ASSIP News

November 2024 Update

Joshua Tian (2023 mentor Dr. Alireza Ermagun in Geography and Geoinformation Science) recently published a paper in Energy Research & Social Science, a peer-reviewed journal in the transportation research field! Not only does this paper cover technical analysis on EV charging station density, but it also includes a policy section detailing how this data can impact our communities. Congrats on this amazing accomplishment, Joshua! You can read the publication here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629624002135.

Lakshmi Agrawal (2024 mentor Dr. Kirin Furst in Civil and Environmental Engineering) submitted her research to WaterJAM 2025. Her poster won 1st place in the WaterJAM Drinking Water Poster Contest, was awarded $1000, and was selected to represent the Virginia AWWA at the AWWA Annual Conference and Exposition 2025 (Denver, CO). Additionally, Lakshmi’s research was selected for the International Forum on Research Excellence (IFoRE), powered by Sigma Xi, which will take place in November, in WA DC. Congrats Lakshmi on taking your research all over the country!

Aanika Tangirala (2024 mentor Dr. Mihai Boicu in Information Sciences and Technology) submitted an abstract for a poster presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), in Montreal, Canada to be held in June 2025. Her project is entitled “Early Signs as Effective Indicators of Long-term Procrastination using Machine Learning”. Congratulations Aanika on a job well done!

Jonah Ascoli, Aadi Gannavaram, Sophie Hutter, Petr Kisselev, Naima Aubry-Romero, and Ryan Singh (2024 mentor Dr. Padmanabhan Seshaiyer in Math), attended the IX Workshop on Computational Data Analysis and Numerical Methods (WCDANM) virtually in Portugal.  This conference normally features talks from graduate students and faculty, so kudos to our high school interns for holding their own and representing ASSIP so well! You can access the abstract booklet from this conference here: (Book of Abstracts – WCDANM 2024 (uevora.pt))

Abdirahman Hassan, Dominic Gasper, Karthik Subramanian, Leah Negash, Noelle Kim, Sahil Shah, Sanjay Ravishankar, and Tara Nalliah (2024 mentor Dr. Art Poland in Physics and Astronomy) are participating in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Bright Stars program in DC this December at the AGU annual meeting, presenting their summer research in astrophysics. What a great way to share your research, all! Check out the abstract here: Study of Magnetic Loops in the Solar Corona

Deepa Shanmugam (2024 mentor Dr. David Straus in Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences), is a co-author on a conference presentation that will be presented at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting. Great job, Deepa! Check out the work here: Influence of ENSO on Indian Summer Monsoon Intraseasonal Circulation and Cluster Dynamics at 

Celia Meunier and Ella Zhang (2024 mentor Dr. Alireza Ermagun) both have conference papers accepted for presentation at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (TRBAM)—the most prestigious and competitive conference in transportation! Congrats to Celia and Ella, and good luck on your presentations! See both paper topics here, as well as the other presentations in their section on “Transportation and Community Impacts”: https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/23134

May 2024 Update

Aryav Gogia (2023 Mentors James Gallagher and Edward Oughton) recently released a paper with his mentors, available on arXiv here: [2402.11413] A Multispectral Automated Transfer Technique (MATT) for machine-driven image labeling utilizing the Segment Anything Model (SAM) (arxiv.org). This project was also entered in the Fairfax County Science Fair, where it won second prize in the AI and Computer Science category and earned Aryav an AFCEA (Armed Forces and Electronics Association) Northern VA scholarship. Thanks for your work building such an awesome tool, Aryav! You can read about the motivation behind Aryav’s work here: Using Segment Anything (SAM) and Autodistill to Automatically Label Multispectral Data While Rapidly Decreasing Model Creation Time | Journal of Student-Scientists' Research (gmu.edu)

Sophia Tang (2023 Mentors Dr. Yunyao Li and Dr. Daniel Tong) was awarded an Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA) at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in December 2023 in San Francisco, CA. AGU is the largest professional society (50,000+ members) in Earth and Space Science, and the 2023 meeting was attended by 23,000 members! Only a small percentage of student presentations are selected for an OSPA; it is pretty rare to have a high school student win this award. Way to go, Sophia! You can read more about the ASSIP projects that Sophia worked on here: Comparing Fire Weather Index (FWI) and Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) as Predictors to Forecast Subseasonal Wildfire Emissions | Journal of Student-Scientists' Research (gmu.edu) and Determining and Applying the Relationship Between FWI and FRP In Predicting Fire Change | Journal of Student-Scientists' Research (gmu.edu)

David Cao (2022 Mentors Dr. Michael Summers and Dr. Peter Plavchan) was named a top-40 finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search for 2024 (https://www.societyforscience.org/regeneron-sts/2024-finalists/), billed as nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. This award comes with $25,000 in prize money to be used for education. David’s project for the Regeneron Science Talent Search included work he completed here at ASSIP! Thanks for taking your research to the next level, David! You can read the abstract for David’s ASSIP project here (The Implications of 'Oumuamua on Panspermia | Journal of Student-Scientists' Research (gmu.edu)). 

Diya Bhattacharjee (2023 Mentor: Dr. Greg Stein) was offered a Morehead-Cain Scholarship at University of North-Carolina, Chapel Hill. This all-inclusive scholarship covers tuition, room and board, pilot research funding, summer leadership experiences, and international gap-year awards. Diya had a number of impressive college offers, and ultimately chose to attend Stanford, where she plans to major in Symbolic Systems. This unique-to-Stanford program merges computer science, psychology, and philosophy to understand the future of AI. Thanks for spending some time researching AI with us, Diya; we’re glad to see you’re staying in the field! You can read a synopsis of Diya’s project here: Real World Data Collection for Navigation via Learning Over Subgoals Planning | Journal of Student-Scientists' Research (gmu.edu)

Siddarth Sreeram (2023 Mentor Dr. Yun Yu) had his project accepted into the American Chemical Society's 2023 Southwest Regional Meeting. Way to represent the cool work happening here at George Mason, Siddarth! You can read more about Siddarth’s project here: Developing Analytical Algorithms for the Rapid Identification of Atomically Thin Materials | Journal of Student-Scientists' Research (gmu.edu)

November 15, 2022

Congratulations to Dr, Myeong Lee and his ASSIP interns Scarlett Adams, Jiwoo Hwang, Arnav Machavarapu, Kaavya Radhakrishnan on their ASSIP 2022 outcome being accepted to the iConference 2023 in the poster session, and will be published in formal proceedings. iConference is an international conference in information science (https://www.ischools.org/iconference).

Siraj, H., Machavarapu, A., Hwang, J., Radhakrishnan, K., Adams, S., Kim, J., Lee, M. (2023). How Do YouTubers Collaborate? A Preliminary Analysis of YouTubers’ Collaboration Networks. In iConference 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science , Mar 27-29. Barcelona, Spain. Springer.

Update May 2022. 

Congratulations to 2020 ASSIP alum Benjamin Choi, who was just named 3rd in the nation in the Regeneron Science Talent Search (the most prestigious STEM competition for high school seniors) ! As part of the awards package, he will receive a $25,000 prize (guaranteed), . His ASSIP mentor was Dr. Natalia Piexoto. Ben's research was titled "An Ultra-Low-Cost, Mind-Controlled Transhumeral Prosthesis Operated via a Novel Artificial Intelligence-Driven Brainwave Interpretation Algorithm."

April, 2022 

Congratulations to ASSIP Mentor Dr. Celso Ferreira and his former ASSIP intern, Vinay Ayala!  Vinay just won the First Place Award for Environmental Engineering at the Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair. https://vssef.zfairs.com/?siteid=resultsArchive&f=6ab628d8-493a-40cd-9ad6-2e31d8cfe8b2, search for 2022 Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair. 

January, 2022.   

Congratulations to 2020 ASSIP alum Benjamin Choi, who was just named a Finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search (the most prestigious STEM competition for high school seniors) — one of 40 selected nationwide! As part of the awards package, he will receive a $25,000 prize (guaranteed), and the opportunity to compete for the chance to win up to $250,000 at the finals in March. His ASSIP mentor was Dr. Natalia Piexoto. Ben's research was titled "An Ultra-Low-Cost, Mind-Controlled Transhumeral Prosthesis Operated via a Novel Artificial Intelligence-Driven Brainwave Interpretation Algorithm."

December 2017: Rachel Naidich, Rebecca Woodhouse, Matthew Trang, and Ish Sethi were selected as the winner of the Virginia 11th Congressional District Congressional App Challenge for their Smart Sleeve Technology. They received top scores in each of the categories including concept, design, and skill.

September 2017: Rachel Naidich, Rebecca Woodhouse and Kshamata Neupane are named finalists in the Built By Girls Challenge. They were competitvely selected as 5 of 450 applicants to present their patent pending Smart Sleeve technology in San Francisco on September 15, 2017.

April 2017: Eric Wang, William Xu, and Suhas Sastry are the first high school students to present research at the ACM/IEEE ICCPS conference. The students were mentored by Dr. Kai Zeng from 2015-2017 and presented "Hardware Module-based Message Authentication in Intra-Vehicle Networks."

April 2017: "Student-developed diagnostics could change tuberculosis detection, treatment", Published Mason News

March 2017: Elizabeth Hu mentored by Dr. Andrew Crooks on the project, “Across the Sea: A Novel Agent-Based Model for the Migratory Patterns of the European Refugee Crisis” is a 2017 awardee of the 2017 Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing.

July 2016: Mapping for Malaria Prevention. Published by Mason News

May 2016: Eric Wang, William Xu, and Suhas Sastry mentored by Dr. Kai Zeng won 1st place in Computer Science at the 2016 Virginia State Science Fair

September 2015: Manassas and George Mason Provide Research Opportunities. Published by Nova intercom

August 2015: Young Scientists from around the Country Get Hands on Experience in Prince William County. Published by PWC News

December 2014: Get Out and Play This Holiday Season: New Research Shows Parents Play Vital Role in Molding Future Scientists. Published by Mason News and Open Science World

October 2013: Kunal Debroy, Naveen Ambati, and Akhil Gangu: 2013 Siemens Competition Semifinalists

July 17, 2013: Va. girl's science project becomes medical advancement

July 11, 2013:Taking the mystery out of Lyme disease

May 17, 2013: Suhas Gondi: 4th Place Cell and Molecular Biology, Intel 2013 International Science and Engineering Fair. Suhas is also recipient of the the highly prestigious Moog Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis (Mentor: Dr. Daniel Cox)

May 17, 2013: Archis Bhandarkar and Rohan Banerjee: 4th Place Mathematics Category, Intel 2013 International Science and Engineering Fair (Mentor: Dr.Padmanabhan Seshaiyer)

March 27, 2013: Rocket Science: Students Vie for Slots in Enriching Summer Program

March 11, 2013: Thomas Jefferson High School’s Archis R. Bhandarkar on STEM and Qualifying as a Siemens Regional Finalist

2012 Siemens Regional Finalists: Rohan Banerjee and Archis Bhandarkar (Mentor: Dr.Padmanabhan Seshaiyer)

2012 Siemens Semifinalists:Suhas Gondi (Mentor: Dr. Daniel Cox)

September 2012: Aspiring Scientists Take Part in Mason Research

July 18, 2012: Aspiring Scientists Get to Next Level Through Program

June 27, 2012:Young Scientists Discover Art–Science Connection

April 23, 2012: New Test Shows Potential for Detecting Active Cases of Lyme Disease

September 26, 2011: Aspiring Scientists Program Puts Young Scholars on Research Cutting Edge

August 29, 2011: Aspiring Scientists Get in Touch with Their Artistic Side

August 8, 2011: Hands-on ASSIP Experience Leads to Better Science

July 29, 2011: The Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program

August 23, 2010: Teens Search for Cures in Mason’s Aspiring Scientists Program

August 17, 2009: The Real World: Aspiring Scientists Learn How It’s Done

April 26, 2009: Summertime, And the Living Is in a Lab