Faculty & Staff Accolades: October 2015

Accolades celebrate the professional achievements of the faculty and staff in the College of Science. The deadline for submissions to be included in the November column is November 19th to tfede@gmu.edu. Submitted accolades will be sent to the University for inclusion in University-wide accolades recognition.

Paul Delamater, Geography and Geoinformation Science, co-published an article entitled “Geographic access to hematopoietic cell transplantation services in the United States” in the journal Bone Marrow Transplantation.

Liping Di, Spatial Information Science & Systems Center, was awarded $79,998 from the U.S. Geological Survey for his research project USGS/Geo-Spatial Standards FY16. 

Paul Dirmeyer, Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences, presented a seminar at the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts: “Land surface processes and interactions with the atmosphere,” Reading, UK in September 2015.

Patrick Gillevet, Environmental Science & Policy, was awarded $110,274 from the U.S. Department of the Army for his research project Army/Molecular Samples and Sensors.

Barry Haack, Geography and Geoinformation Science, was the primary instructor at the Remote Sensing for Resource Assessment and Land Cover Mapping Workshop, USAID SilvaCarbon Program, Manila, the Philippines in August 2015.

Leila Hamdan, Environmental Science & Policy, was awarded $72,198 from the U.S. Department of the Navy for her research project NRL/Genomic Analysis Soil Microbes.

Linda Hinnov, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, was awarded $186,439 for her research project from the National Science Foundation, Johns Hopkins University, for JHU/NSF/Open Earth Systems.

Thomas Lovejoy, Environmental Science and Policy, is part of the November issue of National Geographic which has one of his projects included – the first complete map of the Amazon in decades. He is also the subject of the Three Questions feature. This led to an article written by Lovejoy being published about the map and a 50 year retrospective/prospective in the Brazilian newspaper Veja.

Dhafer Marzougui, Physics and Astronomy, Center for Collision, Safety and Analysis, was awarded $599,134 from the Federal Highway Administration, The National Academies of Sciences, for his research project NAS/FHWA/Work-Zone Traffic Control Devices.

Dieter Pfoser, Geography and Geoinformation Science, co-authored the book “Map Construction Algorithms” (Springer International Publishing). Map construction algorithms compute vector maps from user-generated (GPS) tracking datasets. The book provides an overview of the state-of-the-art of this research and as such is an excellent resource for GIS professionals as well as advanced-level computer science, geography and mathematics students. 

Jagadish Shukla, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, was elected as an Honorary Member of the American Meteorological Society in recognition of his “Outstanding Achievements in the Atmospheric and Related Sciences.”

Michael Summers, Physics and Astronomy, co-published an article entitled “The Pluto system: Initial results from its exploration by New Horizons” in AAS Science Journals.

 Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers, Environmental Science and Policy, co- published the following articles: “A framework for assessing governance capacity: An illustration from Vietnam’s forestry reforms” in Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, SAGE Journal and “Forests Post-2015: Maximizing Synergies between the Sustainable Development Goals and REDD+” in WWF-Wageningen UR.

David Wong, Geography & Geoinformation Science, was awarded $20,000 from the U.S. Geological Survey for his research project USGS/G15PD01004/Jessica Mitchum.

Kim Younsung, Environmental Science and Policy, published an article entitled “Business as a Collaborative Partner: Understanding Firms’ Socio-Political Support for Policy Formation,” in Public Administration Review. This paper provides important perspective about firms’ diverse responses to mandatory regulations and uses climate change regulation as the policy application.