November 12 - November 18, 2012

Newsletter

November 12, 2012

Faculty News

Publications:

Profs. Lijie Grace Zhang and James Lee (both of MAE) have published the following book chapter: L. Zhang, J.Y. Li and J.D. Lee. Chapter 19: Nanotechnology for Cartilage and Bone Regeneration, in: Nanomedicine: technologies and applications, T. Webster (Ed.), Woodhead Publishing Limited, 2012, 571-598.

Conferences and Presentations:

Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) was at Tsinghua University in Beijing last week, where he presented the lecture "New Developments in Mechanics and Materials" and led a panel discussion titled "The Future of Mechanics." He was appointed as a Tsinghua visiting professor last year and an advisor of the H. S. Tien Mechanics Class, a group of top mechanics students selected nationwide.

Prof. Milos Doroslovacki (ECE) served as the general chair of the Fourthy-Sixth Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, held November 4-7, in Pacific Grove, CA. At the conference more than 430 papers were presented, including "Complex colored water-filling algorithm for gain allocation in proportionate adaptive filtering," a paper co-authored by Dr. Kevin Wagner (Naval Research Laboratory) and Prof. Doroslovacki. The conference was co-sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Prof. Evan Drumwright (CS) presented the paper "Fast Dynamic Simulation of Highly Articulated Robots with Contact via O(n^2) Time Dense Generalized Inertia Matrix Inversion" at the Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots, held November 5-8, in Tsukuba, Japan.

Prof. Claire Monteleoni (CS) recently gave two invited talks in Japan. On November 5, she presented "Algorithms for Learning from Data Streams in Supervised and Unsupervised Settings, with Applications to Climate Science" at the University of Tokyo. On November 9, she presented "Climate Informatics: Recent Advances and Challenge Problems for Machine Learning in Climate Science" at the 2012 Information-Based Induction Sciences Workshop, one of the most prestigious machine learning workshops in Japan. Her travel was sponsored by the Global COE program "The Research and Training Center for New Development in Mathematics" at the University of Tokyo.

On November 12, Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE) presented "Quantifying the Capacity Value and Economics of Distributed Energy Storage for PV" at the 2012 Optical Instrumentation for Energy and Environmental Applications (E2) Conference held in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Student News:

Prof. Lijie Grace Zhang’s (MAE) students, Nathan Castro and Mian Wang, gave the following presentations at the 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, October 28 - November 2: 1) N. Castro, C. O’Brien, and L. Zhang. Biomimetic and Biphasic Nanocomposite Scaffold with Growth Factor-Encapsulated Nanospheres for Repairing Osteochondral Defects; and 2) M. Wang, S. Fu, and L. Zhang. Design of a Biomimetic Nanostructured Tissue Engineered Bone Model For In Vitro Breast Cancer Metastasis Study.

Guest Vignette:

With the proliferation of various forms of mobile devices, the radio spectrum has fast become a scarce and expensive resource. Various spectrum utilization studies, however, have revealed that large portions of the overall spectrum remain severely under-utilized, while demand for bandwidth continues to increase. To achieve better management of the spectral resource, cognitive radio has emerged as a promising technology to harness the potential of unused/underutilized spectrum in an opportunistic manner.

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) typically involve two classes of users: primary users (PUs), who are incumbent licensees of the spectrum, and secondary users (SUs), who are allowed to opportunistically operate on licensed spectrum bands, as long as their transmissions do not cause harmful interference with the activities of the PUs. Such a networking paradigm can be enabled with Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA), in which PUs and SUs share the spectrum dynamically in both spatial and temporal domains.

The fundamental problem of enhancing the performance of a CRN via a more effective and efficient exploitation of DSA has attracted much and fast-growing attention in recent years. To tackle the challenges, SEAS professor Xiuzhen Cheng and Hyeong-Ah Choi, along with Prof. Taieb Znati from University of Pittsburg, Prof. Bechir Hamdaoui from Oregon State University, and Prof. Tao Jing from Beijing Jiaotong University of China, launched a collaborative project (led by GW researchers) to investigate novel methodologies and theories for throughput, delay, and fairness enhancement in CRNs via integrated dynamic spectrum access. The team also includes a number of Ph.D. students from the four institutions, and has been working on a number of fundamental issues in extended spectrum sensing, spectrum availability prediction, delay-aware spectrum management, and fair spectrum sharing among different users and different flows. This research is supported by the NeTS program of the National Science Foundation. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Xiuzhen Cheng of the Department of Computer Science)

SEAS Events:

Guest Lecture: “The Role of the National Science Foundation in Developing Innovative Technology through Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants”
Dr. Errol Arkilic, Program Manager for Industrial Innovation and Partnerships, National Science Foundation
Thursday, November 15
6:00 - 7:00 pm
Room B-07, Media and Public Affairs (MPA) Bldg.
Sponsored by the SEAS Clark Engineering Scholars Program

Joint CS-ECE Colloquium: “Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum”
Dr. Zhi (Gerry) Tian, Communications, Circuits and Sensing Systems (CCSS) Program, NSF
Friday, November 16
2:30 - 3:30 pm
736 Phillips Hall
 

MAE Seminar: "Materials by Design"
Dr. Markus J. Buehler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Monday, November 19
11:00 am
736 Phillips Hall
 

ECE Colloquium: “Chemical, Structural, and Electronic Hybridization of Graphene Films”
Dr. Jeremy Robinson, Materials Research Scientist, Naval Research Laboratory
Thursday, November 29
3:30 - 4:30 pm
309 Tompkins Hall
 

Institute for Nanotechonology and Institute for Biomedical Engineering Seminar: "Biocompatible Nanoparticle Materials In For Cancer Imaging and Therapy"
Dr. Xiaoyuan (Shawn) Chen, Chief and Senior Investigator, National Institutes of Health
Friday, November 30
10:30 am
771 Rome Hall
 

Dissertation Defenses:

Name: Gedare Bloom
Dissertation Title: "Operating System Support for Shared Hardware Data Structures"
Advisor: Prof. Bhagirath Narahari
Monday, November 19
10:00 am - 12: 00 pm
205 Tompkins Hall