Three senior design teams from the Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) won best in track awards at the IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium on April 25, 2014.VSE student teams competed against teams from The University of Virginia, James Madison University, The United States Military Academy, The College of William and Mary, Texas A&M, University of Waterloo, and others.
There were five tracks with only one paper per track receiving the Best Paper Award for that track. The judging is performed by a set of external judges from industry and government. The awards based on the written paper, the presentation to the judges, and the students responses to the judges questions.
The winners from the Volgenau School were:
First Place in Environmental Systems Track was awarded to Sheri Gravette, Kevin Cazenas, Said Masoud, Rayhan Ain for their paperDesign of a Dam Sediment Management System to Aid Water Quality Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. The team sponsors included: Lower Susquehanna River Keeper, West/Rhode River Keeper. Professor George Donohue of SEOR, served as the team's faculty advisor.
These students proposed a unique way to move the sediment that collects behind the Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River and is released into the Bay in unhealthy batches after large storms. The batches of sediment create a giant sediment plume in the Chesapeake Bay that kills underwater vegetation and subsequently removes a critical element of the food chain for animals that live in the Bay.
The students designed and simulated the flow of the river with an artificial island upstream of the dam that is created by dredging the stored up sediment. The artificial island constricts the river and keeps the velocity of the flow high enough to prevent the sediment collecting behind the dam. In this way the sediment is released into the Bay slowly over time at a rate that the Bay can absorb without impact to the fauna and flora.
SEOR students Shane Armstrong, Caleb Benn, Alicia Kubokawa and Kelly Prim won First Place in the Modeling Track for their paper Campus Motor Fleet Analysis for the FAA Technical Center to Meet Executive Order 13514. Paula Lewis, from the Federal Aviation Administration worked with the team as its sponsor and Professor Lance Sherry was their faculty advisor.
These students used modeling techniques to address the challenge of reducing greenhouse emissions in the cars used by the Federal Aviation Administration to comply with Executive Order 13514. This system provided an analysis of the life cycle costs and emissions reduction of the motor vehicle fleet at the William J. Hughes Technical Center, in Atlantic City, NJ.
They discovered that by reducing inventory and introducing electric vehicles, the requirements can be met, while staying within current operating budgets. Based on the preliminary results they recommended that the Technical Center gradually introduce electric vehicles on an annual basis into their inventory to meet their sustainment goals by 2020.
In the Decision Analysis Track the paper Design of an Underwater Mine Detection System by James Perkovich, Siamak Khaledi, Hari Mann, Samar Zayed won first place. The team's sponsor was (Sponsor: George Blaha from Raytheon and Professor Lance Sherry served as the faculty advisor.
The students analyzed the benefits of the use of autonomous, unmanned vehicles to tow a mine-detecting sonar through the water compared with current manned systems. Two existing sonar alternatives and five different towing vehicles were considered. Results indicated that the combination of a small-class sonar with an unmanned surface vehicle (i.e. boat) provided the optimum detection rate and lowest cost.
"These awards are a testament to the outstanding students and the rigorous, quality System Engineering Degree Program at George Mason University," said instructor for the Senior Design class, Associate Professor Lance Sherry. "The Senior Design class is by far the most challenging class the students will ever take. It is also the most rewarding."
About the Competition:
The IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS'14) is a student-focused international forum for applied research, development, and design in Systems and Information Engineering. The Symposium showcases undergraduate and Master's graduate design projects, such as those from capstone design courses or from baccalaureate, honors, or design-oriented graduate theses. Projects must extend beyond the analysis of systems and include the synthesis of alternative solutions to a problem.