September 17-23, 2012

Newsletter

September 17, 2012

Faculty News

Research:

Prof. Tian Lan (ECE) received a three-year, $220,000 NSF grant for his project "CSR: Collaborative Research: Per-Process Energy Accounting in Mobile Systems." This research, in collaboration with Prof. Lin Zhong from Rice University, aims to solve a longstanding, hard problem in system research: how to determine the contribution by a process to the system energy consumption when multiple processes are active. Per-process energy accounting is important for software evaluation and optimization, as well as for system energy management and security.

Publications:

Prof. Lile Murphree (EMSE) and Professorial Lecturer Charles Bixler (EMSE) and their former student Dr. Ahmed Zaid AlHussain (Saudi Aramco) published a peer reviewed paper in the Journal of Knowledge Globalization. The full citation of the paper is: AlHussain AZ, Murphree, EL, and Bixler, CH, "Barriers to Knowledge Management in Saudi Arabia" Journal of Knowledge Globalization, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2012. The paper examines societal and cultural reasons why the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not have a robust knowledge management system in place and offers suggestions for positive changes.

Prof. Santos (EMSE) and his Ph.D. student, Rehman Akhtar, have published the following journal article: Rehman Akhtar and Joost Santos, "Risk-Based input-output analysis of hurricane impacts on interdependent regional workforce systems," Natural Hazards, September 2012.

Conferences and Presentations:

Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) was invited to participate in the US-EU Summit on Science, Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Economic Growth at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC on September 11. During the panel discussion, he talked about the innovative drip irrigation and other efficient water management in Israel, which has increased agricultural output 12-fold during the past 50 years. He also pointed out that 80% of Hong Kong's 6.8 million population uses seawater for flushing, reducing the demand for fresh water by 20%. On the energy side, he discussed the Generation IV nuclear plants as a viable source of clean energy. The Summit was sponsored by the European Commission, NSF, and DOE. About 30 invitees participated from Europe, and the U.S. Formal presentations at the Summit will be posted on the Wilson Center website.

Dr. Gulu Gambhir (EMSE part-time faculty member) presented a systems engineering seminar at NASA on September 11. The seminar, titled "Seven +/- Two Lessons Learned from the Development of Large-scale Systems," was a public seminar.

Prof. Claire Monteleoni (CS) will co-chair the Climate Informatics Workshop, which will be held on September 20-21, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. The workshop brings together climate scientists and researchers in machine learning, data mining, and statistics in order to form collaborations to accelerate discovery in climate science. Prof. Monteleoni co-founded the workshop in 2011.

Research Professor David Nagel (ECE) recently presented several talks on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). On August 10, he presented the opening talk, "Introduction to the Tutorial and Low Energy Nuclear Reactions," at an LENR tutorial prior to the 17th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-17) in Daejeon, Korea. At the same tutorial, he also gave the final talk, "Challenges, Attractions and Impacts of Commercial LENR Energy Generators," with Professor M. E. Melich, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey CA. At the ICCF-17 conference on August 13, he presented a poster paper titled "Experimental Evidence for Bursts of Heat, Particles, Sound and EM Radiation and for Explosions in LENR Experiments" with M. Srinivasan, retired from the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Mumbai, India. On August 16, he and lead author F. Scholkmann gave an invited talk at the conference. The talk was titled "Statistical Analysis of Transmutation Data from LENR Experiments and Comparison with a Prediction by Widom and Larsen."

Other News

The GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering (GWIBE) announces the call for proposals for this year's Interdisciplinary Research Fund. Faculty interested in receiving internal funding from GWIBE to conduct pilot research may apply until October 1, 2012.

Guest Vignette

Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) continues to solidify his development of theoretical and practical applications of input-output (I-O) models to disaster preparedness. I-O model derivatives have been found effective in predicting the ripple effects of disasters across interdependent sectors of a region. In the May 2012 issue of Risk Analysis, Prof. Santos' work on inoperability input-output modeling (IIM) with his Ph.D. advisor (Prof. Yacov Haimes, University of Virginia) was included by the journal editors in the 10 most important accomplishments (1980-2010) within the regional economic impact assessment section.

This summer, Prof. Santos presented two IIM-related papers in the International Input-Output Association (IIOA) Conference held in Bratislava, Slovakia. He has also started building a partnership with the program manager (Michelle Quinteros de Czifra) of the Hispanic-Serving Health Professions Schools (HSHPS) and has provided voluntary educational outreach to the Summer 2012 cohort of HSHPS trainees. In addition, he was selected as a science fellow of the Philippine government, under the "Balik" (Returning) Scientist Program of the Department of Science and Technology. During the five-week program, he provided research dissemination initiatives to top-tier universities in the Philippines, including De La Salle University and University of the Philippines. He also offered seminars and workshops to research agencies, including the National Institute of Geological Sciences, National Computer Center, and Advanced Science and Technology Institute.

At GW, Prof. Santos continues to pursue interdisciplinary research on disaster risk analysis through internal grants from the GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering and the GW Institute of Public Policy. His recent research collaboration with Dr. Larissa May (GW Emergency Medicine and GW Epidemiology and Biostatistics) has resulted in a pandemic risk assessment journal paper to appear in Risk Analysis. Prof. Santos also has completed a project with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and has produced a technical report: "A Regional Resilience/Security Analysis Process for the Nation's Critical Infrastructure Systems." His continuing grant from NSF has also generated student publications in Natural Hazards, Economic Systems Research, International Journal of Production Economics, and IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Part A: Systems and Humans). (Provided courtesy of Prof. Joost Santos of the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering)

SEAS Events

CEE Seminar: "Uncertainty Analysis in Groundwater Dating with Environmental Tracers Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo Method"
Prof. Arash Massoudieh, The Catholic University of American
Monday, September 17
2:00 - 3:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
Refreshments will be served

MAE Seminar: "Secrets of Fish Swimming"
Prof. Chui-Jie Wu, Dean, School of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Dalian University of Technology, China
Wednesday, September 26
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

Entrepreneurship Events

GW Business Plan Competition: Entrepreneurial Session 2
The Lean Start-up Approach
Thursday, September 20
5:00 - 7:00 pm
258 Duques Hall