November 7-13, 2011

Newsletter

November 7, 2011

Faculty News

Awards & Honors:

Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) has been appointed to the editorial board of ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems. The entire list of editorial board members is available on the journal's website.

Books & Papers:

Prof. Jonathan Deason (EMSE) recently published a paper with his graduate student Ariel Castillo. The paper sets forth a summary of the results of a just-completed research project sponsored by the Solar Institute. The citation for the paper is: Castillo, A.S. and Deason, J.P., "Determination of Solar Energy Transition Potential of Department of Defense Facilities and Non-Tactical Vehicles," Environmental Practice, Vol. 13, No. 3 (September 2011), pp. 171-183.

Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE) published a journal article with his collaborators from University of Glasgow, New York University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and Oxford University: X.Y. Luo, B.E. Griffith, X.S. Ma, M. Yin, T.J. Wang, Chunlei Liang, P. Watton & G.M. Bernacca (2011): “Effect of bending rigidity in a dynamic model of a polyurethane prosthetic mitral valve,” Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology. This research was funded by the British Heart Foundation.

Conferences & Presentations:

Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) and his doctoral student William Rone presented the paper “The Application of Bioinspired Jumping Locomotion Principles to Mobile Robots: Modeling and Analysis" at the 2011 ASME Annual Dynamic Systems and Control Conference (DSCC 2011), held in Arlington, VA, October 31 - November 2.

Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) has just completed a two-week lecture tour in China at Tsinghua University, Dalian University of Technology, and Xiamen University, where he presented five seminars on advances in mechanics and materials research, including sensors, energy, multi-scale mechanics, and bio-inspired materials. He also visited key labs, faculty, and students. Prof. Chong reports that there may be possibilities of collaborations with GW in the future. At Xiamen University, Prof. Chong presented a paper and chaired two sessions at the International Symposium on Innovation and Sustainability of Structures [ISISS 2011]. The paper, co-authored by Jiao-Yan Li and James Lee (MAE) is titled "Translational Research in Mechanics and Materials with Emphasis on Sustainability and Durability," ISISS 2011 Proceedings, pp. 282-290. 

Prof. Howard Eisner (EMSE) presented his paper "The Second Paradigm Shift - Emerging Graduate Engineering Education" at the ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Fall Meeting, October 28-29, at Temple University’s College of Engineering, in Philadelphia, PA. The paper is published in the proceedings of the meeting.

As part of his sabbatical activities, Prof. Johan Rene van Dorp (EMSE) gave a short workshop on distribution theory to master’s and doctoral students of Almeria University in Spain on October 27. The workshop was based on his paper "Modeling Heavy-Tailed, Skewed and Peaked Uncertainty Phenomena With Bounded Support," which was recently published online in Statistical Methods and Applications and co-authored with Profs. C. B. García, and J. Garcia Perez from Granada and Almeria Universities in Spain, respectively.

Other News:

Prof. Michael Plesniak (MAE chair) hosted the visit of a delegation from Taiwan University & Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education of the Republic of China (Taiwan) on October 25. The delegation recently sent a note to express their appreciation, stating that they enjoyed and learned a lot from visiting our campus and from the MAE laboratories of Profs. Plesniak, Keidar, and Zhang, as well as from collaborative activities in GW's School of Medicine and Health Sciences. They were impressed with the School's dedication to enhancing competitiveness and to fostering cooperation between departments. They commented that the graduate students they met were "successful examples of what SEAS has to offer."  According to an IMD (International Institute for Management Development) report, Taiwan's World Competitiveness Ranking is sixth in the world. Their note states, "The delegation's time spent with GW's faculty and students will help them greatly in their future efforts." 

Other News

Biomedical Engineering/Science Undergraduate Research Fellowship: The GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering is looking for undergraduate students who are interested in participating in biomedical research projects over Spring and Summer. The deadline for application is December 1 at 5:00 pm. Application and more information

Two GW CyberCorps graduates, Patrick Kelly and Mischel Kwon, are quoted in “Students Trade Hacking Skills for U.S. Scholarships,” a November 3 article that appeared in Bloomberg News.

Student News

Mr. Junfeng Wang, a first-year doctoral student of Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE), has been awarded an AFOSR fellowship, which will cover registration and travel support to the 1st International Workshop on High-Order CFD Methods at the 50th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, in Nashville, TN, in January 2012.

Guest Vignette

Prof. Julie Ryan has been working on the field of cybersecurity for almost 30 years and during that time has seen both a lot of change and an amazing amount of non-change. From working on multilevel secure systems to concepts for information warfare, Prof. Ryan's experience has spanned both the prosaic and the exotic. This experience has led to her invitation to join a group of Internet technology, international policy, and legal experts who are working on rules of law regarding the application of the laws of armed conflict in cyberspace. Most recently, Prof. Ryan has been assisting in the development of rules associated with information operations in cyberspace supporting geopolitical conflict. This set of rules, called the Tallinn Manual, is being developed and vetted by Prof. Ryan and other experts in international law and the technical aspects of cybersecurity. In particular, Prof. Ryan is assisting in the technical aspects of exemplars being used to explain the rules and the cyberspace policy analyses of information operations. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Julie Ryan, chair of the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering)

SEAS Events

ECE Seminar: “Tracon: Interference-Aware Scheduling for Data-Intensive
Applications in Virtualized Environments”
Ron Chiang, ECE Ph.D. candidate
Thursday, November 10
1:30 - 3:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

CEE Colloquium: “Introduction to Concrete Segmental Bridges”
William R. Cox, American Segmental Bridge Institute
Thursday, November 10
6:00 - 8:00 pm
405 Marvin Center
More info . . .

GW Engineering Networking Night
Friday, November 18
5:00 - 7:00 pm
Marvin Center, Grand Ballroom (3rd Floor)
Sponsored by Alpha Omega Epsilon Sorority and Theta Tau Fraternity
Light refreshments will be provided. Business attire required.
RSVP to: [email protected] or [email protected]

MAE Seminar: “An Interdisciplinary Study on Fluid Dynamics and Chemistry: Application of Functional Molecules for Global Pressure/Temperature Measurement and Flow Control”
Dr. Hirotaka Sakaue, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Monday, November 21
2:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

CS Seminar: “Using Program Analysis to Understand and Debug Configuration for Cloud Services”
Ari Rabkin, Ph.D. candidate, UC Berkeley
Tuesday, November 22
10:30 am
736 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering Seminar: “Implications of Nanotechnology in Regenerative Medicine: What Have We Learned and What’s Next?”
Prof. Thomas J. Webster, School of Engineering and Department of Orthopaedics, Brown University
Monday, November 28
1:00 - 2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

Entrepreneurship Events

Dolphin Tank Project: We Swim Alongside You
Monday, November 7
6:00 - 8:00 pm
650 Duques Hall
RSVP

Entrepreneurial Session 5: The Killer Idea
Thursday, November 10
4:30 - 6:00 pm
308 Marvin Center
RSVP

Entrepreneur Office Hours
Friday, November 11
1:00 - 2:00 pm
2033 K Street NW, Suite 750
RSVP

Pitch George Competition
Saturday, November 12
9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Duques Hall, 6th Floor (2201 G Street NW)
For more details, visit pitchgeorge.com 

External Events

GW Tech Alumni Group Discussion: “High-Performance Computing/Analytics and Its Applications to Industry (with a focus on IBM’s Watson)”
Tuesday, November 8
5:30 - 8:30 pm
Duques Hall, 6th floor