US
News & WR: SEOR ranked 28 in Industrial, Manufacturing and
Systems
Engineering
New
M.S. in Biostatistics
New Undergraduate Minors:
Mechanical Engineering,
Aviation Flight Training
C4I
Seminar: Friday, Mar 29, 1:30 pm, room 4705
Harry
Wechsler and Venkatesh
Ramanathan
are Issued a Patent
NY
Times: California
Bill Seeks Campus
Credit for Online Study
NY
Times: Colleges
Assess Cost of Free
Online-Only Courses
US
News & WR: SEOR ranked 28 in
Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering
US
News & World Report ranked the Volgenau School of Engineering
as number 28
in the category of Industrial/Manufacturing/Systems Engineering
for 2013, tied
with the University of Virginia and the University of Arizona.
This is
the first year that US News & World Report included Systems
Engineering as
part of a graduate engineering specialty. In earlier years, the
specialty was
Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering.
Last
week, SCHEV gave its final approval to our new M.S. in
Biostatistics.The program
will be available beginning Fall
2013.
The
M.S. in Biostatistics will allow students to specialize in the
design and
analysis of health-related and biological studies, while
maintaining the rigor
and technical training of the Statistical Science master’s
program.
Mechanical
Engineering:The
discipline of mechanical engineering
involves anything that moves or uses energy. There are two major
stems in
mechanical engineering: mechanical systems and thermal fluid
systems.
Mechanical engineers design, build, and analyze complex devices,
systems, and
processes that involve the conversion of energy from one form to
another, the
production of work, and the transport of energy and mass from one
location to
another. Since its origin, mechanical engineering has evolved
tremendously and
plays a vital role in multidisciplinary fields where mechanical
and
thermophysical properties of materials and movement or transport
are relevant.
Examples include materials science and nanotechnology, biomedical
engineering,
aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering, and many others.
Application areas
of mechanical engineering include energy systems, transportation,
medicine,
machines, electronics, robotics, materials, and many other areas.
Aviation
Flight Training and Management:
This
minor provides students with a unique opportunity to earn a
pilot’s license and
gain expertise in various aspects of aviation management. The
combination of
pilot’s license and aviation management places the candidate
seeking employment
with airlines, airports, air traffic control at a competitive
advantage.
Students completing this minor have completed one step in
preparation towards
jobs as Commercial Pilots, Military Pilots, Corporate Pilots,
Certified Flight
Instructors, Unmanned Aerial Systems Operators, Airline
Dispatchers, Airport
Managers, Air Traffic Controllers, Aviation Flight Test Engineers,
Aviation
System Engineers.
C4I
Seminar: Friday, Mar 29, 1:30 pm,
room 4705
Speakers:
Dr. Wei Sun and Walter Powell, George Mason University
Combinatorial
Prediction
Markets by Graphical Model: Algorithms and Auto-Traders
Abstract:
Prediction markets are defined as speculative markets created for
the purpose
of making predictions. The current market prices can be interpreted
as
estimates of the probability of the event, or the expected value of
the
parameter. Public prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic
Market or the
Foresight Exchange have been in place for over two decades. More
recently, Intrade, Inkling, and Betfair have been in the news.
All of these prediction markets ignore the relationships between
questions, but
combinatorial prediction markets explicitly consider and
exploit
dependencies among base events. This allow us to collect more
information and
promises better accuracy. A combinatorial market can integrate
partial
information from many people, and update a joint probability
distribution that
is far larger than any one person can fully edit or consider.
However, we
must tame the combinatorial explosion before the problem is beyond
computers as
well.
In this talk, we show how to use Bayesian networks to represent and
update
combinatorial markets -- including user assets. We also present
results
of a recent murder-mystery experiment where participants used either
a regular
prediction market or a combinatorial market to solve the mystery.
Finally, in order to further improve the market's accuracy, we
designed an
auto-trader based on user's input and/or belief expressed as a
Bayesian network
fragment. We show results that simple auto-traders can encourage
participation, and new work on a "Kelly Rule" auto-trader that finds
optimal trades given a user's joint beliefs.
Speaker information: A Research Assistant
Professor in the
Center of Excellence in C4I at George Mason University, since
August
2009, Dr. Wei Sun is currently involved as a core researcher in a
government funded research project called DAGGRE, which has
awarded the GMU
research team with more than $5 million dollars in research
funding.An expert in
Bayesian inference, Dr. Sun
obtained his Ph.D. in Information Technology in 2007 and has
developed several
efficient inference algorithms for hybrid Bayesian networks. He
has a rich
experience in predictive modeling, probabilistic reasoning,
nonlinear
filtering, sampling methods and simulation. Applications of his
research
include sensor fusion, tracking, classification, forecasting,
performance
modeling, and recently prediction markets. Dr. Sun has published
20 technical
papers in referred journals and prestigious conferences, and two
book chapters.
Walter
Powell
is a Ph.D. candidate and
Research Instructor in George Mason University’s C4I center. A
retired
naval officer, his is completing his doctoral research in the
evaluation of the
quality of decisions. As part of his research he has developed
numerous
experiments and evaluations that assessed the usefulness of
various decisions
support systems. As a Senior Research Engineer with RTSync, Inc.,
he
consults on modeling and simulation projects for various
governmental and
industry entities.
Harry
Wechsler and Venkatesh Ramanathan are Issued a Patent
Harry
Wechsler of the Computer Science Department and recent Ph.D.
graduate Venkatesh
Ramanthan were issued the following patent by the US PTO.
Title: Robust Human Authentication Using Holistic Anthropometric
and
Appearance-Based Features and Boosting
Inventors: Harry Wechsler
and Venkatesh
Ramanathan
Number: 8,379,940 B2
Issue date: February 19, 2013.
NY
Times: California Bill Seeks Campus Credit for Online Study
“Legislation will be introduced in the
California
Senate on Wednesday that could reshape higher education by
requiring the
state’s public colleges and universities to give credit for
faculty-approved
online courses taken by students unable to register for
oversubscribed classes
on campus.
“If it passes, as seems likely, it
would be the
first time that state legislators have instructed public
universities to grant
credit for courses that were not their own — including those
taught by a
private vendor, not by a college or university.”
NY
Times: Colleges Assess
Cost of Free
Online-Only Courses
“Elite
universities are joining in, but the massive online open courses,
known as
MOOCs, threaten to poach paying students from other institutions.”
--
===============================================================
Stephen G. Nash
Senior Associate Dean
Volgenau School of Engineering
George Mason University
Nguyen Engineering Building, Room 2500
Mailstop 5C8
Fairfax, VA 22030
[log in to unmask]
Phone: (703) 993-1505
Fax: (703) 993-1633
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/seor/faculty/nash.html