Faculty & Staff Accolades: December 2017 and January 2018

Accolades celebrate the professional achievements of the faculty and staff in the College of Science. The following accolades are published for the months of December 2017 and January 2018.

Ancha Baranova, School of Systems Biology, co-authored a paper titled “Between Lake Baikal and the Baltic Sea: genomic history of the gateway to Europe” in BMC Genetics.

Gabriele Belle, Physics and Astronomy, was nominated for the Inaugural Online Teaching Excellence Award.

Sharon Bloomquist, Environmental Science and Policy, was selected as the Employee of the Month of George Mason University for February 2018.

Paul Dirmeyer,Liang Chen, Chul-Su Shin, Bohua Huang and Benjamin Cash, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, along with colleagues co- authored a paper titled “Verification of land-atmosphere coupling in forecast models, reanalyses and land surface models using flux site observations” in the Journal of Hydrometeorlogy.

Virginia Espina, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, was awarded $44,000 by Baylor Research Institute for pilot study to investigate targetable metabolic pathways sustaining locally advanced triple negative (TN) breast cancer and associated genomic alterations.

Pat Gillevet, Biology, was awarded $46,142 by Eastern Virginia Medical School for optimizing a Mouse Model Mirroring Human Disease to Accelerate Drug Development for Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis and Related Complications.

Rebecca Goldin, Mathematical Sciences, was featured in Quanta Magazine, which was also posted on Youtube. She gave two presentations, one at the Occidental College titled “Should You Believe It? Critical Minds in the Information Age” and the other in the Center for Digital Liberal Arts titled “Free speech on campus: a case study on surveys.” In addition, Dr. Goldin was a guest on the radio show, Science Friday, for a segment titled “The Infinitely Surprising Career of a Mathematician.”  She was interviewed by the Ground Truth Project, as well as held a webinar with the Shorenstein Institute at Harvard. She was also filmed for a documentary on predication for PBS’s NOVA programming in December which airs on Wednesday, February 28, at 9 p.m.

Geraldine Grant, Biology, and Don Seto, School of Systems Biology, were awarded a Summer Impact Grant for “Title Developing an Active Integrated Teaching Model Utilizing Mass Data to Find Clinically-Relevant Biomarkers in Human Disease.” Summer team projects are based around a central theme, question, or problem related to the Provost’s Mason Impact initiative.

Haw Lim, Biology, has been inducted as an elective member of the American Ornithological Society. The American Ornithological Society (AOS) recognizes three classes of special membership and individuals are elected to these categories in recognition of their contributions to ornithology and to AOS.

David Luther, Biology, along with a former doctoral student co-published a paper titled “Spatiotemporal patterns of avian vocal activity in relation to urban and rural background noise” in Journal of Ecoacoustics.

Kathleen Pegion, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies along with a doctoral student co-authored a paper titled “Diagnosing Sea Ice from the North American Multi Model Ensemble and Implications on Mid-latitude Winter Climate” in Climate Dynamics. She also gave two presentations at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas titled “How Important are the Extratropics to ENSO Diversity and Predictability?” and “Multi-model MJO Simulation and Prediction in the Subseasonal Experiment (SubX).”

Emanuel Petricion, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics, Molecular Medicine, was awarded $15,000 by Yale University for Protein Pathway Activation Mapping of Lapatinib Neoadjuvant Response in Her2+ Breast Cancer Patients.

Larry Rockwood, Biology, Alonso Aguirre, Environmental Science and Policy and Pat Gillevet, Biology, along with colleagues from Global and Community Health were awarded a Summer Impact Grant for “One Health: A Transdisciplinary approach.” Summer team projects are based around a central theme, question, or problem related to the Provost’s Mason Impact initiative.

Christina Stan and David Straus, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, were lead authors on an article titled “Review of Tropical-Extratropical Teleconnections on Intraseasonal Time Scales” featured on the cover of Reviews of Geophysics, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). These interactions provide a potential tool for helping predict average weather behavior in mid-latitude regions (such as the United States) based on skill in predicting tropical weather variations such as El Nino.

Albert Torzilli, Environmental Science & Policy and Pat Gillevet, Biology, co-authored a paper along with a former doctoral student titled “Changes in mycorrhizal colonization and overall fungal communities across upland and wetland Acer forests of the Virginia Coastal Plain” in Wetlands Ecology and Management.