September 13-19, 2010

Newsletter

September 13, 2010

Faculty News

Research:

Prof. Stephen Hsu (MAE) has received a $65,000 cash donation from Cummins Inc. to support his work to increase the fuel economy of cars and trucks using a new surface technology, combining surface textures, thin films, and chemical treatments.  Cummins has been providing cash and equipment donations for the last two years to facilitate the technology transition into real engine applications.  The basic science portion of the project has been supported by a $600,000 Department of Energy (DOE) grant for the last several years.  Prof. Hsu has also recently received a $65,000 grant from the DOE's Office of Wind and Hydro Energy to develop a wind energy curriculum at GW to provide training for professionals in wind energy.

Media Mentions:

Prof. Stephen Hsu (MAE) was interviewed by WAMU radio on plugin hybrid electric vehicles and the need for infrastructures for this new generation of vehicles.  The interview aired on September 8. 

Books & Papers:

Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) has had the following paper published: Ben-Tzvi, P., Goldenberg, A.A., Zu, J.W., "Articulated Hybrid Mobile Robot Mechanism with Compounded Mobility and Manipulation and On-Board Wireless Sensor/Actuator Control Interfaces," Mechatronics Journal, vol. 20, issue 6, pp. 627-639, September 2010.

Conferences & Presentations:

On September 2, Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) gave a seminar on nano and bio mechanics at the Purdue University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics 2010 Colloquium Series. The seminar was taped and will be posted on the nanoHub website, which has 130,000 registered users.  Prof. Chong also visited with faculty members, students and toured state-of-the-art laboratories.  Overall, he found it an enlightening and productive trip. 

Other:

Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE) received an equipment donation of two Tesla C2050 GPU (graphics processing unit) processors that are worth approximately $5,000 from NVIDIA. NVIDIA is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU.  This is an unrestricted gift from the NVIDIA Academic Partnership Program to support Prof. Liang's research.  He will use these GPU processors for his research in computational fluid dynamics and his teaching of numerical solutions of partial differential equations.

Student News

CEE master's student Deborah Blass has been selected to receive an AISC (American Institute of Steel Construction) Education Foundation fellowship.

EMSE doctoral candidate Deena Disraelly has co-authored a recently published paper with her colleagues from the Institute for Defense Analyses. The citation is: D.S. Disraelly, T.J. Walsh, and R.A. Zirkle, 2010. "A New Methodology for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Casualty Estimation over Time." Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, 7(4): 226-240.

Other News

Profs. Lance Hoffman and Rachelle Heller (CS) have received $312,390 in funding from the Defense Department to continue GW's scholarship program in Computer Security and Information Assurance.  These monies provide full scholarships, including tuition, books, and a stipend, for students who then go on to work for the Defense Department in this field.  This year, five GW students are recipients of these awards.

The ECE Department has recently agreed to start a new focus area in electrical power and energy in its electrical engineering M.S. degree program.  The focus area will consist of five courses directed toward the traditional subjects in electrical power engineering, but with emphasis on modern applications to energy conservation, smart electrical grid monitoring, improving efficiency of electrical equipment and systems, generation from renewable energy sources, and economic issues.  The department will also offer an option in power and energy in its undergraduate B.S. degree.  The graduate degree program will start in the spring semester 2011, and the undergraduate option will be offered starting in the fall of 2011.

This semester, the ECE Department begins offering a new master of science degree in biomedical engineering. The graduate program will prepare students to apply engineering principles to problems in medicine and biology, to understand and model multiple attributes of living systems, and to synthesize biomedical systems and devices.

The GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering (GWIBE) announces its call for proposals from GW faculty who are interested in biomedical engineering research support from GWIBE.  Proposals are due to Prof. James Hahn, 720B Academic Center, 202-994-5920, [email protected], by 5:00 pm, Friday, October 1.  Electronic submissions are required.  

Guest Vignette

Prof. Joost Santos, the newest star in the EMSE constellation, has made significant contributions in the area of understanding and modeling risks, particularly within the field of disaster management.  Over the past academic year, Prof. Santos has extended the input-output (I-O) model to improve its capability for assessing and managing disaster impacts. Particularly noteworthy are the dynamic and probabilistic extensions that were used in modeling epidemic scenarios and their effects on workforce productivity. A series of papers on this topic were published in Risk Analysis, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS(Part A), and Economic Systems Research.  Prof. Santos has levaraged his work to create several important partnerships.  To whit, in partnership with Prof. Kash Barker from the University of Oklahoma, Prof. Santos has an ongoing collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation that seeks to develop inventory-based I-O models to expedite recovery from disasters.  Additionally, results from this research have been disseminated to the University of Southern California, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Sydney, and University of the Philippines. Prof. Santos is also building a potential collaboration with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers to integrate analytical and computer-based models to enhance regional resilience.   (Provided courtesy of Prof. Julie Ryan, chair of the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering)

Upcoming

MAE Seminar: "Aerohydronautical Power Engineering: Can it lead the way out of the energy and climate crisis?"
Tuesday, September 14
1:45 - 2:45 pm
736 Phillips Hall

Turner Construction Meet & Greet
Information Session, Career Fair Prep
Thursday, September 16
6:00 - 7:00 pm
Dean's Conference Room, Tompkins Hall

General Dynamics/Electric Boat 
Monday, September 20
Information Session: 3:00 - 4:00 pm
Resume Review Session for NSBE, ASME & IEEE: 4:00 - 6:00 pm
Dean's Conference Room, Tompkins Hall

Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management: Homeland Security and Emergency Management Forum
Tuesday, September 21
4:30 - 6:30 pm
Marvin Center Amphitheater

Cybersecurity Seminar: The Future of Privacy and Cybersecurity
Prof. Jeffrey Rosen, GW Law School
Wednesday, September 22
12:00 pm
302 Marvin Center

SEAS Graduate Student Open House and Seminar 
Topic: Cybersecurity Challenges, presented by Prof. Poorvi Vora (CS)
Wednesday, September 22
4:00 pm
307 Marvin

Cybersecurity Seminar: The Future of Privacy and Cybersecurity
Patricia MacTaggart, GW School of Public Health and Health Services
Wednesday, October 13
12:00 pm
302 Marvin Center

SEAS Graduate Student Open House and Seminar 
Topic: Cloud Computing, presented by Prof. Howie Huang (ECE)
Wednesday, October 13
4:00 pm
310 Marvin Center

GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering Seminar: "Endothelialization of Drug Eluting Stents:  Will new designs overcome limitations?"
Tuesday, October 19
1:00 - 2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

SEAS Entrepreneurship Seminar: "Student Startups: From Biz Plan to Inc 500"
Tuesday, October 26
6:00: Reception; 7:00: Panel Discussion
103 Funger Hall
Please join us for the first panel discussion in the 2010-2011 SEAS Entrepreneurship Seminar Series. Registration is required.

Dissertation Defenses

Name of Student Defending:  Darnell Bennett
Title of Dissertation: "Probing Depths with a Two-Dimensional Electrical Impedance System with Applications to Breast Cancer Screening”
Wednesday, September 15 at 2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

Name of Student Defending:  Rohan M. Amin
Title of Dissertation: "Detecting Targeted Malicious Email through Supervised Classification of Persistent Threat and Recipient Oriented Features”
Wednesday, September 22 at 10:30 am
1776 G Street, N.W. Conference Room 120