October 14-20, 2013

Newsletter

October 14, 2013

Faculty News

Research:

Prof. Zoe Szajnfarber (EMSE) has received a five-year grant from NASA for the project "Understanding the Role of Mass Collaboration and Open Innovation Methods in the Development of Complex Engineering Systems: A Study of NASA's Asteroid Initiative." The first year of the grant is funded at $170,000 with the expectation of additional funding in subsequent years. Under this grant, Prof. Szajnfarber's research group will map NASA's distributed architecture formulation process with the goal of gaining insight into the relationship between open innovation methods and problem complexity.

Conferences & Presentations:

Prof. Erica Gralla (EMSE) gave two talks at the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Annual Meeting, held October 6-9 in Minneapolis, MN.  The talks were titled "Human and Modeling Approaches for Humanitarian Aid Delivery," and "Humanitarian Transportation Planning: A Behavioral Study." She was also re-elected to the board of the INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Services, and Needs, as vice president for communications.

Prof. Zoe Szajnfarber (EMSE) attended the International Astronautical Congress,  held September 23-27 in Beijing, China. There she presented two papers that were co-authored with her graduate students:  1) Vrolijk, A. and Szajnfarber, Z. "Decentralization of Space Research within Europe and Its Effect on Technology Development," and 2) Bignon, I. and Szajnfarber, Z. "Understanding How Human Resource Policies Influence the Career Progressions of NASA’s Technical Workforce."

Prof. Guru Venkataramani (ECE) and his doctoral students, Jie Chen and Fan Yao, presented the following papers at the 31st IEEE International Conference on Computer Design, held October 6-9 in Asheville, NC: 1) Jie Chen, Fan Yao, and Guru Venkataramani. "Watts-inside: A Hardware-Software Cooperative Approach for Multicore Power Debugging," and 2) Fan Yao, Jie Chen, and Guru Venkataramani. "JOP-alarm: Detecting Jump-oriented Programming-based Anomalies in Applications."  The conference accepted 56 papers out of 225 submissions, with an acceptance rate of 25%.

Other News:

The AAAI Fall Symposium on Discovery Informatics, "AI Takes a Science-Centered View on Big Data," will take place November 15-17 in Arlington, VA, and Prof. Claire Monteleoni (CS) is one of the invited speakers.  Discovery Informatics focuses on intelligent systems aimed at accelerating discovery, particularly in science but also from any data-rich domain. It is a generalization of scientific informatics work (e.g., medical-, bio-, eco- or geo-informatics) that seeks to apply principles of intelligent computing and information systems in order to understand, automate, improve, and innovate any aspects of discovery processes. The registration deadline for the symposium is October 18.  Both registration and the program are available online.

Other News

The Institute for Biomedical Engineering also announces the 2013-2014 Undergraduate Research Fellowship. This is an opportunity for undergraduates interested in conducting meaningful research in biomedical engineering and computing with a faculty mentor. The deadline to apply is Tuesday, October 15.

Guest Vignette

GW was the host of the 33rd International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC), held last week at the Marvin Center.  The conference, which takes place every other year and alternates between locations in and outside the United States, is the premier venue for researchers from around the world to meet and discuss the latest in the field of electric propulsion.

The 2013 IEPC had a record number of attendees and papers delivered.  More than 440 people attended the conference, and 356 technical papers were delivered on Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP).  The papers ranged in subjects from basic research on new technologies for micropropulsion to large scale SEP vehicle concepts for missions such as NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission. The keynote speaker for the conference was Dr. David Devorkin of the National Air and Space Museum, who gave an excellent presentation on the behind-the-scenes aspects of the museum.

The Electric Rocket Propulsion Society (ERPS) co-sponsors the conference and includes representatives from spacecraft manufacturers and operators, propulsion system providers, and university researchers.  Prof. Michael Keidar was the general chair of the conference.  More information is available on the conference website at www.iepc2013.org(Provided courtesy of Prof. Michael Keidar of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)

SEAS Events

MAE and the GW Institute for Nanotechnology: “Size-dependent Probabilistic Damage Micromechanics and Toughening Behavior of Particle/Fiber Reinforced Composites”
Speaker: Prof. J. Woody Ju, University of California, Los Angeles
Monday, October 14
1:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering Seminar: "The Fluid Dynamics of Human Birth"
Speaker: Prof. Megan Leftwich (MAE)
Tuesday, October 15
1:00 - 2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

CS Seminar: “Machine Learning Approaches for Annotating Biological Data”
Speaker: Dr. Huzefa Rangwala, George Mason University
Wednesday, October 16
2:30 pm
736 Phillips Hall

MAE Seminar: “Peridynamic Theory: An Approach to Computational Mechanics without Spatial Derivatives”
Speaker: Paul N. Demmie, Sandia National Laboratories
Monday, October 21
11:00 am
204 Tompkins Hall

ECE Colloquium: "Power System Economics: Optimizing the Electric Delivery Infrastructure"
Speaker: Rounak Muthiyan, Berkeley Research Group LLC; Kalpa Energy LLC
Wednesday, October 30
3:30 - 5:30 pm
222 Funger Hall

MAE Seminar: "A Vision of Structural Health Monitoring for Intelligent Structures"
Speaker: Dr. Fu-Kuo Chang, Stanford University
Friday, November 1
11:00 am
771 Rome Hall

MAE Seminar: “Mechanical Forces Drive (and Regulate?) Organogenesis”
Speaker: Larry A. Taber, Washington University
Thursday, November 7
11:00 am
736 Phillips Hall

MAE Seminar: “Modeling Inelastic Behavior of Metals at Multiple Scales for Multiple Purposes”
Speaker, David L. McDowell, Georgia Institute of Technology
Monday, November 25
736 Phillips Hall

Entrepreneurship & Other Events

SEAS-6200 (Launching Technical Ventures), taught by SEAS alumnus Richard Stroupe, will host a VC guest panel on Wednesday, October 16 at 6:40 pm.  The panel takes place in 201 Tompkins and includes Jon Perrelli of Fortify and Jaye Gamble of BVI.  The panel is open to all GW students and alumni.

Center for International Science and Technology Policy Seminar: "Driving Technological Surprise: An Enduring Mission in a Changing World"
Speaker: Arati Prabhakar, director of DARPA\
Tuesday, October 15
3:30 - 5:00 pm (refreshments to follow)
1957 E Street NW, Room 113 (Elliott School)
RSVP to: [email protected]

The 5th Annual Metropolitan Biophotonics Symposium
Monday, October 21
9:00 am - 5:00 pm: Symposium
5:00 - 7:00 pm: Poster Session
309 Marvin Center
More info

10th International Conference on Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning
The George Washington University
Thursday and Friday, October 24 and 25
More info
Information provided courtesy of Prof. Michael Stankosky

2013 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Southeast & Mid-Atlantic Biomedical Engineering Career Conference
Friday, October 25
The Ronald Reagan Building - Washington, DC
Don't miss out on the opportunity to learn about careers in biomedical engineering!  This one-day career conference is designed specifically for students (undergraduates, graduates, and post-docs) and recent graduates/early career professionals. 

Dissertation Defenses

Name of Student Defending: Emmanuel A. Donkor
Title of Dissertation: “Optimal Capital Structure and Financial Risk of Project Finance Investments”
Advisor: Prof. Michael Duffey (EMSE)
Tuesday, October 22
1:00 pm
1776 G Street, Conference Room 120