Faculty & Staff Accolades- November 2017

Accolades celebrate the professional achievements of the faculty and staff in the College of Science. The following accolades were published for the month of November 2017 on News at Mason.

Four team proposals were selected as finalists to present in an open review session on December 1st for the 2017 Trans-Disciplinary Center for Advanced Study Competition. The College of Science Centers chosen included the DataLab – Center for Translational Data Science: Tracy Mason, Dieter Pfoser, Matthias Renz, Nektaria Tryfona, and Iosif Vaisman; GMU Forensic Behavior and Identity Analysis Center: Steve Burmesiter, JosephDizzino, Mary EllenO’Toole; Mason Center for Advanced Study of Social Complexity Science and Technology: Caludio Cioffi-Revilla, Andrew Crooks, Christiana Stan, Michael Summers and Qing Tian; Quantum Materials and Center: James Glasbrenner, Karen Sauer, Ming Tian, Patrick Vora and Erhai Zhao. All teams included University colleagues from other units.  

Ancha Baranova, School of Systems Biology, co-authored papers in PLOS One and BMC Med Genomics, and delivered an invited talk at Precision Medicine 2017 in Berlin, Germany.

Natalie Burls, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, co-published two papers in National Academy of Sciences: Wetter subtropics in a warmer world: contrasting past and future hydrological cycles” and “Active Pacific meridional overturning circulation (PMOC) during the warm Pliocene” in Science Advances. She was also interviewed about her work on Pliocene research which was published in Science News.

Kim De Mutsert, Environmental Science and Policy, accepted the invitation by the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Ecological Modelling to join the Ecological Modelling Editorial Board. Ecological Modelling is one of the top journals in the field of Environmental Science and Policy.

Harold Geller, Physics and Astronomy, contributed to the Skype-a-Scientist Program in which he spoke via Skype to a 6th grade class in Chicago, Illinois and to a 6th grade class in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Geller also led a workshop for K-12 teachers at the Virginia Association of Science Teachers Professional Development Institute in Roanoke, Virginia, in which he focused on how teachers could demonstrate energy concepts, including concepts related to renewable energy resources. He also gave a speech about the Observatory during George Mason University’s Family Weekend. 40 guests of George Mason visited the observatory and were able to observe the night sky.

Robert Hazen, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, was elected as a foreign honorary member of the Russian Mineralogical Society. Hazen is the 14th American mineralogist to receive this honor in the 200-year history of the RMS.

R. Christian Jones, Environmental Science and Policy, was awarded $4,357 by the City of Fairfax for City of Fairfax Monitoring Program.

Kylene Kehn-Hall, School of Systems Biology, National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases, was awarded $706,898 by Tasso Inc. for The HemoLink; A universal platform for blood collection, stabilization, and shipping.

John Kwiatkowski, The Center for Earth Observing and Space Research, has been awarded the 2017 Robert H.Goddard Award for Science.

Lance Liotta, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, was awarded $37,830 by the Columbia University for Novel Protein Risk Markers for Lung Cancer.

Emanuel Petricoin, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, was awarded $257,447 by the Henry Jackson Foundation for Murtha Cancer Center Clinical Proteomics Platform- RPPA Assessment in the APOLLO Program, $298,506 by AbbVie Inc. for Reverse Phase Protein Arrays (RPPA) on Tumor Tissues Collected from M15-913 Clinical Trial and Preclinical Studies, and $10,000 by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for Salivary Proteomic Analysis for Biomarkers of Renal Cancer.

Peter Plavchan, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded a $106,017 grant by Jet Propulsion Laboratory for Simulations of Radial Velocity Pre-Cursor Survey Yield for Future Direct Imaging Missions.

Shobita Satyapal, Physics and Astronomy, along with other researchers, conducted a study discovering 10 feeding supermassive black holes. Each of the five pairs of black holes is a result of the collision.

Karen Sauer, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $147, 303 by Chemring Sensors & Electronic Systems for Development of Compact RF Atomic Magnetometers with Sub-ft Sensitivity.

Chawoei (Phil) Yang, Geography and Geoinformation Science, was awarded $114,580 by Zhejiang Administration of Surveying Mapping for Zhejiang Training Program, and $54,450 by Shaanxi Administration of Surveying for Training on the Development of Advanced Mapping and Geo-Information Technologies for Shaanxi Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation (SASMG).