Faculty News
Grants:
The U.S. Army has awarded a $17.2 million grant to Virginia Tech and partners to determine which STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs are most effective in developing an interest in STEM among children from fifth grade and up, and to train teachers for these programs. Of the $17.2 million awarded, approximately $6.5 million was awarded to GW for four STEM programs, including math-and-science internships in Army laboratories for students in grades seven to 12. The funds will flow through the EMSE department over the next three years. They will not be spent within GW, so no new internal programs will be developed. Nevertheless, the funds do serve to give SEAS excellent publicity in the STEM arena and to boost our outreach profile. This could play a helpful role in the recruitment of the STEM University professor. That open position is currently being advertised.
Papers:
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) and his doctoral student Olga Volotskova and post-doc Alexey Shashuring published a paper entitled "Single-step synthesis and magnetic separation of graphene and carbon nanotubes in arc discharge plasmas," O. Volotskova, I. Levchenko, A. Shashurin, Y. Raitses, K. Ostrikov and M. Keidar Nanoscale, 2010, 2, 2281-2285. To celebrate the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene," Nanoscale has prepared a web collection on graphene. This paper is one of 17 articles and reviews on graphene selected for the collection.
"Force oscillation and phase transition of simple fluids under confinement," a paper by Prof. Yongsheng Leng (MAE) and his postdoctoral research scientist Yajie Lei, was published online in the October 2010 issue of Physical Review E as a rapid communication.
Prof. Nan Zhang (CS) and his students Xin Jin and Mingyang Zhang, together with Prof. Gautam Das of the University of Texas at Arlington, have recently published a novel versatile publishing scheme with which privacy requirements can be specified as an arbitrary set of privacy rules over attributes in the microdata table, introducing a Guardian Normal Form that "guarantees" all privacy rules. They present extensive experiments over real-world datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness of this work in protecting privacy.
Conferences & Presentations:
Prof. Roger Lang (ECE), his graduate student Qianyi Zhao, and Cuneyt Utku of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center presented the paper "A Model for Backscattering from a Quasi-Periodic Corn Canopies at L Band" at the URSI Commission F Specialist Symposium on Microwave Signatures held in Florence, Italy, October 5-8.
Prof. Michael Plesniak (MAE chair) presented a seminar entitled "Secondary flow structures in a model for curved arteries under physiological inflow conditions and effects of a stent, " at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health in Silver Spring, MD, on September 29. Prof. Plesniak also presented a seminar entitled "Unsteadiness and Turbulence in Biomedical Fluid Dynamics: Cardiovascular Flows and Phonation" at the Pennsylvania State University, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering on October 12.
Prof. Julie Ryan (EMSE chair) gave an invited presentation to the Army Science Board on October 12. The topic of the presentation was cybersecurity. The Army Science Board is a Federal Advisory Committee that provides advice and recommendations to Army leadership on matters of science and technology.
Other News
Prof. Matthew Kay (ECE) was invited to serve on a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study Section (ZRG1 BDCN-Y(2)) to review grants submitted to the Research Project Grant Program. The study section met last week to review R01, R21, and R03 grant proposals.
Prof. Jonathan Deason (EMSE) presented a "Classes from GW's Best" lecture at Colonials Weekend at the Marvin Center on October 15. Prof. Deason's lecture, which was attended by about 60 GW parents and students, was entitled "Impending Global Energy Crisis: Fact or Fiction?"
Student News
The National Institutes of Health has awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award For Individual Postdoctoral Fellows ($150,000 for three years) to Nikki Gillum Posnack, Ph.D., for her proposal, entitled "The effect of phthalates on the heart: molecular pathways and clinical relevance." Dr. Posnack will be co-mentored by Prof. Matthew Kay (ECE) and Dr. Norman Lee (Pharmacology and Physiology) to study toxic effects of phthalates on cardiac tissue using novel fluorescence imaging techniques and gene expression profiling with microarrays.
Aleksandar Stefanovski (CS doctoral student) presented the paper "Hands-on Education in Robotics for Talented Youth in Developing Countries," Aleksander Stefanovski, Rhys Price Jones at the CCSC (Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges) Eastern Conference, October 15 at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA. The full program can be found at http://projects.juniata.edu/ccsce10/index.shtml
Guest Vignette
Dr. Francesco Calabrese (EMSE), managing director of GW's Institute for Knowledge and Innovation (IKI), traveled to Bangkok, Thailand and Hong Kong last summer for a series of workshops and meetings to continue existing collaborations and develop new collaborations with universities in the region.
In Bangkok, Dr. Calabrese met with IKI, South East Asia (IKI-SEA), which is sponsored by Bangkok University (BU). Dr. Vincent Ribiere (EMSE, D.Sc., 2001) an assistant professor at BU, is managing director of the IKI-SEA. Dr. Calabrese was one of two presenters in a half-day seminar series on "Knowledge Management Lessons Learned from the USA and Thailand." Dr. Calabrese also participated in a second seminar/workshop at BU. This session was sponsored by UMAP (University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific), an organization of which the US is a member. Representatives of GW; Bangkok University; Norton University, Cambodia; Universti Sains, Malaysia; College University of Buskerud, Norway; and Hedmark University College, Norway attended the seminar.
Dr. Calabrese also visited Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU) to discuss collaboration with Dr. W.B. Lee, manager of HKPU's Knowledge Management Research Centre and co-editor of Vine Journal (IM/KM), which Dr. Michael Stankosky (EMSE) expanded into a global footprint as editor (2006-2008). The group then met with and briefed President Timothy Tong, former SEAS dean. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Francesco Calabrese of the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering)
Upcoming
CS Colloquium: Query Processing in a Large Scale Web Search Engine
Ali Ahmadi (Ph.D., CS '09), Microsoft
Monday, October 18
4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
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 Resume Critique Night
Wednesday, October 20
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Alumni House @ 1918 F Street NW
RSVP required
CEE Colloquium: Material Characterization for Numerical Simulations and their Validation with Component Tests
Prof. Eberhard Roos, University of Stuttgart (Germany)
Thursday, October 21
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
USA Science & Engineering Festival EXPO
Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 24
10:00 am to 5:00 pm both days
Fifteen CEE students and Prof. Kim Roddis (CEE chair) have signed up as volunteer staff at USA Science & Engineering Festival EXPO on both days. The booth and activity they will be working is: Rollin' and Shakin' on the Richter Scale (Space #1315, NSF EXHIBITOR 5 of 15) on Pennsylvania Avenue, south between 13th and 14th Streets. Please come visit. For more information or to volunteer, please contact the CEE Department.
Looking Forward
SEAS Entrepreneurship Seminar: "Student Startups: From the Dorm Room to the Board Room"
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. This event will also be the kick-off for the $50,000 GW Business Plan Competition. Registration is required.
Institute for Knowledge and Innovation Seminar: Adapting for Success in a Knowledge-based Economy"
Tuesday, October 26
10:00 am - 3:30 pm
Virginia Science and Technology Campus, Research 1, Rooms 410-413
CS Colloquium: Query Processing in a Large Scale Web Search Engine
Dr. Joel Sherrill, Director of Research and Development for OAR Corporation; Dr. Cynthia Cicalese, Lead Software Systems Engineer, The MITRE Corporation
Tuesday, October 26
11:00 am
205 Tompkins Hall
ECE Colloquium: Electrical Power System Reliability and Economics: Applications and Challenges in the Emerging Energy Sector
Needal Deeb, Renergix, Fairfax, VA
Thursday, October 28
1:30 - 2:30 pm
640 Phillips
ECE Colloquium: An Investigation of Magnetic Reversal at Almost the Nanoscale (IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecture Series 2010)
Prof. E. Dan Dahlberg, University of Minnesota
Wednesday, November 3
4:00 pm
640 Phillips
MAE Colloquium: How Aeros, Ag/Bio Engineers, Chemists, Food Scientists & MEs Work Together To Develop Advanced Rocket Motors
Paul Sojka, Purdue University
Monday, November 8
1:00 - 2:00 pm
736 Phillips
ECE Colloquium: A New Paradigm for Exchange Bias in Polycrystalline Films (IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecture Series 2010)
Prof. Kevin O'Grady, University of York (U.K.)
Wednesday, November 10
3:00 pm
640 Phillips
CEE Colloquium: Micro-to-Macro Connections in Geomechanics
Prof. A. (Rajah) Anandarajah, Johns Hopkins University
Monday, November 15
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering Colloquium: Dual-Mode Imaging of Cardiac Ischemia and Reperfusion in Contracting Hearts Using Contrast Echocardiography and Fluorescence Imaging
Profs. Vesna Zderic and Matthew Kay, ECE
Tuesday, November 16
2:30 - 3:30 pm
736 Phillips
"A Day in the Life of an Engineer"
Tuesday, November 16
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TBD
GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering Colloquium: The Role of Tissue Engineering and Nanomedicine for Musculoskeletal Tissue Regeneration
Prof. Lijie (Grace) Zhang, MAE
Tuesday, November 30
1:00 - 2:00 pm
736 Phillips
Dissertation Defenses
Name of Student Defending: Bassam Ar Noaman
Title of Dissertation: "Computation of Semiconductor Device Noise for Semi-Classical
Transport"
Monday, October 18 at 11:30 am
640 Phillips Hall
Name of Student Defending: Majid Mubarak Al-Naimi
Title of Dissertation: "Waveband Optimization in ROADM-based Optical Networks"
Thursday, October 21 at 1:00 am
640 Phillips Hall