College of Science Accolades March 2022 – May 2022

Harbir Antil, Mathematical Sciences, Center for Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (CMAI), along with Co-PI Tyrus Berry, Mathematical Sciences, was awarded $114,554 for the “Geometries of Learning (GoL)” by Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, LLC. Prime Sponsor: U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Antil was awarded $300,000 “Compression and Randomization for Extreme-Scale Training and Optimization (CREST Opt)” by the U.S. Department of the Air Force (USAF). Antil was also rewarded $24,121 for “Nonlocal School on fractional Equations (NSFE)” by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Raphael Attie, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $28,789 for “Deep Learning for Ensembles of High-Resolution and High-Cadence Transverse Velocity Maps” by the University of Colorado Boulder. Prime Sponsor: NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center.

Laura Balmaceda, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $45,000 for “Investigating Energy Release during Solar Eruptive Events” by the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Prime Sponsor: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Milton Brown, Center for Drug Discovery for Rare Diseases (CDDRD), along with Co-PIs Kan Wong, Farhang Alem, Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDR), Naoru Koizumi, Schar School of Policy and Government, and Yali Kong, College of Science, was awarded $1,570,977 for “A Novel BRCA1 Binding Domain on the Estrogen Receptor-Alpha Overcomes Tamoxifen Resistance” by the U.S. Department of the Army.

Natalie Burls, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, was awarded $20,000 for “Climate Master Fellowship” by the George Mason University Foundation.

Liping Di, Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems (CSISS), was awarded $30,000 for “GMU CSISS Participation in OGC Disaster Pilot 2022” by Open Geospatial Consortium Inc. Di was also awarded for “GMU CSISS participation in OGC Testbed-18” by Open Geospatial Consortium Inc.

Anthony Falsetti, Forensic Science Program, along with Deputy Chief Michael Lighthiser and Master Police Offer Ashley Woodman, George Mason University Police Department, was presented a Team Excellence Award by the County of Fairfax, Virginia at the 2022 Meritorious Awards Ceremony for their commendable work and assistance alongside the Fairfax County Police Department in the closure of a case.

Gregory Foster, Environmental Science and Policy, along with Co-PIs Thomas Huff, Randolph McBride, andScott Glaberman, Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center (PEREC), was awarded $62,000 for “Presence, Principal Sources, and Ecological Risk of PFAS in the Tidal Freshwater Potomac River Along with Comparisons to PPCPs” by Alexandria Renewal Enterprises.

Nirmal Ghimire, along with Igor Mazin, Postdoc Peter Siegfried, Graduate student Hari Bhandari, and Graduate student David Jones, Physics and Astronomy, co-published a paper entitled “Magnetization-driven Lifshitz phases transition and charge-spin coupling in the kagome metal YMn6Sn6” in Communications Physics. 

Ramin Hakami, School of Systems Biology, Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDR), was awarded $25,000 for “Efficient and Sensitive Methods for Detection of Bacteria and Outer Membrane vesicles (OMVs) in Various Samples” by Intellifoods Labs-LLC.

Min Huang, Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems (CSISS), published an article entitled “Satellite soil moisture data assimilation impacts on modeling weather variables and ozone in the southeastern US – Part 2: Sensitivity to dry-deposition parameterizations” in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.  Huang was also among the awardees for the 2021-2022 U.S. Carbon Program Leadership Award.

Mohsin Jafri, School of Systems Biology, was awarded $18,000 for “Predicting Genetic Variants for Familial Aneurisms” by the George Mason University Foundation.

James Kinter, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), will serve as the PI of a pilot project requested by Rep. Gerry Connolly, approved by the U.S. Congress, and signed by President Joe Biden. The pilot project, with a $1.97 million appropriation, will establish the Virginia Climate Center at Mason with the goal to save tax dollars and improve the livelihoods of Virginians, by increasing their resilience to severe weather, air pollution, drought and floods, with an emphasis on the underprivileged communities that are most susceptible to adverse effects of climate change.

John Kwiatkowski, Center for Earth Observing and Spatial Research (CEOSR), was awarded $8,347,536 for “Collaborative Effort on Atmospheric Retrievals, Data Processing, and Products” by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center.

Lance Liotta, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), along with Co-PI Alessandra Luchini, was awarded $326 for “Whole Genome Sequencing of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis in India: Genotype-Phenotype Correlation, Clinical Impact of Resistance, and Sequencing Directly from Sputum – Year 3” by John Hopkins University. Prime Sponsor: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

David Luther, Biology, was awarded $4,000 for “Survival of juvenile Wood Turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) in two distinct landscapes in Virginia” by the Chelonian Research Foundation.

Igor Mazin, Physics and Astronomy, co-authored a paper entitled “Effect of alloying in monolayer niobium dichalcogenide superconductors” in Nature Communications 13. Mazin also authored a paper entitled “Inverse Occam’s razor” in Nature Physics 18,367.

Edward Oughton, Geography and Geoinformation Science, was awarded $42,000 for “Data Analytics Research For Decisions” by the George Mason University Foundation.

Emanuel Petricoin, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), was awarded $826,400 for “Ovarian Cancer Detection with Blood – and Imaging-Based Biomarkers” by the University of Arizona. Prime Sponsor: Department of Health and Human Services (NIH). Petricoin was also awarded $30,558 for “Cell signaling analysis of immune cells with targeted inhibitors” by Georgiamune, Inc.

Shobita Satyapal, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $35,000 for “NRAO Student Observing Support Award to Emma Schwartzman” by Associated Universities Inc. Prime Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF). Satyapal was awarded $94,241 for “Hidden Broad Lines in Bulgeless Galaxies? An XMM-Newton Follow-up” by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center. Satyapal was also awarded $51,834 for “Multi-messenger Astrophysics Science Work Package: Visualizing Binary Black Hole Spacetimes and their Accretion Luminosity” by the NASA-Goddard space Flight Center.

Cynthia Smith, Environmental Science and Policy, was interviewed by Channel 7 News about straggler periodical cicadas showing up in Fairfax in late May. 

Jennifer Sklarew, Environmental Science and Policy, has two advisees who received the 2022 Boren Fellowship. Ashley Robertson, Graduate student in Energy and Sustainability Policy, will go to South Korea to study governance factors influencing environmental and energy policies. Kiernan Hogan, Graduate student in Energy and Sustainability, will study private sector renewables initiatives in Brazil.  

John Qu, Geography and Geoinformation Science, along with Raymond P. Motha, Environmental Science and Technology Center (ESTC), co-authored a new textbook entitled “Climate Change and a Sustainable Earth.” Qu and Motha also developed a new core course proposal, GGS 106, with this book.

Cristiana Stan,Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), was awarded $16,381 for “Joint Appointment – June 2022” by the University of Chicago, Argonne, LLC. Prime Sponsor: U.S. Department of Energy.

Amanda Still, along with Co-PI Lance Liotta, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), was awarded $15,000 for “Oral Fluid Testing of COVID 19 antigen” by the Inno-Medical Sciences USA.

Donglian Sun, Geography and Geoinformation Science, was awarded $50,000 for “Development of Sentinel-3/SLSTR Flood Products for Flood Disaster Service” by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center.

Monique van Hoek, School of Systems Biology, was awarded $58,329 for “Zeovation Environmental; Applications of Zeolites” by ZeoVation Inc. Prime Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF).

Chaowei Yang, Geography and Geoinformation Science, Center of Intelligent Spatial Computing (CISC), was awarded $100,000 for “Improving ground-level air quality prediction by integrating spatiotemporal new observation system datasets and numerical simulations” by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center.