Development of a robust landmine detection system using multi-sensor fusion of Infra-red Imaging, Ground Penetrating Radar, and Acoustics signals

Sponsor: Mr. Yousef Jameel
Abdul-Latif Jameel Group, SA

Amount: $300,000

Duration: 2 years
Starting Oct. 17, 2003

Investigators at the Department of Mechanical Engineering:
Thermal and Fluid Group: Profs. Ghaddar, Moukalled and Shihadeh
Robotics and Vision Group: Profs. Abdallah, Khalaf, and Smaili

Environmentally Appropriate Rural Technologies (EARTH) Initiative (September 2003)

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Cooperative Housing Foundation - CHF International, Maryland, U.S.A., and the American University of Beirut (AUB) was signed through the AUB Regional External Programs “REP”. The agreement is given the title: “Environmentally Appropriate Rural Technologies (EARTH) Initiative” and is partially funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The responsibilities of AUB under this MOU include the following:

· Prepare conceptual designs of the waste management facilities by incorporating the reuse of by-products, including effluent water, compost, recyclables and biogas;
· Prepare tender specifications, evaluate bids, and select the best offers for procurement of equipment and construction of facilities and systems, in compliance with USAID and CHF policies and procedures;
· Monitor and report periodically to CHF on the progress of work and the quality and quantity of completed works;
· Conduct required initial testing of compost, influent and treated effluent waters, as well as periodic testing thereafter (with all testing conducted at AUB laboratories) as needed
· Train and build capacity of the Municipalities’ Facility Management Teams (FMTs) to properly operate and maintain the facilities in a cost-effective manner;
· Prepare Standard Operating Procedures Manuals; and
· Document lessons learned for preparation of a final Lessons Learned Report, based on CHF’s past experience in the waste management sector in Lebanon, as well as on-going experience under the EARTH Initiative.

The project duration is July 2003 to July 2006. The project budget is $150,000. The project manager is Dr. Mutasem El-Fadel, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Short Term Health Effects of Argileh Smoking (September 2003)

Prof. Alan Shihadeh was awarded a research grant to work on the short-term health effects of argileh smoking. The duration of the grant is for two years, 2002-04. The amount of the grant is $16,500.

The grant is a part of an interdisciplinary research project in which Prof. Shehadi will focus on argileh smoke toxicology. This work is being carried out in the Aerosol Research Lab of the Mechanical Engineering Department at FEA. This project is part of a larger research program ($200,000) in the Faculty of Health Sciences on Tobacco control policies, their implementation, and their implication on the health of argileh users. The work in FHS is lead by Prof. Rima Afifi Soweid and her co-Investigators: Samer Jabbour, and Norbert Hirschhorn.

The International Tobacco Control Secretariat of the Canadian International Development Research Centre is funding the research.

Microsoft Research Grant (June 2003)

Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, USA, has awarded Prof. Mazen A. R. Saghir (Principal Investigator) and Prof. Hassan Diab (Co-Investigator), Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, a $25,000 grant for a research proposal entitled "Accelerating Next-Generation Windows CE Applications Using Run-Time Configurable Co-Processors." The proposal was selected by Microsoft Research from among a number of proposals that were submitted on a competitive basis.

The objective of the research is to study run-time configurable co-processor architectures and how they can be used to accelerate next-generation embedded applications running under the Windows CE operating system. A parameterized architectural template for describing different instances of a computational platform consisting of a standard, off-the-shelf, embedded processor connected to a reconfigurable co-processor core will be defined. While the embedded processor would be used to execute control code, the co-processor would be used to accelerate performance-critical computational tasks. To support the exploitation of instruction-level parallelism, the coprocessor will be based on the EPIC architecture. It will also include run-time configurable computational units for implementing user-defined instructions. To support co-processor task scheduling and run-time configurability, a Windows CE application programming interface (API) and a device driver for the reconfigurable co-processor will be developed. A C compiler to generate optimized code for the target platforms, and a system simulator to study the run-time behavior of application programs, estimate their execution performance, and guide the exploration of the architectural space, will also be developed. Experiments on representative application benchmarks will be executed to measure the impact of using run-time configurable co-processors on the execution performance of different embedded application workloads.

Dar Al-Handasah (Shair & Partners) Endowed Fund for Research in Engineering (July 2001)

Dar Al-Handasah (Shair & Partners) will contribute 2.0 million dollars towards an endowment fund to support research in Engineering at AUB. The pledge will be paid over in five years starting October 2001.

Petrofac International Grant for Research (February 2003)

Petrofac International LTD of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, has donated $25,000 to support research in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture.

NSF Grant (January 2003)

The National Science Foundation (USA) awarded a $34,000 grant to support research collaboration between AUB professors Ali Chehab and Ayman Kayssi of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor Rafic Makki, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The grant will fund collaborative research in the area of digital system testing based on transient supply current (iDDT). The focus of this research will be on the design of improved current sensors for the on-chip testing of embedded memories and mixed-signal circuits in deep sub-micron technologies.

LibanCell Grant (January 2003)

LibanCell (Lebanon) awarded a $6,000 grant to the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture to support the travel of Prof. Ayman Kayssi (Electrical and Computer Engineering) and one of his graduate students, Wassim Itani, to present a paper on J2ME end-to-end security for mobile commerce, at the 2003 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The results that will be presented at the conference are based on research that was funded by LibanCell during the academic year 2001-2002.

European Commission and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Grant (January 2003)

A research grant in the amount of 2,345,569.00 Euros has been recently approved by the European Commission and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership to conduct a study entitled " Development of Tools and Guidelines for the Promotion of the Sustainable Urban Wastewater Treatment and Reuse in Agricultural Production in the Mediterranean Countries". Ten institutions from different countries along the Mediterranean will cooperate on this project with AUB's Environmental Program being one of the partners. AUB has been awarded 218,012.00 Euros for it's share in the project and will be hosting one of two seminars that are scheduled to take place on this project.
Professor George Ayoub of FEA will administer and coordinate the work at AUB. Five other faculty members, namely Professors F. AlKhal, M. Darwish, H. Diab, M. El-Fadel, and W. Nasrallah, will participate in this research activity. The tentative starting date is February 2003.

Sun Microsystems Equipment Grant (February 2003)

Sun Microsystems has approved an Education Grant to the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture. The grant consists of 10 Sun workstations that will be used to expand the existing Sun workstation laboratory in the FEA. The Sun Lab is under the supervision of Prof. Ayman Kayssi, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The equipment grant will enable FEA students and faculty to expand their knowledge in, and have a hands-on understanding of, web and Java technologies, software development, operating systems, compilers, distributed and mobile computing, and network applications. The workstations will also run a variety of application software, such as electronic design automation tools.

US Department of State grant on “Enhancing Environmental Sustainability through Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Technology”(July 2002)

A training and development grant in the amount of $ 176,057 has been recently awarded to the American University of Beirut by the US Department of State to implement a project to develop renewable energy initiatives and technology, greatly enhancing energy efficiency and contributing to environmental sustainability in the Middle East. The grant will reinforce regional collaboration among universities and will support training in alternative energy for faculty members from AUB Energy Resaerch Group, the Jordan University of Science and Technology, Birzeit University, and Palestine Polytechnic University. This train-the-trainers project, is in collaboration with scientists/educators from the Partnership for Environmental Technology Education (California), the Florida Solar Energy Center, and the Northwest Energy Education Institute (Oregon), will comprise three elements: faculty training in energy efficiency and renewable energy technology, a workshop on energy efficiency and energy auditing of commercial buildings, and the development of an action plan for regional sustainable energy development. The project director is Prof. N. Ghaddar from FEA/AUB. The project duration is 20 months starting July 1, 2002.

Domains of Heritage: Shifting Boundaries and the Emergence of a 'Transformed Public Consciousness' 'the politics of place & identity construction, contested pasts, and investment rights in Bilad al Sham'. (July 2002)

The research grant is awarded by the Social Science Research Council in New York- International Collaborative Research Grants (Reconceptualizing Public Spheres in the Middle East and North Africa). The grant is highly competitive [three research proposals were awarded last year only].

The research group is formed of the following members:
Jamal Abed, American University of Beirut
Rami Daher, Jordanian University of Science and Technology
Jamal Quawasmi, Jordanian University of Science and Technology
Mike Robinson, Sheffield University, UK
Xavier Guillot, Centre d' Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain
The research grant is of $35,000 and will end on December 2003.