Faculty News
Research:
Prof. Ekundayo Shittu (EMSE) has received a one-year, $12,000 George Washington Institute for Public Policy (GWIPP) grant for his project "Policy Design for Renewable Energy Credits: Equilibrium vs. Optimality." This project will address how regulation should be designed to guarantee that the value proposition created is equitably and fairly distributed among the participating entities if energy firms were to participate in a national market for renewable energy credits or certificates (RECs). Specifically, under what policy scenarios would firms favor expensive local energy over cheaper more effective out-of-state renewable energy? What are the impacts of such a national market on firms' technology choices and on their strategies for energy capacity expansion decisions?
Publications:
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) and his undergraduate students William Murphy and Caitlin Carroll published the following article: W. Murphy, C. Carroll and M. Keidar. "Simulation of the effect of plasma species on tumor growth and apoptosis," Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. The article was published as a fast track communication.
Conferences & Presentations:
Prof. Azim Eskandarian (CEE) and his doctoral student Mohammad Goli (MAE) published and presented the following paper at the 3rd International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo, held November 3-7 in Vienna, Austria: M. Goli and A. Eskandarian. "Evaluation of Lateral Trajectories with Different Controllers for Multi-vehicle Merging in Platoons." At the conference, Prof. Eskandarian also chaired the technical session "Cooperative Driving, Intelligent and Autonomous Vehicles." The conference was sponsored by several technical societies and organizations including IEEE, IFAC, SAE, TRB, and others.
Prof. Shelly Heller (CS) was invited to the Indo-US Roundtable on Advancing Women Faculty in STEM meeting, held November 15 in New Delhi, India. At the meeting, she led the discussion on pathways to mentoring, which was based on her National Science Foundation grant "FORWARD to Professorship."
Visiting researcher Virgil Provenzano (NIST), postdoctoral research fellow Mohammadreza Ghahremani, and recent graduates Maryam Ovichi and Hatem ElBidweihy from GW's Institute for Magnetics Research (IMR) attended the annual Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (MMM) conference, held November 3-7 in Honolulu, HI, where they presented the following papers:
- V. Provenzano, E. Della Torre, L. H. Bennett, and H. ElBidweihy, "Large Magnetocaloric Effect Peaks of Gd22Ge8Si34Fe36 Alloy for Low Temperature Magnetic Refrigeration Applications"
- M. Ghahremani, A. Aslani, M. Ovichi, A. Siddique, L. H. Bennett, and E. Della Torre. "Optimization of Magnetic Refrigerators by Tuning the Heat Transfer Medium and Operating Conditions"
- M. Ovichi, M. Ghahremani, E. Della Torre, L. H. Bennett, H. ElBidweihy, F. Johnson, and M. Zou. "Magnetocaloric effect in NiMnInSi Heusler alloys"
- E. Della Torre, H. ElBidweihy, C. Burgy, and L. H. Bennett. "Vector Properties of Magnetostriction"
Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) served as a co-chair of the Public Programs, Service and Needs cluster at the INFORMS conference, held November 9-12 in San Francisco, CA. This cluster has organized 35 conference sessions, with diverse themes that include humanitarian logistics, emergency response optimization, healthcare applications, infrastructure recovery, and disaster risk analysis. INFORMS is the world's largest professional society encompassing the fields of operations research, management science, and analytics. On November 15, Prof. Santos presented the paper "Analysis of Drought Risk Management Strategies Using Dynamic Inoperability Input-Output Modeling and Event Tree Analysis" at the North American Regional Science Conference, which was held in Bethesda, MD.
On November 13, Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE) gave an invited talk titled "2D Materials for Photon Conversion: Limits and Applications" at the Optical Society of America incubator meeting on the fundamental limits of optical energy conversion. The meeting was held here in Washington, DC.
Prof. Tim Wood (CS) was invited to attend the first AT&T SDN University Summit, held November 10 in New York City. The event brought together top researchers from academia and industry to discuss advances in software based networking. Prof. Wood led a break-out session titled "Packet processing in software or hardware? New models for both."
Other News
Graduate Recruiting & Admissions
International recruiting: Graduate Admissions staff will recruit at the QS World Grad Fair in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (November 17), Hyderabad, India (November 19), and Bangalore, India (November 22). They will present at the Department of State's EducationUSA center in Kuala Lumpur on November 18 and conduct a site visit at a prospective partner institution in Malaysia. Last week, Graduate Admissions staff recruited at the QS World Grad Fairs in Manila, the Philippines; Singapore; and Pune, India. They also presented at the International Education Week at the Department of State's EducationUSA in Manila, and conducted a site visit at a prospective partner institution outside of New Delhi.
Domestic recruiting: EMSE Off-Campus programs will conduct an open house on November 18 from 5:30 to 6:30 pm in Newport News, VA, and the Graduate Admissions office will hold a happy hour for prospective on-campus students on November 20 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm at State Plaza Bistro on F Street. They will host online information sessions on November 18 at 12:00 noon and November 19 from 8:00 to 9:00 am. Last week, the staff recruited at the ABRCMS conference in San Antonio, TX and the NSBE regional fair in Pittsburg, PA, and held EMSE Off-Campus Programs information sessions in Ashburn and online sessions. SEAS is still accepting spring applications for domestic students who already have completed the GRE. The fall 2015 deadline for Ph.D. applicants has been moved from December 15 to January 15. Please refer all prospective students to [email protected].
Graduate Career Services:
The GW SEAS Graduate Career Services Team continues to meet with students to review and discuss resumes, cover letters, and interview preparation. The team will host its November International Coffee Hour on November 20 from 4:00 to 5:00 pm. All graduate students will have the opportunity to get their resumes reviewed. The staff will host information sessions by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Time, Inc. on November 18, the Environmental Defense Fund on November 20, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute on November 21. Students should RSVP on GWork.
Guest Vignette
Combining Nanomaterials and Additive Manufacturing to Make Energy Conversion Devices
Worldwide energy demand is projected to increase by approximately 40% over the next 20 years. The successful development of many next-generation energy conversion devices hinges on the use of nano- and micro-structured materials. Engineering materials at this scale provides materials with combinations of properties absent in the natural world, enabling tunable and enhanced energy conversion. These novel materials must be integrated into devices that allow them to interact with the macroscale world. However, the key desirable features of these materials are competing. Nanostructured materials that are easy to manufacture are difficult to integrate into devices, and materials designed for seamless device integration are manufacturing intensive.
Prof. Saniya LeBlanc's research group is using additive manufacturing techniques to integrate advanced materials into energy conversion devices. We develop 3D printing techniques for nanostructured semiconductor materials. In a current project, we are developing thin, flexible thermoelectric generators using inkjet printing. Thermoelectric generators convert heat into electricity, and these generators could be used as distributed power sources for small electronics. Inkjet printing allows for rapid printing of uniform and complex films and patterns, and it provides a low-cost manufacturing solution for large-area devices. We engineer material properties by custom-synthesizing nanoparticle inks, and we manipulate the piezo jetting nozzles' electronic pulses to fabricate devices at multiple length scales. In future projects, these techniques can be used to develop other scalable, integrated devices like fuel cells, photovoltaic cells, or sensors. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Saniya LeBlanc, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)
SEAS Events
GW's CyberCorps Cybersecurity Scholarship Program: Information Session
Thursday, November 20
5:30 – 7:30 pm
1957 E Street NW, Room 113
Students also can attend on the web at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gw-cspri.
Come and learn about the program, meet some of the faculty members in charge of it and current CyberCorps program participants, and get all your questions answered about it. There is no specific curriculum or major requirement; all programs of study focusing on cybersecurity are eligible. More details are given at our scholarship program website, http://www.seas.gwu.edu/cybercorps. Applications for the program are due January 31, 2015.
CEE Seminar: "Nanotwinned Materials: Weird Kinks and Strength at the Nanoscale"
Speaker: Dr. Frederic Sansoz, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Vermont
Monday, November 24
3:00 – 4:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
Entrepreneurship Events
Lean Startup Workshop
Monday, November 17
5:30 – 7:00 pm
536 Marvin Center
Final Business Skills Workshop: Writing a Compelling Executive Summary
Wednesday, Nov 17
5:30 – 7:00 pm
451 Duques
The Executive Summary is the first opportunity to get a potential investor's attention, and should engage them in learning more about your venture. Learn the practical tools for capturing the most pertinent information in a clear, concise way. Teams interested in applying to the 2015 GW Business Plan Competition are strongly encouraged to attend this workshop. The first submission deadline for the competition is January 20, 2015.
IP Roundtable for Startups: Software Patents Post-Alice
Wednesday, November 19
12:00 – 1:00 pm
Fish & Richardson: 1425 K Street, NW
The United States Supreme Court recently ruled on the patent eligibility of software in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International. Moving forward, what does this mean for entrepreneurs and startups? Join this DC startup team for a discussion on how to protect software inventions post-Alice, including examples of recent cases. Lunch will be provided. This is a casual event.
Startup Grind Hosts Nick Lavezzo (FoundationDB)
Thursday, November 20
6:00 – 9:00 pm
Nick Lavezzo is cofounder and COO of FoundationDB, an industrial strength NoSQL database with a data model similar to Google's Spanner and F1 projects (which run AdWords). FoundationDB is the only DC startup that is angel funded by the famous Ron Conway's SV Angel fund. Lavezzo will discuss fundraising, marketing developer oriented products, building a community using social media, getting press attention, solving "impossible" problems and DCTech.
Dissertation Defenses
Student's Name: Mr. Xin Xu
Dissertation Title: "Multil-Layer Fault Tolerant Techniques for High Reliability and Performance: Device, System and Data Center"
Advisor: Prof. Howie Huang (ECE)
Monday, November 24
10:30 am