Faculty & Staff Accolades: February 2018

Accolades celebrate the professional achievements of the faculty and staff in the College of Science. The following accolades were published for the month of February 2018 on News at Mason.

Gabrielle Belle, Physics & Astronomy, was awarded $5,000 by 4-VA for OER Project: ASTR 112, ASTR 114 and ASTR 115 lab courses.

Estela Blasiten-Barojas, Computational Data Sciences, was awarded $25,000 by 4-VA for Scalable Molecular Dynamics.

Robin Couch, Chemistry and Biochemistry, was awarded $7,000 by Prodrome Sciences Incorporation for PSI Research Sample Analyses – Schedule B – Study Plan 2.

Liang Chen, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies is a lead author on a paper titled “Pairing FLUXNET sites to validate model representations of land use/land cover change” published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. 

Paul Dirmeyer, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, is the lead author of a large multi-authored paper titled “Verification of land-atmosphere coupling in forecast models, reanalyses and land surface models using flux site observations” published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.  He also co-authored a review paper titled “Land-atmosphere interactions: The LoCo perspective” in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Mosissa Fayissa, Chemistry and Biochemistry, was awarded $2,500 by 4-VA for OER Project: Physical Chemistry Lab I.

Mario Gliozzi, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $2,500 by 4-VA for OER Project: ASTR 113.

Geraldine Grant, Biology, was awarded $24,600 by 4-VA for Prognostic Noninvasive Biomarker Investigation of Induced Sputum and Peripheral Blood in IPF.

Christopher Kennedy, Environmental Science and Policy, was awarded $53,188 by Alliance for Market Solutions for Oil price volatility, carbon taxes, and macroeconomic performance: theory and evidence.

Younsung Kim, Environmental Science and Policy, will present a paper entitled “How Can We Promote Sustainable Innovations in Business? The Role of Public-Private Partnerships” at the American Society of Public Administration in Denver. She was also invited to the Academic Paper Series of Korea Economic Institute of America and presented her paper entitled “Korean Firms’ Sustainability Practices and Their Role in the Green Economy” in Washington, D.C.

Kelly Knight, Forensic Science, STEM Accelerator, and Padhu Seshaiyer, COS, Mathematics, were awarded $20,000 from Community Foundation for NOVA for FOCUS Academy.

Haw Lim, Biology, was awarded $20,000 by 4-VA for High-throughput bee pathogen survey: combining expertise in pollinator biology, bioinformatics and geonomics to yield insight into pollinator health.

Yuri Mishin, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $330,000 by the U.S. Department of the Army for Stabilization and Strengthening of Nano-Crystalline Materials by Alloying.

Aarthi Narayanan, School of Systems Biology, National Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, was awarded $121,325 by Vanderbilt University for Assessment of Infection Induced Inflammation in The Blood Barrier and Utility of Anti-Inflammatory Strategies.

Dusan Odsctrcil, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $59,981 by the University of California, San Diego for NASA Focused Science Topic to Combine World IPS Data and Standardize its Analysis.

Chris Parsons, Environmental Science and Policy, along with colleagues, were invited to give a presentation before the Mexican Government’s House of Deputies on dolphin science and welfare. He also co-published the following articles: “Recent advances in whale-watching research” in the journal Tourism in Marine Environments and “Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) sightings in the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary” in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

Emanuel Petricoin, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, was awarded $50,000 by Pituitary Adenoma Research Foundation for Protein Pathway Activation Mapping of Human Pituitary Tumors.

Matthew Rice, Geography and Geoinformation Science, was awarded $90,008 by the University of Alabama for Operational-Level Optimization of Autonomous Logistics Enterprises.

Dann Sklarew, Environmental Science and Policy, delivered two lectures on American watershed management practices to successive Chinese delegations from the Shandong Capital of Jinan and from the China National Development Reform Commission, PRC. He organized the first PEREC symposium on tidal Potomac River Ecosystem Health and Recovery. PEREC faculty, including Kim deMutsert, Environmental Science and Policy, Gregory Foster, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Amy Fowler, Environmental Science and Policy, and R. Christian Jones, Environmental Science and Policy, were among the regional presenters. Sklarew also did the following invited speeches: “Golden opportunities to advance campus sustainability” to the Centro de SOStenibilidad at the Universidad de Monterrey, and “Town and gown partnerships: solving sustainability issues together” to the American Public Works Association, Mid-Atlantic Chapter, at George Mason University’s new Potomac Science Center in Woodbridge, Virginia.

Monique Van Hoek, School of Systems Biology, was awarded $25,000 by 4-VA for Critical post-translational modifications of the Francisella proteome.

Joseph Weingartner, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $63,614 by NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center for The Habitability of Collisionally Formed and Tidally Heated Trans-Neptunian Objects.

Ruixin Yang, Geography and Geoinformation Science, was awarded $19,924 by Spatiotemporal Information Systems for Cloud Computing and Big Data Partner -2018.

Jie Zhang, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $73,715 by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics for A Comprehensive Study of Coronal Mass Ejection Morphology Based on Multi-viewpoint Observations from STEREO and SOHO.

Andreas Zuefle, Geography and Geoinformation Science, along with co-PIs Andrew Crooks, Computational and Data Science, and Dieter Pfoser, Geography and Geoinformation Science, were awarded $1,544,290 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects for a Ground-truth Simulator for Socio-spatial Alternate Worlds.