Faculty News
Research:
Energy Frontier Research in Extreme Environments (EFree) is an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and directed from GW SEAS by Dr. Russell Hemley (CEE). EFree just received $447,794 in additional funding for Year Four of its current award, which runs through July 31, 2018. Dr. Tianshu Li (CEE), Dr. Zhenxian Liu (associate research professor, CEE), and Dr. Stephen Gramsch (research scientist, CEE) are also part of EFree.
Publications:
Dr. Stephen Gramsch (research scientist, CEE) and Dr. Russell Hemley (CEE) have published the following paper: S. A. Gramsch and R. J. Hemley. “X ray Diffraction, Lattice Structure, and Equation of State of PdH x2 and PdDx to Megabar Pressures,” Journal of Physical Chemistry C. Their co-authors are Keenan Brownsberger, a student from Whitworth University, and Muhtar Ahart, Maddury Somayazulu, and Changyong Park of the Carnegie Institution. The paper reports a new high-pressure study of energy-relevant materials conducted by the Energy Frontier Research in Extreme Environments (EFree) and the Carnegie/Department of Energy Alliance Center (CDAC) materials science centers, now headquartered at GW SEAS. EFree and CDAC are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Conferences & Presentations:
Dr. Amir Aslani (lecturer, ECE) and Dr. Mohammadreza Ghahremani (GW’s Institute for Magnetics Research) attended the 62nd Annual Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, held November 6-10 in Pittsburgh, PA. They gave two oral research presentations, “Direct and indirect measurement of the magnetocaloric effect in bulk and nanostructured Ni-Mn-In Heusler alloy” and “Field, temperature, and size effect on the critical points and magnetic properties of nanoparticles.” Their presentations received a good deal of interest from top scholars in the magnetic and material science field. The Institute for Magnetics Research is directed by Dr. Edward Della Torre (ECE) and Dr. Lawrence Bennett (ECE).
On November 9, Dr. Tarek El-Ghazawi (ECE) and Dr. Volker Sorger (ECE) jointly delivered an invited research talk titled “Pioneering Directions for Future Processing with Nanophtonics: From Adaptive Hybrid NoCs to Atto-Joule Computing” at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Basic Research Forum. The forum is a seminar series organized by the Basic Research Office of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. The audience for the forum included agency leaders, program officers, and technical staff from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and DoD research organizations. The seminar provided an overview of efforts by Dr. El-Ghazawi and Dr. Sorger to engender revolutionary computing paradigms that provide orders of magnitude improvement over conventional systems in terms of power, performance, and size by cross-fertilizing their expertise in high-performance computing architectures and nanophotonics.
On November 14, Dr. Rachael Jonassen (director, EMSE Greenhouse Gas Management Program) gave the keynote address to the Environmental, Health, Safety, and Sustainability Roundtable (EHSS) at the National Press Club. Her topic was “The Risk of Climate Risk.” The EHSS Roundtable, composed of senior executives from major corporations, has explored the strategic business impact of sustainability issues since 1988.
Dr. Roger Lang (ECE) gave a talk titled “Detection of Climate Change via Microwave Remote Sensing” at the International Climate Change Workshop, held November 16 at the Catholic University of America.
Dr. Murray Loew (BME) was an invited plenary speaker at the Fourth International Workshop on Medical Imaging, held November 4-5 at Soochow University, Suzhou, China. His talk was titled “Clinical applications of hyperspectral imaging: the example of cardiac ablation.”
Other News:
The Clare Boothe Luce Program has awarded SEAS $300,000 to support an undergraduate research program that will enable undergraduate female SEAS students to pursue research with guidance from faculty mentors, hone their professional skills, and establish themselves as university leaders. Dr. Rachelle Heller (CS) will serve as the academic lead on the program. Four students will be selected for the 2018-2019 research program. Currently enrolled female, sophomore students in SEAS are eligible for one of the four research scholarships that will be awarded this year. Funding for each scholarship will total $37,250 and will cover academic year and summer stipends, and money for research materials, supplies, and travel to a professional conference. The application deadline is March 1, 2018. Students may find more information and apply online. They may also contact Dr. Heller with questions regarding the program.
GW President Thomas LeBlanc, accompanied by Provost Forrest Maltzman, Dean David Dolling, and CEE Department Chair Majid Manzari, visited GW’s high bay facility on November 16 to see the load testing in progress on GW’s first indoor bridge. The test is part of the experimental activities of the NCHRP 12-96 research project funded by the National Academy of Science. During the visit, the group met with the project’s principal investigator, Dr. Sameh Badie (CEE), and with Dr. Majid Manzari, who gave a brief introduction to the features of the high bay and the bridge. The group also met with CEE undergraduates Khaled Elfadal and Hannah Gaudet, who helped Dr. Badie construct the bridge. President LeBlanc was impressed with the scale of the test and thanked the research team for their hard work.
Student News
ECE doctoral student Youngil Kim presented the following paper at the IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability, held November 12-14 in Phoenix, AZ: Y. Kim, J. Zhao, S. Kim, and R. Harrington. “Power Management Strategy for Residential Housing Connected to the Rooftop Solar PV.” Youngil is advised by Dr. Robert Harrington (ECE).
BME seniors Sarah Sopher and Konstantin Mitic competed in a medical hackathon held November 4-5 at Virginia Commonwealth University. They won Third Prize for their prototype of an adjustable wheelchair for pediatric users in the developing world.
Other News
Innovate to help Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria caused catastrophic damage when it hit Puerto Rico in September. More than half the island remains without power, and recovery in rural areas is slow. Join the SEAS Innovation Challenge and develop creative technological solutions to help meet needs in Puerto Rico. Join as an individual or invite your friends and join as a team. Prizes: First Place –$2,500; Second Place–$1,500; and Third Place–$1,000. The deadline to enter is 5:00 pm on Friday, December 1. Please contact Monica Kavathekar if you have questions. Application and more information
This semester GW’s Environmental and Energy Management Institute (EEMI) will offer several on-campus, two-day professional short courses in renewable energy and sustainability. EEMI runs the courses in partnership with the European Energy Center. The courses qualify participants to take the exam for the internationally recognized Galileo Master Certificate (GMC). The remaining courses are:
Renewable Energy Market Trends and Finance
December 11-12
More information
Distributed Generation and Energy Storage
December 13-14
More information
SEAS Computing Facility
MATLAB and Solidworks Tutoring: SEAS Computing Facility (SEAS CF) will continue to offer MATLAB and Solidworks tutoring throughout the fall semester in Tompkins 401. To schedule a tutoring appointment, please email [email protected]. The MATLAB and Solidworks workshops and tutoring will be hosted by SEAS graduate student Makan Payandehazad. Tutoring dates:
- Wednesdays: 12:00 – 5:00 pm
- Thursdays: 12:00 – 3:30 pm
- Fridays: 4:00 – 6:00 pm
SEAS CF is hosting a series of workshops covering a range of topics throughout the fall semester:
Software Carpentry Workshops:
SEAS CF in partnership with the GW Libraries and Academic Innovation is offering four, two-day software carpentry workshops this academic year. The next workshop will run December 1-2 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm both days in Gelman 201 (STEMworks). The remaining workshops will be announced at a later date.
Who is this for?
Graduate students, postdocs, and faculty who want to become more productive with lab skills for scientific computing. The workshop is free to any GW-affiliated participant.
What is it?
Two days of hands-on learning on how to:
- automate repetitive tasks (Unix shell)
- track and share your code and writing (git and GitHub)
- build modular code for data analysis and science tasks (Python))
Program
Short tutorials alternate with hands-on practical exercises in the workshops. Participants are encouraged both to help one another and to try applying what they have learned to their own research problems during and between sessions. Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system; they also should have admin privileges on this computer. The computer needs to be a “real” laptop—not a Chromebook, tablet, etc.
Register
High Performance Computing Workshops:
These workshops will be offered in collaboration with the Colonial One HPC support team and will leverage Colonial One, GW's Central HPC cluster. They will be held in Tompkins 405 from 2:30 to 4:30 pm and will be hosted by the Colonial One HPC support team: SEAS CF (Marco Suarez, Jason Hurlburt, Zhen Ni); CCAS OTS (Glen MacLachlan); and DIT (Adam Wong).
Workshop pre-requisites: you must have a Colonial One account, familiarity with programming languages, and Linux fundamentals knowledge. If you are unfamiliar with Linux, please attend the Introduction to Linux workshops (listed above). Please email [email protected] with any questions or comments.
Register
December 1: Workshop 1
- Topics: Logging in; navigating the shell; modules, environment variables and .profile; how to submit job script; quotas; purges; and file transfer and management (scp, globus, and Lustre vs. NFS, including Lustre striping, inodes, and simple job submission script)
December 8: Workshop 2
- Topics: Working with SLURM and checkpointing; SLURM topics include: sinfo, salloc, squeue, scancel, sbatch, sshare, sprio, srun; scripting submit files; how fair share works; and common job errors
December 15: Workshop 3
- Topics: MPI; OpenMP; and Python package management
SEAS Events
CEE Seminar: “Topology Optimization: From Algorithmic Developments to Applications”
Speaker: Dr. Reza Behrou, Johns Hopkins University
Monday, November 27
3:30 – 4:30 pm
SEH, B1270
ECE Distinguished Lecture: “Lazy Shadowing: A Versatile Resilience Scheme for Extreme Scale Systems”
Speaker: Dr. Rami Melhe, University of Pittsburgh
Wednesday, November 29
1:00 pm (Reception to follow)
SEH, B1220
CS Lecture: “Credit Card Fraud: Fighting the Bad Guys with Data”
Speaker: Dr. Paul Melby, Senior Director of Data Science, Capital One
Wednesday, November 29
7:10 – 8:30 pm
SEH, B1270
This is a special topic lecture for the course CSCI 6548: ECommerce Security. The lecture is open to GW students, faculty, and staff. Seating is limited. Please RSVP to Dr. Hurriyet Ok by November 28.
MAE Seminar: “High-Order Computational Fluid Dynamics and Its Application to Thermal Fluids Flow Simulation”
Speaker: Dr. Meilin Yu, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Thursday, November 30
2:00 pm
SEH, B1220
BME Seminar: “Ultrasound Elasticity Imaging and Therapeutics”
Speaker: Dr. Elisa Konofagou, Columbia University
Wednesday, December 13
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
SEH, B1270
MAE Seminar: “A Computational Bifluid–Solid Mechanics Framework Dealing with Capillarity and Wetting Issues: Towards Void Formation and Permeability Predictions in LCM Processes”
Speaker: Dr. Yujie Liu, Sun Yat-Sen University (China)
Thursday, December 14
2:00 pm
SEH, B1220
Entrepreneurship Events
Webinar: How to Submit Your New Venture Competition Application
Tuesday, December 5 | 1:00 – 2:00 pm | WebEx Room | Register
Wednesday, December 6 | 5:00 – 6:00 pm | WebEx Room | Register
Compete for over $300,000 in cash and in-kind prizes at the 10th Annual GW New Venture Competition! Join us for an informational webinar to learn what you need to do to submit a robust application. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn how you can compete in one of the nation's largest business planning competitions.
Information Session: Innovation & Entrepreneurship at GW
Thursday, December 7
5:30 – 7:00 pm
District House, Room B114, 2121 H St. NW
Register
Do you want to get involved with the innovative and entrepreneurial community on campus? Stop by District House on December 7 for a brief information session on all the programs and resources GW has to offer. Don't miss out on these great resources for next semester.