Faculty News
Research:
GW’s Transportation Group, led by Dr. Samer Hamdar (CEE), is a member of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Team, which was awarded a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for its project, “AVA: Automated Vehicles for All.” From a pool of 73 applicants, the team is one of eight recipients of the DoT’s Automated Driving Systems (ADS) Demonstration Grant Notice of Funding Opportunity. The team consists of Texas A&M University, University of California - Davis, and GW, and it is one of the few research entities in the country tasked with testing automated electric vehicles (AEVs) in a multi-modal city environment. The GW Transportation Group was sub-awarded $1.24 million over a three-year period. Additional details will follow during the course of the project.
Publications:
Dr. Arkady Yerukhimovich (CS) and his collaborators have published the paper “Blockchain Technology: What is It Good For?” in acmqueue magazine. The citation is: S. Ruoti, B. Kaiser, A. Yerukhimovich, J. Clark, and R. Cunningham. “Blockchain Technology: What is it Good for?” acmqueue, Vol. 17, Issue 5.
Media:
Dr. Lorena Barba (MAE) was quoted in Nature’s November 5 Technology Feature, “Make code accessible with these cloud services,” by Jeffrey Perkel. This is the latest in a series of articles by the author highlighting new tools and techniques for reproducible research in data-enabled and computational science. Those interested in this topic can follow him on Twitter: @j_perkel.
Conferences & Presentations:
Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE) has made several recent presentations. On November 1, he gave an invited panel talk titled “Addressing the Vaccine Crisis: The Digital World, Big Data, and Public Health” at UCLA’s Institute for Digital Research and Education's symposium. On November 5, he gave an invited panel presentation, “Vaccines: Information, Misinformation and Disinformation,” at the American Public Health Association’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo, and he presented a poster that was co-authored by his doctoral student, Michael Smith. The poster was titled “Translating Trust in Vaccines from Surveys to Twitter.”
On November 10, Cynthia Gayton (adjunct professor, EMSE) moderated the panel “The Convergence of Artificial Intelligence on Art.” Panelists included Nanne Dekking, founder and CEO of Artory, Inc.; Steven Frank, co-founder and manager of Art Eye-D Associates; and Doug Woodham, keynote speaker.
Dr. Payman Dehghanian (ECE) received a National Science Foundation travel award to attend the NSF Workshop on Power Electronics-Enabled Operation of Power Sytems, which was held October 31 - November 1 in Chicago, IL. Separately, he has been appointed the Society-Wide Webinar Program Chair of the IEEE Industry Application Society (IAS) Education Department.
Dr. Erica Gralla (EMSE) gave two presentations with students at the INFORMS Annual Conference, held October 20-23 in Seattle, WA: 1) L. Bateman and E. Gralla. “Evaluating strategies for intra-organizational information management in humanitarian response;” and 2) J. Moline, J. Goentzel, and E. Gralla. “Approaches for Locating and Staffing FEMA’s Disaster Recovery Centers.”
On October 1-2, Dr. Rachael Jonassen (director, Climate Change EEMI) participated in a panel at Asian Development Bank (ADB) headquarters in Manila, Philippines. She serves as senior adaptation expert advising ADB on developing and delivering good practice guidance on climate resilient infrastructure design in the transport sector. Eight GW graduate students support the project.
Other News:
The CS Department has been selected for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) 2020 Learning Circles cohort. During this project, Drs. Shelly Heller (CS), Bhagi Narahari (CS), Tim Wood (CS), and Jason Zara (BME) will work closely with NCWIT Extension Services consultants to design and implement a plan for recruiting and retaining women in SEAS. The award is accompanied by professional support and $10,000 to help defray the cost of implementation. While the focus will be CS recruitment, the team expects the materials to be useful for recruitment to all undergraduate programs in SEAS.
The BME Capstone Design Program, directed by Dr. David Lee (associate professor of practice, BME), has been collaborating with GW’s Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service for the past several years. When the Nashman Center created the GW Community Engaged Scholarship Program, Dr. Lee registered BME-4920w and BME-4925w as courses, opening up opportunities for SEAS students to collaborate with community partners while they discover needs that their capstone projects could address. Through Dr. Lee's efforts, students have partnered with QL+, GW’s College of Nursing and Medical School, The Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National Hospital, and others. And one student has continued working on a project beyond graduation; the device he made is currently used in a GW Hospital medical research program.
Student News
CS doctoral student Pedram Hosseini and his advisors, Dr. Mona Diab (CS) and Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE), published the paper “Identifying Nuances in Fake News vs. Satire: Using Semantic and Linguistic Cues”
at the 2019 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, held November 3-7 in Hong Kong. Their work also was featured in the November 5 VentureBeat article “Researchers develop AI that distinguishes between satire and fake news” and in the November 8 ZDNet article "Will AI ever 'understand' satire?"
Upcoming SEAS Events
ECE Research Blitz
Monday, November 11
2:00 pm
SEH, B1220
Join ECE as six students present research in their respective areas of focus. Refreshments will be provided.
Special Topic Lecture
Speaker: Dr. Eric Marineau, Office of Naval Research
Tuesday, November 12
3:30 pm
1957 E Street, Room B16
Dr. Eric Marineau is in the Air Warfare and Weapons Directorate at the Office of Naval Research and is program director for Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics, High Speed Propulsion and Materials. He will discuss the work the Navy is doing in these areas. This lecture is a special topic lecture for MAE 6291-11: Hypersonics, and it is open to the SEAS community.
Women in Engineering Career Toolkit Series: Cover Letter & Professional References
Wednesday, November 13
4:45 pm
SEH, 2000
Register
The SEAS Center for Women in Engineering is presenting the final session in this series designed to help SEAS students and recent alumnae gain the skills they need to launch their career. The sessions are open to all SEAS students, but are geared
particularly to women students. Visit the Center for Women in Engineering site for more details.
MAE Seminar: “An Outlook on Fundamental and Translational Research”
Speaker: Dr. Ken Chong (MAE)
Thursday, November 14
2:00 pm
SEH, B1220
ECE Seminar: “Infrastructure Systems Resilience: Models and Algorithms”
Speaker: Dr. Elise Miller-Hooks, George Mason University
Friday, November 15
11:00
Funger Hall, Room 420
ECE Talk: "Positive Trigonometric Polynomials: Application to Spectral Super-Resolution"
Speaker: Dr. Kumar Vijay Mishra, U.S. Army Research Lab
Friday, November 15
12:30 pm
SEH, B1220
ECE Distinguished Lecture Series: “Advanced 5G and SATCOM Phased-Arrays and UaV-Detection Radars Using Low-Cost Silicon Technologies: The End of the Marconi Era Is Near”
Speaker: Dr. Gabriel Rebeiz, University of California at San Diego
Monday, November 18
2:00 pm (Reception to follow)
SEH, B1220
CVP Speaker Series @ GW: “Cybersecurity and Data Science: Partnering for the Future”
Wednesday, November 20
5:00 – 7:00 pm
SEH, Lehman Auditorium
RSVP
Cybersecurity attacks are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, putting organizations’ valuable data at greater risk. Failure to prepare and stay up-to-date on developments in cybersecurity and data science could mean hundreds of millions
of dollars in lost revenue. How we can protect environments from threats targeting data and valuable assets, and what kinds of organizational cultural changes are required to integrate cybersecurity and data science? Join us for a panel discussion
of these and other related questions.
Software Carpentry Workshop: shell/git/Python
Thursday and Friday, November 21 and 22
9:00 am – 4:30 pm
Gelman Library, Rooms 301/302
Register
FREE to GW-affiliated participants
Join Academic Commons and SEAS Computing for the Software Carpentry Workshop, two days of hands-on instruction in automating tasks with the
Unix shell, version control with Git, and data analysis and visualization with Python. The course is intended for GW graduate students, faculty, and other researchers. Advanced undergraduates are also welcome. The workshop is free to GW-affiliated
participants. Attendees don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop. Participants must register in advance and must attend both days of the workshop. Registration and further details are available on the workshop website.
CSPRI Talk: “Cybersecurity for Connected and Automated Vehicles”
Speaker: Duncan Woodbury, Founder & CEO, DTLLC
Thursday, November 21
12:00 noon (An informal lunch will be served)
SEH, B1220
RSVP for lunch
The intent of this and future Cyber Security and Privacy Research Institute (CSPRI) lunches is to give GW faculty and students glimpses of the vibrant security and privacy private sector in
the Washington region and to promote dialog and debate regarding breakthrough initiatives. The potential for support for research or conference papers on related topics will be part of the discussion.
Entrepreneurship News & Events
Make-A-Thing Open Studio @ GW Innovation Center
Fridays throughout the semester
1:00 – 6:00 pm
Tompkins Hall, M06
The studio is open to the GW community. For more information, please email the GW Innovation Center.
External Events
GW Grant Writers' Workshop Series
The Research Enhancement Unit within the Office of the Vice President for Research is offering four workshops for grant writers and associated programmatic support staff. Participants will learn tips for developing winning proposals, managing cross-disciplinary
project teams, and working with foundations and industry partners. The sessions are open to GW faculty, staff, postdocs and students. Non-GW participants will be considered as space allows. There is no fee to attend, but an RSVP is required.
Session I: Foundation Grant Writing
Tuesday, November 12
9:00 am – 12:30 pm
Marvin Center, 310
RSVP
Session II: Successful Collaborative Projects
Tuesday, November 12
1:00 – 4:30 pm
Marvin Center, 310
RSVP
Session III: Building Partnerships with Industry
Wednesday, November 13
9:00 am – 12:30 pm
Marvin Center, 308
RSVP
Session IV: Grant Writing at the Next Level
Wednesday, November 13
1:00 – 4:30 pm
Marvin Center, 308
RSVP
Global Blockchain Business Council Demo Day on the Hill
Wednesday, November 13
12:00 – 4:00 pm
Russell Senate Office Building, Kennedy Caucus Room (SR-325)
RSVP
Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) invites GW faculty and students to GBBC’s Demo Day on the Hill in
conjunction with the Congressional Blockchain Caucus. The goal of this Demo Day is to bring to life the myriad blockchain-based solutions companies around the world are deploying across sectors, including e-governance, financial services, supply chain,
agriculture, energy, and more. Please email GBBC if you have questions about the event.
Big Idea CONNECTpreneur Winter Forum
Speaker: Seth Goldman, Founder and TeaEO of Honest Tea, and Executive Chairman of Beyond Meat
Thursday, November 21
7:30 – 11:30 am
Marvin Center, Grand Ballroom.
Tickets and more information
This is a great opportunity for SEAS faculty, staff, and students to see how GW’s Office of Technology Commercialization gets your inventions before an audience of investors and experienced start-up professionals. Note: A limited number of
complimentary tickets for GW students are available through Ms. Jasmine Bautista of GW’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Students who wish to apply for complimentary tickets should email Ms. Bautista and supply their name, email address, and venture name.
Human Resources News
In this month's HR Corner, SEAS HR Manager Marion Flythe-Inman shares new information on:
- How to share your GW employment stories with HR
- GW's Career Milestones Celebrations in December
The HR Corner is a web page for SEAS staff that contains HR-related news, information, and events. Marion encourages staff to visit the page to find information on GW's new time off and leave guide, events and trainings, SEAS employment opportunities, and much more.