisms and careful NUMA-aware processor management to achieve high performance even in virtual machine-based environments that typically have high overheads for I/O activities. Our research team is also investigating how the network's control plane algorithms must evolve to take advantage of these new software-based building blocks. These projects are funded by the National Science Foundation and our collaborators include researchers at the University of California Riverside, AT&T Labs, and IBM Research. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Tim Wood, Department of Computer Science)

SEAS Events

BME Department Launch: "The Future of Biomedical Engineering: Celebrating George Washington University's Newest Department"
Wednesday, January 28
3:30 – 6:00 pm (Reception begins at 5:00 pm)
SEH Lehman Auditorium (Lower Level)
RSVP required

External Events

Biomedical Engineering & Health Sciences Career Week
January 26-30
Biomedical Engineering & Health Sciences Career Week is held in partnership with SEAS, CCAS, Milken Institute SPH, and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The week includes a networking prep session, STEM-H Federal Application Workshop, Med School 101 Panel, a company site visit, employer-in-residence sessions, and an industry career panel and reception. The week will include employers such as Becton Dickinson (BD), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Medtronic, St. Jude Medical and many more! To learn more, visit GWork.

Biomedical Engineering & Health Sciences Industry Career Panel
Friday, January 30
11:00 am – 1:00 pm
SEH Lehman Auditorium (Lower Level)
As part of the Biomedical Engineering & Health Sciences Career Week there will be a panel and networking reception for students, faculty and staff. Listen, learn and engage with industry experts to gain insights into various career paths within the Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences fields. The program will begin with a one-hour panel and Q & A session followed by open networking. Organizations represented include Becton Dickinson (BD), Medtronic, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Students should RSVP in GWork; faculty and staff should RSVP to [email protected].

22nd Global Environment for Network Innovators (GENI) Engineering Conference Competition: GENI Tutorial
Monday, January 26
The GENI tutorial is for all students interested in entering the competition. Sponsored by Cisco Systems®, the competition aims to discover, develop and encourage talent in developing innovative applications. GENI provides a virtual laboratory for networking and distributed systems research and education. It is well suited for exploring networks at scale, thereby promoting innovations in network science, security, services and applications. For more information, please visit http://www.caaren.org/gec22_ competition.

Entrepreneurship News & Events

Office of Entrepreneurship Spring Workshop: "Pushing Forward with Customer Discovery"
Wednesday, February 4
5:30 - 7:00 pm
255 Duques Hall
RSVP

Save the date for these other Office of Entrepreneurship upcoming workshops/events:

February 11: Creating Financial Projections for a Startup
February 18: Writing a Successful Business Plan
February 25: Special Topics: Foreign Startup Founders
March 11: Keeping Your Legal House in Order
March 18: Your Startup's Pitch and Visual Deck
April 14: GW Business Plan Competition Finals, Jack Morton Auditorium

Doctoral Dissertations

Student's Name: Kimberly S. Stambler
Dissertation Title: "Intermediate and Long-Range Incident Action Planning For Complex and Extended Incidents"
Advisor: Prof. Joseph Barbera (EMSE)
Monday, February 9
1:00 pm
2600 SEH

Student's Name: Amine El Haimar
Dissertation Title: "Stochastic Risk Analysis of Influenza Pandemic on Interdependent Workforce Sectors Using Input-Output Modeling"
Advisor: Prof. Joost Reyes Santos (EMSE)
Wednesday, February 25
1:00 – 3:00 pm
2600 SEH