Introducing Dean John Lach Contents In this issue of Synergy magazine, the GW School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) is delighted to introduce the school’s new dean, Dr. John Lach. Dr. Lach began his role as dean of SEAS last August, at the beginning � of the 2019-2020 academic year. He joined SEAS from the University of Virginia, where he served most recently as the director of cross-cutting initiatives at the university’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and as a professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He previously served as the chair of the department. Throughout his 19-year career at the University of Virginia, Dr. Lach worked extensively with departments, schools, and initiatives to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, and he has a long-standing interest in NASA promoting partnerships between engineers and others in the academic, �� business, and research communities. “I see the future of engineering as being something that’s more integrated with other disciplines,” he states. COVER STORY: This key interest of Dr. Lach’s extends back through his own education, SPRING 2020 particularly his undergraduate education at Stanford University, where Engineering at the Intersections EDITOR � Dean John Lach Outlines a Strategic Plan for the School he studied in the Science, Technology, and Society program. It was there Joanne Welsh that he developed a keen understanding of the fact that engineering is DESIGN practiced most effectively when it integrates and synthesizes multiple Brian Cox – Brian Cox Design Service PHOTOGRAPHY 2 SEAS DEPARTMENTS disciplines and perspectives. Eleanor Kaufman Khan 12 STUDENT PROFILE: Allegra Farrar SYNERGY IS PUBLISHED BY After studying at Stanford, Dr. Lach went on to UCLA, where he received THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY’S SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE 13 FACULTY PROFILE: Tom Mazzuchi his Master of Science and PhD degrees in electrical engineering. Over Science and Engineering Hall, 2885 800 22nd Street, NW 14 NEWS the course of his career, he developed a research focus on wireless 202-994-6080 • www.seas.gwu.edu technologies in health, working primarily in cyber-physical systems, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY 18 FACULTY embedded sensor systems, smart and connected health, and body Thomas J. LeBlanc 22 STUDENTS sensor networks. At the University of Virginia, he worked with faculty DEAN John C. Lach across several schools to innovate wireless sensor technologies for 24 ALUMNI ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS health and wellness applications, becoming one of the founders of the Rumana Riffat 28 CLASS NOTES field of Smart and Connected Health. ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH AND GRADUATE STUDIES 31 VOLUNTEERS Can E. Korman Dr. Lach brings to GW this same interest in integrating engineering ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR UNDERGRADUATE AFFAIRS & PROGRAMS with other disciplines, and he looks forward to developing more Bhagirath Narahari opportunities for collaboration between SEAS and other GW schools DEPARTMENT OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING and partners. We invite you to read about his plans in our feature article, Murray Loew, Chair “SEAS: Engineering at the Intersections.” DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING Majid T. Manzari, Chair DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE Robert Pless, Chair DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING Suresh Subramaniam, Chair DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT & SYSTEMS ENGINEERING Thomas A. Mazzuchi, Chair DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL & AEROSPACE ENGINEERING Michael W. Plesniak, Chair SYNERGY SPRING 2020 1 DEPARTMENTS THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & APPLIED SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS PROFILE PROFILE Engineering Civil & Environmental Chair: Murray Loew Material Progress Chair: Majid Manzari 202-994-3740 Dr. Tianshu Li’s ultimate research goal can be stated quite simply: to understand materials 202-994-4901 www.bme.seas.gwu.edu and develop better materials. The research itself, however, is anything but simple. www.cee.seas.gwu.edu Undergraduate students: 196 Undergraduate students: 91 Graduate students: 63 Dr. Li uses computational modeling to try to understand the behaviors of materials, and Graduate students: 40 Annual research expenditures: $3.1 million Annual research expenditures: $2.6 Million his current research explores primarily two interest areas: anti-icing materials and sensing FAC U LTY materials for infrared imaging. FAC U LTY Igor Efimov,PROFESSOR AND FELLOW OF HRS, AHA, Arzhang Angoshtari, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Anti-icing technologies are important to the transportation industry for both safety and AND AIMBE Sameh Badie, PROFESSOR economic reasons, whether for airplanes, ships, or cars and trucks. Existing technologies Emilia Entcheva, PROFESSOR AND FELLOW OF AIMBE Leila Farhadi, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR tend to be very costly and have significant side effects, such as corroding roads. To find better Matthew Kay, PROFESSOR Samer Hamdar, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR David Lee, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE solutions, Dr. Li is looking to nature. Tianshu Li, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Zhenyu Li, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Xitong Liu, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Murray Loew, PROFESSOR AND FELLOW OF IEEE, SPIE, “It turns out that nature has already developed an efficient anti-icing strategy that we can Majid Manzari, PROFESSOR AND AIMBE learn from,” he remarks. “Fish can survive in very cold environments. Their bodies have Rumana Riffat, PROFESSOR Luyao Lu, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR developed a special anti-freeze protein that prevents ice from growing, and the nice thing Kim Roddis, PROFESSOR Anne-Laure Papa, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR about the anti-freeze proteins is that you don’t need a lot of them to do their job.” Danmeng Shuai, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Chung Hyuk Park, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Pedro Silva, PROFESSOR Biomedical Engineering Kate Schunke, ASSISTANT RESEARCH PROFESSOR Dr. Li wants to develop a material that mimics the function of the proteins and is much Jason Zara, PROFESSOR cheaper than current technologies, so he is leading a multi-disciplinary team of other RESEARCH AREAS Vesna Zderic, PROFESSOR researchers who hope to study the issue from the molecular to the microscopic level. ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER RESOURCES ENGINEERING Farhadi, Liu, Riffat, Shuai RESEARCH AREAS He also is a member of a new MURI (Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative) grant MATERIALS BIOMEDICAL IMAGING team, led by the University of Arkansas, to develop a new material for infrared imaging. Li, Liu Efimov, Entcheva, Kay, Li, Loew, Lu, Zara, Zderic A Promising Therapy While this Department of Defense-funded research focuses on military applications, it also MECHANICS CARDIOVASCULAR ENGINEERING Cancer metastasis, the process of cancer spreading to different parts of the body, is much- has a number of civilian applications, such as improving geological surveys, chemical sensing, Angoshtari, Manzari Efimov, Entcheva, Kay, Schunke feared because it can make cancer ‘incurable.’ For a cancer patient at high risk of metastasis, and self-driving cars. STRUCTURAL/GEOTECHNICAL/EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING CELL AND TISSUE ENGINEERING time is often a critical issue in the treatment options that the doctor and patient consider to Badie, Manzari, Roddis, Silva Entcheva, Lee, Papa slow down the cancer spread and prolong the patient’s life. The infrared imaging industry currently is dominated by a semiconductor compound that is expensive and not high-quality. Dr. Li hopes to develop a new material called silicon TRANSPORTATION SAFETY ENGINEERING MEDICAL INSTRUMENTATION Dr. Anne-Laure Papa and her team are focusing their efforts on developing innovative germanium tin alloy (SGTA), which has better performance than the existing compound Hamdar Efimov, Entcheva, Li, Lu, Zara, Zderic solutions to target this spread, called “metastatic dissemination.” Her lab concentrates on cell- and is significantly cheaper. One of the sensing applications that uses the semiconductor ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION based diagnostics and therapeutics for cancer, and in her current research she is looking at the compound is lidar, a survey method that measures the distance of an object by illuminating a Entcheva, Li, Park potential for using platelets to slow cancer metastasis and buy patients more time. laser toward the object and measuring the feedback—the wavelength of the laser—to make THERAPEUTICS AND DIAGNOSTICS 3D representations of the object. Shifting the material in the sensors from the semiconductor Papa Cancer spreads in a body when the cancer cells escape the primary tumor and travel in the compound to SGTA could bring the cost of the sensors down dramatically. blood stream to distant tissues. Dr. Papa explains that while the blood stream is not a natural environment for cancer cells, platelets in the blood stream help them survive by cushioning Dr. Li hopes that the team’s work will fundamentally change the understanding of SGTA and them from the shear stress in the blood vessels and by shielding them from recognition by the its possible applications. “We call it a disruptive technology. It will completely revolutionize body’s immune cells. the infrared imaging field,” he claims. Given the role of platelets in protecting cancer cells, Dr. Papa and her colleagues decided to modify the platelets by inactivating them, so that even though they would still interact with cancer cells, they would not protect them anymore. The team published their results last year in a paper in Science Translational Medicine, demonstrating