Attacking
tumors from the inside. Nitin Agrawal received a
$300,000 grant from the
National Science Foundation to develop an anti-cancer therapy
in which
researchers will induce the body to grow more T-cells.
If
you have suggestions for other stories, please submit them to
Martha Bushong, [log in to unmask].
-------------------------------------------------------------- Photo of the Week
Dr. Laurence
Bray (second
from right) and engineering students in the GMU-Inova Applied
Neuroscience
class work with faculty and clinicians in both didactic and
simulated clinical
environment on the Inova Fairfax Medical Campus. Photo by Evan
Cantwell.
Summer Research Fellowships
provide financial
support to graduate students during the summer term, allowing
students to
devote significant time to their dissertation or thesis research.
The intent of
the award is to foster greater professional productivity and to
assist in
timely degree completion.
Summer Research Fellowships are
awarded on a
competitive basis. Applicants must submit materials to the Office
of the
Provost by Friday, January 20, 2017 (see Application Process).
Recipients will
be notified by Friday, February 24, 2017.
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants must be doctoral
or master’s
students enrolled full-time during both fall 2016 and spring
2017 semesters.
Applicants may not currently
hold a
fellowship that offers funding through the summer.
Applicants may not hold an
assistantship or
accept outside employment during the award period.
Doctoral students must have
completed course
requirements, passed all required written and oral exams, and
be registered for
dissertation credit in the spring 2017 semester.
Master’s students must
provide written
verification of thesis proposal acceptance by thesis
chair/committee no later
than May 6, 2017 (last day of classes).
Award
Fellowship amount: $7,000
for doctoral
students; $5,000 for master’s students.
Term of award: Summer 2017
(May 25 – August
24).
Enrollment in summer
coursework beyond
dissertation or thesis credits must be approved in advance by
the Associate
Provost for Graduate Education.
Student must submit a
summary of the work
produced at the conclusion of the summer.
Student’s thesis or
dissertation chair must
be willing to provide a written evaluation of student’s work
at the conclusion
of the fellowship
[This
message was sent to me by Viviana Maggioni of the CEIE Department.Faculty are encouraged to
nominate students
to this program.] We
are currently accepting applications for the Spring 2017 Classroom
to
Maker’sWeek (C2MW).
Through
this program, students will receive expert assistance, be eligible
for
microgrants to fund development, receive materials and supplies,
and gain access
to specialized equipment to realize their entrepreneurial ideas.
Students
can get accepted two different ways.
Have
an idea? If you think this idea can benefit someone else, find a
market, or
fill a gap in existing offerings, then take the next step! We’ll
pair you with
talented students, faculty, and professionals to help realize this
idea. Apply
to C2MW for an entrepreneurial idea here.
Want
to share your skills? We want to pair
talented students, faculty, and professionals with folks that have
a great idea
already. We need complementary skill sets from business, science,
engineering,
humanities, art, policy, law, health and education. Tell us what
you bring to a
potential team by applying to C2MW for your expertise here.
The
program is only offered in the Spring semester. For more
information, please
feel free to contact us at [log in to unmask].
LATTICE: Launching Academics on
the Tenure
Track: an Intentional Community in Engineering is a national
program, funded by
the National Science Foundation (HRD-1500310), to advance faculty
diversity in
engineering. It includes a professional development intervention
and a research
study to understand why the intervention works. LATTICE seeks to
positively impact
early-career women in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
(EECS) and
early-career underrepresented minority women across all fields of
Engineering
who are interested in faculty careers.LATTICE
participants will gain a stronger sense of career self-efficacy
and a stronger
sense of belonging through a combination of symposia, peer
mentoring networks,
and other support structures over a two-year period. The long-term
goal of
LATTICE is to diversify the national engineering faculty
population.
LATTICE is now recruiting
applicants for our
2017 national LATTICE symposium, to be held May 18-21, 2017
outside of Seattle,
WA. 2017 LATTICE participants will be early career women Ph.D.
engineers from
electrical engineering and computer science who are interested in
or are
pursuing faculty careers. Early career includes postdoctoral
researchers,
assistant professors, assistant research professors, and other
pre-tenure level
engineering positions.
Funding Opportunity:Cyberinfrastructure for Emerging Sci. & Eng. Research
(NSF)
Opportunity Title:Cyberinfrastructure for
Emerging Science and
Engineering Research(CESER) Sponsor:Directorate for Computer and Information Sciences and
Engineering/NSF Program URL: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505385
Synopsis:The overall goal of the Cyberinfrastructure for Emerging
Science and
Engineering Research (CESER) program is to foster the development
of innovative
cyberinfrastructure (CI) technologies and new means of leveraging
existing CI
resources to catalyze emerging areas of potentially transformative
science and
engineering research, including NSF priority areas, national
strategic
initiatives, and international collaborative research.
Funding Opportunity:Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (NSF)
Opportunity Title:Software Infrastructure for
Sustained
Innovation (SSE, SSI, S2I2) Sponsor:Directorate for Computer and Information Sciences and
Engineering/NSF Deadline Dates:07-Mar-2017, 19-Sep-2017,
07-Mar-2017 Program URL: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2017/nsf17526/nsf17526.htm
Synopsis:Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) is a
bold and
long-term investment that maintains a sustained focus on realizing
the
Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and
Engineering, which
envisions a highly reusable and interoperable cyberinfrastructure
architecture
that integrates large-scale computing, high-speed networks,
massive data
archives, instruments and major facilities, observatories,
experiments, and
embedded sensors and actuators, across the nation and the world,
to help make
great strides towards revolutionizing virtually every science and
engineering
discipline. The SI2 program focuses on supporting robust, reliable
and
sustainable software that will support and advance sustained
scientific
innovation and discovery. Thus, proposals are strongly encouraged
to describe
their approach to quality software development through a defined
software
engineering process that includes software testing, the
appropriate use of
analysis tools and capabilities such as those made available
through the
Software Assurance Marketplace (SWAMP, https://continuousassurance.org/), and collaborations
with resources
such as Software Carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org/) and the Center for
Trustworthy
Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (CTSC, http://trustedci.org/), in order to gain
access to
expertise where needed, such as in software design and
engineering, as well as
in cybersecurity.
Funding Opportunity:Student Design Competition for Sustainability (EPA)
[There are several similar
opportunities
under this program.I
mention what I
considered to be the two most relevant ones here.]
Opportunity Title: P3 Award: A
National
Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People,
Prosperity,
and the Planet - Built Environment Sponsor:Environmental Protection Agency Sponsor Number:EPA-G2017-P3-Q2 Deadline Date:03-Feb-2017 Program URL : http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=290505
Opportunity Title:P3 Award: A National Student
Design
Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity, and
the Planet -
Water Sponsor:Environmental Protection Agency Sponsor Number:EPA-G2017-P3-Q4 Deadline Date:03-Feb-2017 Program URL : http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=290481
Synopsis:The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of
its People,
Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Award Program, is seeking
applications proposing
to research, develop, and design solutions to real world
challenges involving
sustainability. The P3 competition highlights the use of
scientific principles
in creating innovative projects focused on sustainability. The P3
Award Program
was developed to foster progress toward sustainability by
achieving the mutual
goals of improved quality of life, economic prosperity and
protection of the planet
- people, prosperity, and the planet - the three pillars of
sustainability. The
EPA offers the P3 competition in order to respond to the technical
needs of the
world while moving towards the goal of sustainability.
Synopsis:DARPA is seeking innovative ideas and disruptive
technologies that offer
the potential for significant capability improvement across the
Strategic
Technology Office focus areas. This includes technology
development related to
Battle Management, Command and Control (BMC2), Communications and
Networks,
Electronic Warfare, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance
(ISR),
Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT), Maritime, and Foundational
Strategic
Technologies and Systems. Proposed research should investigate
approaches that
enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems.
DARPA
anticipates funding a limited number of proposals under this BAA.
Specifically
excluded are existing mature solutions and research that results
in
evolutionary improvements to existing technologies.
Funding Opportunity:NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering,
& Math.
Opportunity Title:NSF Scholarships in Science,
Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) Sponsor:Directorate for Education and Human Resources/NSF Deadline Date:29-Mar-2017 Program URL: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2017/nsf17527/nsf17527.htm
Synopsis:A well-educated science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM)
workforce is a significant contributor to maintaining the
competitiveness of
the U.S. in the global economy. The National Science Foundation
(NSF)
Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
(S-STEM)
program addresses the need for a high quality STEM workforce in
STEM
disciplines supported by the program and for the increased success
of
low-income academically talented students with demonstrated
financial need who
are pursuing associate, baccalaureate, or graduate degrees in
science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Recognizing that
financial aid
alone cannot increase retention and graduation in STEM, the
program provides
awards to Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) to fund
scholarships and to
advance the adaptation, implementation, and study of effective
evidence-based
curricular and co-curricular activities that support recruitment,
retention,
transfer (if appropriate), student success, academic/career
pathways, and
graduation in STEM. The S-STEM program encourages collaborations
among
different types of partners: Partnerships among different types of
institutions; collaborations of STEM faculty and institutional,
educational,
and social science researchers; and partnerships among
institutions of higher
education and local business and industry, if appropriate.
Synopsis:Advancements in data-driven scientific research depend on
trustworthy
and reliable cyberinfrastructure. Researchers rely on a variety of
networked
technologies and software tools to achieve their scientific goals.
These may
include local or remote instruments, wireless sensors, software
programs,
operating systems, database servers, high-performance computing,
large-scale
storage, and other critical infrastructure connected by high-speed
networking.
This complex, distributed, interconnected global
cyberinfrastructure ecosystem
presents unique cybersecurity challenges. NSF-funded scientific
instruments,
sensors and equipment are specialized, highly-visible assets that
present
attractive targets for both unintentional errors and malicious
activity;
untrustworthy software or a loss of integrity of the data
collected by a
scientific instrument may mean corrupt, skewed or incomplete
results.
Furthermore, often data-driven research, e.g., in the medical
field or in the
social sciences, requires access to private information, and
exposure of such
data may cause financial, reputational and/or other damage.
Therefore, an
increasing area of focus for NSF is the development and deployment
of hardware
and software technologies and techniques to protect research
cyberinfrastructure across every stage of the scientific workflow.
Opportunity Title:
Energy-Efficient
Computing: from Devices to Architectures (E2CDA) Sponsor: Directorate for
Computer and
Information Sciences and Engineering/NSF Deadline Date:07-Mar-2017 Program URL:https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2017/nsf17531/nsf17531.htm
Synopsis:There is a consensus across the many industries touched by
our
ubiquitous computing infrastructure that future performance
improvements across
the board are now severely limited by the amount of energy it
takes to
manipulate, store, and critically, transport data. While the
limits and
tradeoffs for this performance-energy crisis vary across the full
range of
application platforms, they have all reached a point at which
evolutionary
approaches to addressing this challenge are no longer adequate.
Truly disruptive
breakthroughs are now required, and not just from any one segment
of the
technology stack. Rather, due to the complexity of the challenges,
revolutionary new approaches are needed at each level in the
hierarchy.
Furthermore, simultaneous co-optimization across all levels is
essential for
the creation of new, sustainable computing platforms. These
simultaneous
technical and organizational challenges have never been as complex
or as
critically important as they are now. The urgency of solving the
multi-disciplinary
technical challenges will require new methods of collaboration and
organization
among researchers. Therefore, a comprehensive and collaborative
approach must
be undertaken to maximize the potential for successfully
identifying and
implementing revolutionary solutions to break through the
bottleneck of
energy-constrained computational performance. Programmers, system
architects,
circuit designers, chip processing engineers, material scientists,
and
computational chemists must all explore these new paths together
to co-design
an optimal solution path. The National Science Foundation (NSF)
and the
Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) recognize this need, and
agree to
embark on a new collaborative research program to support
compelling research that
is of paramount importance to industry, academia and society at
large. This
partnership will specifically support new research to minimize the
energy
impacts of processing, storing, and moving data within future
computing
systems, and will be synergistic with other research activities
that address
other aspects of this overarching energy-constrained computing
performance
challenge.
Synopsis: The goal of the CPS
program is to
develop the core system science needed to engineer complex
cyber-physical
systems that people can use or interact with and depend upon. Some
of these may
require high-confidence or provable behaviors. The program aims to
foster a research
community committed to advancing research and education in CPS and
to
transitioning CPS science and technology into engineering
practice. By
abstracting from the particulars of specific systems and
application domains,
the CPS program seeks to reveal cross-cutting fundamental
scientific and
engineering principles that underpin the integration of cyber and
physical
elements across all application sectors. To expedite and
accelerate the
realization of cyber-physical systems in a wide range of
applications, the CPS
program also supports the development of methods, tools, and
hardware and
software components based upon these cross-cutting principles,
along with
validation of the principles via prototypes and testbeds. The
sponsor has also
seen a convergence of CPS technologies and research thrusts that
underpin Smart
& Connected Communities (S&CC) and the Internet of
Things (IoT).
These domains offer new and exciting challenges for foundational
research and
provide opportunities for maturation at multiple time horizons.
Bob Elder Receives Funding from Johns
Hopkins Univ. &
NAVSEA
Bob Elder of the C4I & Cyber
Center
received $100K from The Johns Hopkins University / Applied Physics
Laboratory
and NAVSEA for his project, “National C3 (NC3) Architecture
Modernization.”
--
===============================================================
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
https://volgenau.gmu.edu/profile/view/10248
