Faculty News
Research:
Dr. Nathan Choe (BME) has received a two-year, $194,464 grant from the National Science Foundation to study “Computational Modeling in the Professional Formation of Materials Engineers.” Dr. Choe is a co-principal investigator on the grant. Computational thinking and skills are critical for the success of both engineering students and practicing engineers in the 21st century. The study will explore the extent to which key motivation factors for students learning computational skills such as efficacy, expectancy-value, and utility value differ across engineering disciplines. By better understanding this relationship, engineering educators can help develop programs or curriculum that will improve students’ learning in this vital area.
Publications:
Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE) has published the following journal article: P. Xu, M. Dredze, and D. A. Broniatowski (2020). “The Twitter Social Mobility Index: Measuring Social Distancing Practices from Geolocated Tweets,” Journal of Medical Internet Research. Dr. Broniatowski, his recently graduated PhD student Michael Smith, and Dr. Thomas Mazzuchi (EMSE) separately published: M. C. Smith, T. A. Mazzuchi, and D. A. Broniatowski (2020). “Validating Social Media Monitoring: Statistical Pitfalls and Opportunities from Public Opinion,” in R. Thomson, H. Bisgin, C. Dancy, A. Hyder, and M. Hussain (Eds.), Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling (Vol. 12268, pp. 65–74). Springer International Publishing.
Dr. Payman Dehghanian (ECE) has published the following article in collaboration with Dr. Miguel Lejune (GW Business School): M. Lejeune and P. Dehghanian. “Optimal Power Flow Models with Probabilistic Guarantees: A Boolean Approach,” IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 34, No. 6, pp. 4932-4935, Nov. 2020. Separately, Dr. Dehghanian also contributed a chapter on a full report of America's Zero Carbon Action Plan—published by the Development Solutions Network (SDSN)—to the report “Accelerating Deep Decarbonization in the U.S. Power Sector.” SDSN mobilizes global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The SDSN USA network brings together researchers, knowledge creators, and thought leaders to mobilize expertise on the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals in the United States. The network was launched in December 2018 and has quickly grown to become the largest network within SDSN. Dr. Dehghanian is the director of the GW Smart Grid Lab.
Dr. John Helveston (EMSE) and colleagues have published the following recent paper: F. Feinberg, E. Bruch, M. Braun, B. Hemenway Falk, N. Fefferman, E. M. Feit, J. P. Helveston, D. Larremore, B. B. McShane, A. Patania, and M. L. Small (2020). “Choices in networks: a research framework,” Marketing Letters. 1-11. In this article, the authors propose an integration of network science and choice theory beyond merely incorporating metrics from one area into models of the other. They posit a typology and framework for “network-choice models” that highlight the distinct ways choices occur in and influence networked environments, as well as two specific feedback processes that guide their mutual interaction, emergent valuation and contingent options. In so doing, they discuss examples, data sources, methodological challenges, anticipated benefits, and research pathways to fully interweave network and choice models.
Media Mentions:
Forbes mentioned GW research conducted by Dr. Aylin Caliskan (CS) and her PhD student Akshat Pandey in the October 26 article “ Uber Faces Civil Rights Lawsuit Alleging ‘Racially Biased’ Driver Ratings.”
Conferences & Presentations:
Dr. Amir Aslani (ECE) attended the 3rd IEEE Workshop on 5G Technologies for First Responder and Tactical Networks, which was held virtually on October 23. The workshop explored the applicability of 5G technologies for tactical and first responder networks, offered solutions, shared use cases, and investigated the challenges. The event also provided an opportunity for 5G experts from industry and academia, as well as the standards, regulatory, homeland security, public safety and defense communities, to collaborate.
On October 19, Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE) was featured on C-SPAN as part of the Institute for Data, Democray and Politics’ “Digital Citizenship in a Pandemic” event. Separately, he recently gave the following three panel presentations: 1) “Foreign and Domestic Online Manipulation of the Vaccine Debate” at the UCLA Health Symposium (October 14); 2) “COVID 19: hate speech, civil liberties, and political mobilization on digital platforms” at the SBP-BRIMS Conference (October 20); and 3) “Facebook Pages, the ‘Disneyland’ Measles Outbreak, and Promotion of Vaccine Refusal as a Civil Right, 2009–2019” at the APHA Annual Meeting (October 26).
Dr. Howie Huang (ECE) and his students Ben Bowman, Craig Laprade, and Yuede Ji presented their paper, “Detecting Lateral Movement in Enterprise Computer Networks with Unsupervised Graph AI,” at the 23rd International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID 2020). The symposium was held virtually on October 14-16. Their work develops a new authentication graph-based detection technique that utilizes the information derived from industry standard logging practices, rendering it immediately deployable to real-world enterprise networks. Importantly, this technique is fully unsupervised, not requiring any labeled training data, making it highly generalizable to different environments. This graph-based approach is able to accurately detect malicious authentication events associated with lateral movement, beating traditional rule-based heuristics and non-graph anomaly detection algorithms. The project has been supported by DARPA and National Science Foundation grants.
Dr. Suresh Subramaniam (ECE) delivered an invited talk at the 2020 Asia Communications and Photonics conference, held October 24-27 in Beijing (China) and virtually. The title of his talk was “Disaster management in optical networks.”
Student News
Mariia Sidulova, a second-year PhD student and member of Dr. Chung Hyuk Park’s (BME) Assistive Robotics and Tele-Medicine (ART-Med) Lab, presented her work “Towards Explainable Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease and MCI” at the 2020 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2020) Workshop on Social AI for Human-Robot Interaction of Human-care Service Robots. The IROS 2020 was organized as a full on-line, "on-demand" conference, with free registration to over 18,000 participants. A second paper produced by Dr. Park’s ART-Med Lab will be presented at the 8th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2020) and has been nominated for the Best Student Paper Award: M. Sidulova, R. Kim, and C. H. Park. “Cerebrovascular Event Detection Robotic System: Rob Bitt.”
At the SBP-BRIMS 2020 conference, held October 19-21, SEAS data analytics students Peiyu Wang and Madeline Warndorf, and Elliott School student Drew Gobbi presented their capstone project, “Demographic Cofactor Analysis of Opioid Use.” At the same conference, Peiyu presented her project “Propaganda or Scam: Pattern Analysis of Tweets on ‘Chemtrails.’” Peiyu and Madeline are master’s students advised by Dr. David Broniatowski (EMSE).
Upcoming SEAS Events
Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture: “Navigating the New Normal”
Speaker: Mr. Christopher Wiernicki (MS ’83), Chairman, President, and CEO of American Bureau of Shipping
Thursday, November 12
12:00 – 1:00 pm ET
RSVP
Mr. Wiernicki’s talk will cover an exploration of the technology, talent, and leadership skills required to address our current environment and shape our post-pandemic future. He will touch on topics such as how new technology is redefining our talent needs and the speed with which the Fourth Industrial Revolution is reshaping our world through unprecedented processing power and unlimited access to knowledge. The Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture Series, hosted by SEAS, is an endowed lecture fund established in 1945 by a gift from its namesake. The lecture brings outstanding leaders of science and industry to GW to discuss timely topics in engineering and allied subjects.
CS Lecture: “Building A Lost City: An Interactive Story in VR about the Impact of Climate Change on the Ocean”
Speaker: Liz Canner, Director, Astrea Media
Thursday, November 12
3:30 – 4:30 pm
This is a special topic lecture for the course CSCI 6907: Augmented and Virtual Reality. To attend, please RSVP to Dr. Hurriyet Ok by November 11. Dr. Ok will send a WebEx invitation to those who RSVP.
SEAS Community Workshop: Engineers Can Write, Too
Thursday, November 12
5:00 – 6:00 pm ET
Join the Webinar
The workshop will be presented by the SEAS Undergraduate Advising and Student Services Office.
SEAS Community Workshop: Money Matters
Monday, November 16
12:00 – 1:00 pm ET
Join the webinar
This workshop will be presented by the SEAS Undergraduate Advising and Student Services Office.
SEAS Community Workshop: The Best of Growth Worlds
Tuesday, November 17
12:30 – 1:30 pm ET
Join the webinar
This workshop will be presented by the SEAS Undergraduate Advising and Student Services Office.
CSPRI Webinar: “Adversarial Machine Learning and Wireless Security for 5G and Beyond”
Speakers: Dr. Yalin Sagduyu, Director of Networks and Security, Intelligent Automation, Inc., and Dr. Tugba Erpek, Lead Scientist, Intelligent Automation, Inc.
Thursday, November 19
12:00 noon ET
This Cyber Security & Privacy Research (CSPRI) event will be held as a webinar through Webex. Please RSVP to Dr. Hurriyet Ok to register for the talk. Registrants will receive the Webex video conference details from Dr. Ok.
BME Seminar: “Flexible, Hybrid Opto-Electro-Chemo Implants for Neural Interfaces”
Speaker: Dr. Wen Li, Michigan State University
Wednesday, December 2
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Join via WebEx
Entrepreneurship News & Events
GW Innovation Center
Fall Fridays at the GW Innovation Center:
Check out the GWIC Innovation Center’s line-up of fall Friday events. All events will take place from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. Please visit the GWIC Events page for links and details.
Live Music
Friday, November 6
Chill out at the end of election week to live music. Featured artists to be announced.
GWIC Podcast Series: “Graduated, What's Next?”
Friday, November 13
Join us for the second edition of our new podcast series “Graduated, What's Next?” with GWIC Founding Fellow Sarah Shavin (BA ’19).
Discussion: Plastic Recycling: Fact or Fiction?
Friday, November 20
Join us for a discussion with industry experts on innovations in plastic recycling.
GWIC Cookie Contest: Winning Cookie Baked Live
Friday, December 4
Watch live as Chief Evangelist and GWIC founder Annamaria Konya Tannon bakes the winning cookie recipe. Keep an eye out for the cookie recipe contenders and make sure to cast your vote for your favorite recipe on Instagram (@gwinnovationcenter) on 11/30 and 12/1.
GW Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Events:
Jumpstart Bootcamp: Global Challenge Innovation
Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and 8
Saturday and Sunday, November 14 and 15
10:00 am – 12:00 pm ET on each of the four dates
Register
Students will discover and breakdown complex global problems, innovate new solutions, and design a business plan to launch a startup. This virtual event will feature four, two-hour interactive sessions. Guests who register for this event must attend all four sessions.
External Events
ACT-IAC Panel on Emerging Technology
Thursday, November 5
11:45 am – 12:45 pm ET
Register
Ms. Annamaria Konya Tannon (chief evangelist and director of the GW Innovation Center) will participate in the Panel on Emerging Technology at the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology Forum, which will focus on a discussion of how to reorient the US innovation economy to one that is able to invest in deep tech in a sustained way. Other panelists include: Joshua Weaver (Telecom Systems Engineer, U.S. Navy, Moderator), Charles Clancy (Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mitre Labs, The Mitre Corporation), Paul Lopata, (Principal Director for Quantum Sciences, Office of Under Secretary of Defense and Research, Department of Defense), and Ronald Thompson (Associate Chief Information Officer for Transformation and Data and Chief Data Officer, NASA).
Cybersecurity Across Borders Panel Discussion
Friday, November 6
12:00 – 1:00 pm
Register
Dr. Costis Toregas (director, Cyber Security and Privacy Research Institute) will be a participant in the Cybersecurity Across Borders webinar, a technology and diplomacy series panel. He will address academic efforts across national boundaries to share security frameworks and workforce pathways such as apprenticeships.
Student Workshop: NSF and Funded Research Application
Wednesday, November 11
4:00 – 5:00 pm
Register on Handshake
During this workshop students will learn how to submit a successful research funding application, and guest speaker(s) will share their experiences as researchers.
OVPR Workshop: Pivot and InfoReady
Tuesday, November 17
9:00 – 10:30 am ET
WebEx link will be provided to registrants
Register
Learn how Pivot can help your search for new research funding opportunities and how InfoReady is used to support GW's intramural funding programs and limited submission competitions. This workshop is offered by the Research Enhancement Unit within the Office of the Vice President for Research.
The GW Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service hosts GW Votes, a non-partisan coalition of students, faculty, and staff that promotes voter registration and participation among GW students. This fall, GW Votes is hosting a number of programs and initiatives leading up to the November 3rd elections. Visit GW Votes for more information.
GW Coders
Weekly, on Fridays
11:00 am
Complete this short form to learn more
GW Coders is a new community that brings together students and faculty to apply computational and data analytics skills in research. We will share coding experiences, learn some new skills, and build our professional networks. GW Coders is for everyone, from those just getting interested in coding to those who have years of experience; for undergraduate and graduate students; for faculty in any discipline; for others in the DC community who want to join us.
Office of Research Integrity Seminar: “Responsible Conduct of Research”
Weekly, on Thursday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Online
Register
This fall 2020 seminar course is designed to develop and strengthen ethical problem-solving skills and foster sensitivity to ethical issues in the conduct of research. Registration is open to the entire campus community but will be capped at twenty participants. Please register early to secure your space. If you have questions about the seminar, please email the Office of Research Integrity.
Dissertation Defenses
Student’s Name: Vikram Rao (EMSE)
Dissertation Title: “Investigation of Decision Processes in Chemical Substitution Decision Making”
Advisor: Dr. Royce Francis (EMSE); Presiding: Dr. Ekundayo Shittu (EMSE)
Monday, November 23
11:00 am – 1:00 pm ET
WebEx Link
Human Resources News
This week's HR Corner includes information related to the temporary suspension of employer base and matching contributions to retirement plans, changes to campus access, updates to GW's FY21 holiday schedule, and more. Please visit the HR Corner to read these updates.