October 28 - November 3, 2019

Faculty News
Publications:

Dr. Igor Efimov (BME), collaborating with colleagues across several countries, has published a paper that presents new mechanisms of atrial fibrillation. The paper demonstrates that atrial fibrillation in humans could be due to mutations in non-protein-coding regions (or regulatory elements) that affect many other remote genes via gene-gene DNA interactions in three-dimensional space. The citation is: A. F. van Ouwerkerk, F. M. B., K. van Duijvenboden, M. C. Hill, L. E. Montefiori, K. T. Scholman, J. Liu, A. A. F. de Vries, B. J. Boukens, P. T. Ellinor, M. J. T.H. Goumans, I. R. Efimov, M. A. Nobrega, P. Barnett, J. F. Martin, and V. M. Christoffels. “Identification of atrial fibrillation associated genes and functional non-coding variants,” Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Article number: 4755 (2019).

Conferences & Presentations:

The University of Wyoming invited Dr. Ken Chong (MAE) to be a facilitator of a three-day workshop “NSF CAREER Awards and Grantsmanship,” held October 22-24. While there, he also visited the newly constructed engineering complex with state-of-the-art facilities and held discussions with the university’s vice president for research, engineering deans, faculty members, and students. The university has areas of strengths in atmospheric sciences, energy, water, bio-diversity, materials, geology, and others. Dr. Chong has been working with Dr. Can Korman (ECE) and associate deans of the Columbia College of Arts and Sciences for the last ten years on the annual NSF CAREER Workshop.

Dr. Samer Hamdar (CEE) was invited to give a talk at the Georgia Tech Transportation Institute (GTI) under the GTI Seminar Series. The seminar, titled “Collision Formation in Uninterrupted Flow Conditions: Behavioral and Data-Driven Analysis and Modeling,” was held October 24 in Atlanta, GA. The work presented by Dr. Hamdar is based on research projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the Federal Highway Administration.

On October 3, Dr. Jigar Shah (visiting scholar, GW Environmental and Energy Management Institute) participated in an IFC Climate Biz podcast titled “Cooling a Warming World” with Jim Maguire from Sustainable Development Capital. He discussed the financing mechanisms for efficient, sustainable cooling.

Student News

Other News
The Wall Street Journal interviewed SEAS alumnae Aicha Evans (BS '96) and Anousheh Ansari (MS '92) at the Journal’s Tech Live conference and featured them in the October 24 article "Reimagining the Car and Carbon Removal: Two innovators, Aicha Evans and Anousheh Ansari, talk about their big ideas." (Subscription required). Ms. Evans is the CEO of autonomous-vehicle startup Zoox, and Ms. Ansari is CEO of the XPrize Foundation.

SEAS Events Re-cap

Thank you to the students and mentors who participated in the 2019 SEAS Student R&D Showcase, held last Friday in the SEH. Approximately 130 students, both graduate and undergraduate, competed for this year's prizes. Congratulations to our winners:

Department of Biomedical Engineering
Graduate: “Bioresorbable Wireless Battery-Free Pacemaker for Electrical Stimulation of the Heart”
First Author: Rose Yin
Advisor: Dr. Igor Efimov

Undergraduate: “Ultrasound-Enhanced Ocular Drug Delivery for Treatment of Acanthamoeba Keratitis”
First Author: Bianca Karpinecz
Advisor: Dr. Vesna Zderic

Runner-up: “Probing the Integration between Three-Dimensional ‘Spark­Cell’ Spheroids and Human Cardiac Syncytia”
First Author: Christianne Chua
Advisors: Dr. Emilia Entcheva, Julie Han, and Weizhen Li

Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Graduate: “Drugs in Drinking Water: An Enhanced Biological Removal through Biofilm Thickness Management for Sustainable Water Reuse Application”
First Author: Mahmudul Hasan
Advisor: Dr. Rumana Riffat

Undergraduate: “Integrated Micro-Irrigation and Surface Water Catchment System for Water Management in India”
First Author: Khyati Patel
Advisor: Dr. Rumana Riffat

Runners-up: “Demonstration of Practical Mainstream Deammonification Schemes Balancing Treatment Efficiency with Complexity and Cost”
First Author: Mojolaoluwa Ladipo-Obasa
Advisor: Dr. Rumana Riffat
and
“Short-term Traffic Prediction and Incident Detection with Single Traffic Detector Using Recurrent Neural Network”
First Author: Dong Pan
Advisor: Dr. Samer Hamdar

Department of Computer Science
Graduate: “Predicting Spread of Fake News on Social Media”
First Author: Pedram Hosseini
Advisors: Drs. Mona Diab and David Broniatowski

Undergraduate: “Secure and Scalable Network Packet Processing”
First Author: Dennis Afanasev
Advisor: Dr. Tim Wood

Runner-up: “Automated Sentence Correction Using Machine Learning”
First Author: Zhantong Liang
Advisor: Dr. Abdou Youssef

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Graduate: “Application-Aware Reconfigurable Manycore Architectures”
First Author: Hao Zheng
Advisor: Dr. Ahmed Louri

Undergraduate: “Low-Cost, Remote Data Acquisition Platform for In-situ with Biological and Fluidic Measurements”
First Author: Rachel Zaitz
Advisors: Drs. Kartik Bulusu and Amir Aslani

Runner-up: “A Lateral MOS-Capacitor Enabled ITO Mach-Zehnder Modulator for Beam Steering”
First Author: Rubab Amin
Advisor: Dr. Volker Sorger

Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering
Graduate: “Online Labor Platforms and the Future of Engineering Design Work”
First Author: Suparna Mukherjee
Advisor: Dr. Zoe Szajnfarber

Undergraduate: “Engineered Coal: A New Green Product for the Coal Industry”
First Author: Justin Williams
Advisors: Drs. Richard Millar and Thomas Mazzuchi (EMSE), Todd Mlsna and Sita Warren (Mississippi State University)

Runner-up: “Improving Emergency Department Patient Throughput by Considering Providers’ In-patient Admission Rates: A Mathematical Programming Approach”
First Author: Kelly Rickard
Advisor: Dr. Johan Rene van Dorp

Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Graduate: “Development and Characterization of Bovine Milk Ultrasound Responsive Exosomes”
First Author: Jenna Osborn
Advisor: Dr. Kausik Sarkar

Undergraduate: “Design of Large-Scale Turbulent Flow Loop”
First Author: Samuel Rudy
Advisors: Dr. Phillipe Bardet and Charles Fort

Runners-up: “Micro-Cathode Matrix Arc Thrusters for Small Satellites”
First Author: Keir Daniels
Advisor: Dr. Michael Keidar
and
“Buoyant Jet Mole Fraction Measurements Using RayIeigh Scattering Technique”
First Author: Hatef Pazhand
Advisor: Dr. Phillippe Bardet

Upcoming SEAS Events
Women in Engineering Career Toolkit Series: The SEAS Center for Women in Engineering is presenting sessions to help SEAS students and recent alumnae gain the skills they need to launch their career. The sessions are open to all SEAS students, but are geared particularly to women students. All workshops will be held in SEH, Room 2000 and begin at 4:45 pm. Visit the Center for Women in Engineering site for more details.

Resume Writing – Wednesday, November 6
Register

Cover Letter & Professional References – Wednesday, November 13
Register

BME Seminar: “Bubbles and Sound for Diagnostic Imaging, Therapeutics and Tissue Engineering: Pressure Dependent Subharmonic to Collapsing Jet and Acoustic Streaming”
Speaker: Dr. Kausik Sarkar (BME)
Wednesday, October 30
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
SEH, B1270

4^th Annual BME Day: “Innovation in Biomedical Engineering”
Monday, November 4
8:00 am – 5:00 pm
SEH, B1 Level
Register
BME Day will showcase faculty and student research projects, highlight the collaborative nature of the biomedical engineering field, and raise awareness of biomedical engineering at GW and in the Washington, DC region. The day will consist of student poster sessions, a moderated panel discussion on how to land a job within the biomedical engineering field, and selected talks from GW’s BME faculty and invited guest speakers. The entire SEAS community, including alumni, is invited.

CS Colloquium: “BurScale: Using Burstable Instances for Cost-Effective Autoscaling in the Public Cloud”
Speaker: Dr. Timothy Zhu, Pennsylvania State University
Tuesday, November 5
2:00 pm
SEH, B1220

GW Innovation Center Workshop: “Design Think Your Project”
Workshop Lead: Dr. Erica Wortham, Co-director, GW Innovation Center
Tuesday, November 5
6:00 – 7:30 pm
GWIC, Tompkins Hall M06
Design Think Your Project covers the basics of human centered design, a collaborative problem solving method that prioritizes people’s lived experiences. Bringing users into the discovery phase and design of your project fosters more innovative solutions. Starting with understandings gathered through empathy, the workshop introduces hands-on techniques, such as rapid prototyping, and emphasizes how to creatively reframe problems.

GW AIAA Student Branch Event
Speaker: Mr. Keith Zuegel, Director of Government Relations at the Air Force Association
Tuesday, November 5
7:00 pm
SEH, B1220
RSVP-Students
RSVP-Non-students
The GW branch of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics will host Mr. Keith Zuegel, who will be on campus to talk about the role of space in upcoming conflicts. Admission is free and food will be provided.

CS Lecture: “Using Virtual Reality to Inform Precision Medicine”
Speaker: Dr. Susan Persky, National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH)
Thursday, November 7
4:30 pm
SEH, B1270
This is a special topic lecture for CSCI 6907: Augmented and Virtual Reality. For more information about this and upcoming lectures, please contact Dr. Hurriyet Ok.

ECE Distinguished Lecture Series: “Advanced 5G and SATCOM Phased-Arrays and UaV-Detection Radars Using Low-Cost Silicon Technologies: The End of the Marconi Era Is Near”
Speaker: Dr. Gabriel Rebeiz, University of California at San Diego
Monday, November 18
2:00 pm (Reception to follow)
SEH, B1220

CVP Speaker Series @ GW: “Cybersecurity and Data Science: Partnering for the Future”
Wednesday, November 20
5:00 – 7:00 pm
SEH, Lehman Auditorium
RSVP
Cybersecurity attacks are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, putting organizations’ valuable data at greater risk. Failure to prepare and stay up-to-date on developments in cybersecurity and data science could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. How we can protect environments from threats targeting data and valuable assets, and what kinds of organizational cultural changes are required to integrate cybersecurity and data science? Join us for a panel discussion of these and other related questions.

CSPRI Talk: “Cybersecurity for Connected and Automated Vehicles”
Speaker: Duncan Woodbury, Founder & CEO, DTLLC
Thursday, November 21
12:00 noon (An informal lunch will be served)
SEH, B1220
Please RSVP for lunch
The intent of this and future Cyber Security and Privacy Research Institute (CSPRI) lunches is to give GW faculty and students glimpses of the vibrant security and privacy private sector in the Washington region and to promote dialog and debate regarding breakthrough initiatives. The potential for support for research or conference papers on related topics will be part of the discussion.

BME Seminar: “Physical Biology at Semiconductor-enabled Biointerfaces”
Speaker: Dr. Bozhi Tian, The University of Chicago
Wednesday, December 11
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
SEH, B1270

Human Resources News

In this month's HR Corner, SEAS HR Manager Marion Flythe-Inman shares new information on:

• Federal form revisions
• SEAS unconscious bias training sessions
• GW retirement and financial wellbeing fair

The HR Corner is a web page for SEAS staff that contains HR-related news, information, and events. Marion encourages staff to visit the page to find information on GW's new time off and leave guide, events and trainings, SEAS employment opportunities, and much more.

Entrepreneurship News & Events
Make-A-Thing Open Studio @ GW Innovation Center
Fridays throughout the semester
1:00 – 6:00 pm
Tompkins Hall, M06
The studio is open to the GW community. Please email the GW Innovation Center if you are interested in participating in the studio.

Human Centered Design Workshop
Wednesday, October 30
5:45 – 7:45 pm
MakeOffices Penn Ave
Register
This experiential and interactive workshop exposes students to the tools, tactics, and frameworks used by innovators, entrepreneurs, and designers to empathize with populations they seek to serve, define problem sets, and come up with innovative solutions.

Jumpstart One-Day Bootcamp
Saturday, November 2: Register
Sunday, November 3: Register
9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Gelman Library, 301-302
Choose to attend either date listed above. Jumpstart your ideas and passions with this experiential and interactive one-day bootcamp that exposes you to the tools, tactics, and frameworks used by innovators and entrepreneurs to create new startups, businesses, and social enterprises. This bootcamp will dive into design thinking as a way to help students frame problems and create solutions to social and environmental issues and provide impactful solutions in the US and internationally.

Pitching to Investors Workshop
Thursday, November 7
5:30 – 7:00 pm
MakeOffices Penn Ave
Register
This workshop will present methods for conveying facts about a startup venture efficiently. This workshop explores approaches for generating enthusiasm for your venture and addressing the fears and concerns that investors and funders have about any new venture.

External Events
SEH WOW TALK (What’s Our Work)
Speakers:

• Dr. Ling Hao (Chemistry), “Discovering Molecular Signatures of Human Diseases via Mass Spectrometry”
• Dr. Santiago Solares (MAE), “Exploring the Micro- and Nanoworld with the Atomic Force Microscope”
• Dr. Yuxiao Huang (Data Science), “On the Discovery of Feature Importance Distributions: An Overlooked Area”

Wednesday, November 6
4:00 – 5:00 pm
SEH, B1220
RSVP
SEH WOW TALK (What’s Our Work) Series brings together colleagues and students from disciplines associated with GW's Science and Engineering Hall—and related fields—to present new research and share ideas. These short talks (15 minutes each) are designed to introduce members of the GW community to current and exciting research projects being undertaken, to initiate discussion, collaborate, share expertise, and promote research performed in the SEH and at GW.

National Science Foundation Research Prep
Thursday, November 7
12:00 -1:30 pm
Marvin Center, 538
RSVP
This session shares information about the application process for the many funded research opportunities available to students by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This session will be facilitated by two experts who can help students submit a successful application: Paul Hoyt O'Connor, Ph.D. director, GW Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, and Sonya Merrill, Ph.D. STEM Industry Coach GW Center for Career Services. Please bring a laptop or note pad and pen.

GW Grant Writers' Workshop Series
The Research Enhancement Unit within the Office of the Vice President for Research is offering four workshops for grant writers and associated programmatic support staff. Participants will learn tips for developing winning proposals, managing cross-disciplinary project teams, and working with foundations and industry partners. The sessions are open to GW faculty, staff, postdocs and students. Non-GW participants will be considered as space allows. There is no fee to attend, but an RSVP is required.

Session I: Foundation Grant Writing
Tuesday, November 12
9:00 am – 12:30 pm
Marvin Center, 310
RSVP

Session II: Successful Collaborative Projects
Tuesday, November 12
1:00 – 4:30 pm
Marvin Center, 310
RSVP

Session III: Building Partnerships with Industry
Wednesday, November 13
9:00 am – 12:30 pm
Marvin Center, 308
RSVP

Session IV: Grant Writing at the Next Level
Wednesday, November 13
1:00 – 4:30 pm
Marvin Center, 308
RSVP

Announcements
Call for proposals: Sustainable GW announces a call for proposals for the 2020 round of the Duke Energy Innovation Fund. This year Sustainable GW is accepting proposals for up to $85,000. Complete instructions for submissions are available on its web page. Please send any questions to Robert Orttung.

Never underestimate the potential of your research. If you have an exciting research proposal or positive preliminary results, or if you aren't sure whether or not you have a patentable invention, GW’s Technology Commercialization Office (TCO) would love to hear from you. TCO is available to discuss your ideas and to help protect your intellectual property rights and those of the university. TCO promotes and facilitates the transfer of GW innovations for the benefit of the university community and the public while leveraging GW resources by partnering with industry experts and entrepreneurs.

Dissertation Defenses
Student Name: Kazem Qazanfari
Dissertation Title: “Methods of Enriching Domain Knowledge with Universal Semantics for Higher Text Mining Performance”
Advisor: Dr. Abdu Youssef (CS) - Presiding: Dr. Hyeong-Ah Choi (CS)
Thursday, October 31
12:00 – 2:30 pm
SEH, 2000