Prospective 2026 ASSIP Mentors
Select 1, 2, or 3 prospective 2026 mentors for your ASSIP application. Carefully read the linked information on this to match your interests. Previous intern research abstracts are published in Mason's open-access Journal of Student Scientist' Research (JSSR) where you can find out more about past projects. Some mentors publish certain abstracts in other journals; not all abstracts are in JSSR.*
Prospective 2026 ASSIP Mentors
Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Climate Science. Paul Acosta is a co-mentor on my team (https://science.gmu.edu/directory/rene-paul-acosta).
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Project Overview: Our research focuses on climate change across both past and present time periods, with an emphasis on tropical climate variations related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and monsoon systems. These projects aim to improve our understanding of tropical climate dynamics and their impact on global climate patterns. Preferred Skills (not required): (1) Proficiency in coding (e.g., Python, MATLAB), (2) data analysis skills, especially with climate datasets.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Air pollution, public health. Center for Satellite and Earth Science Research; Learn more here: https://cser.science.gmu.edu/
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Bioengineering
Format: RHybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Rehabilitation Robotics, Prosthetics, Soft Robotics, Exoskeletons. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine
Format: In-person Internships ONLY.
Research Interests: Proteomics, Cancer research, protein profiling. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus.
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Proteomics, cancer, cell culture, signal transduction, mitochondria function. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus.
Format: In-person Internships ONLY.
Research interests: Cancer research invasion and metastasis, human disease, proteomics, biologic signaling networks, bioengineering inventing new technologies. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus.
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: Inorganic solid state chemistry. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Modeling; Quantum Mechanics; Chemical Reactions; Docking; Drug Discovery; Drug Design; DNA/protein interactions (coding required); Theory Development. Interns must be 16+ to work to work on wet-lab projects; otherwise, they may work on computational projects.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Protein Design and Biomaterials. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus.
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Looking for antimicrobial peptides in plants to fight antimicrobial resistant pathogens using proteomic and mass spectrometry techniques. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus.
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: Development of multifunctional nanomaterials for energy and environmental applications, with specific focus on lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors, and the remediation of chemically toxic metals for water purification and nuclear waste treatment. Joining George Mason in 2026; learn more at my lab website here: https://www.saiful-m-islam-research-group.com/home. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus.
Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Living Civil Materials, Machine Learning, Bioinspired Design
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Catalina Del Pilar Gonzalez Duenas
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Natural Hazard Risk and Resilience Assessment; Cascading Hazards; Intersection of AI and Civil Engineering
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Big data analytics in transportation, travel behavior analysis, traffic safety
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Computational and Data Sciences
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Data science
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Computational Social Science, i.e., models of people interacting with other people and the environment.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week).
Research interests: Agent-based simulation, machine learning
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Computer Science
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week).
Research interests: machine learning, deep learning, optimization, foundation models, distributed/parallel computation.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: AI systems. Web frontend skills are required for this project. Also it's expected that the candidate should know a little about programming languages. Learn more at https://deep-learning-profiling-tools.github.io/CAT-Lab/
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Quantum computing, scheduling algorithms, combinatorial optimization
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week).
Research interests: Software Engineering. With a focus on Software Testing and Analysis, AI and Software Engineering, Software Evolution, and Software Dependability. Learn more here: https://cs.gmu.edu/~winglam/
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Machine Learning, Data Mining
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week).
Research interests: Robotics. Learn more at our website here: https://robotixx.cs.gmu.edu/
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Mason Square (Arlington) Campus
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week).
Research interests: WWireless, IoT, and Sensing; Wireless sensing for robots; AI/ML on Mobile and IoT.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Cyber Security Engineering
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: We are working on accelerating GPU kernels for cryptography. The students will work on CUDA implementation of modern cryptographic protocols. The participants will receive CUDA training, however math and programming expertise is a must. Learn more at tanvirarafin.github.io
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research Interests: Semiconductor Engineering and Microelectronics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Materials and Devices, Hardware Implementation of Machine Learning, Artificial Leaf, Supercapacitor, Microfluidic Sensor, and Microneedle Array for Drug Delivery. Learn more at https://masonnano.wixsite.com/ethanahn
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research Interests: Robotics, Hardware development, Ground Vehicles, Human and robot interaction/teaming
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Environmental Science and Policy
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: Aquatic invertebrate ecology; invasive species. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Potomac Science Center (Woodbridge).
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Coral microbiology, bioinformatics, cyanobacteria, harmful algal blooms, bacterioplankton. Learn more at www.salernolab.com. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Potomac Science Center (Woodbridge).
Finance, School of Business
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: blockchain, cryptocurrency, financial technology. Learn more at https://sites.google.com/view/jiasunli
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Mason Square (Arlington) Campus
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: finance; ETF performance
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Economics of AI, Market Structure, Investments, Corporate Finance, FinTech. Learn more at my website: https://sites.google.com/view/lei-gao/home.
Forensic Science
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week).
Research interests: Drones and 3D modeling and mapping of Crime Scenes and Incidents.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Geography and Geoinformation Science
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Spatiotemporal Computing and Digital Twin
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Robotics, drones, intelligent spatial systems, critical infrastructure, space weather. Learn more about my group here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjM3M6c7qLo
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Human Mobility and Accessibility, Health, Geographic Information Science, Geospatial Data Science
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Earth Artificial Intelligence
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Geoinformation science
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Food Systems Transformation, Environmental GIS, Biogeography & Data Analytics.
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: modeling and simulation, data science, public health, spatial analysis.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Climate Science, Remote Sensing, Wildland Fires, Soil Moisture and Drought, Clean Energy, Water and Food Security, Water-Energy-Food-Health (WEFH) Nexus. Learn more at our department and center websites: (https://ggs.gmu.edu) and (http://estc.gmu.edu). Xianjun Hao is a co-mentor on my team (https://science.gmu.edu/directory/xianjun-hao).
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: AI-assisted disaster analysis, Human mobility modeling, Social computation, Environmental and climate risk, Urban analytics, Geospatial science, Community resilience, Urban planning and design. I am also affiliated with the Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering Department.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Global and Community Health
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: emerging disease, qualitative and quantitative research
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Information Sciences and Information Technology
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: Community Informatics, AI for Social Good, Public Sector AI. Learn more at https://cil.cec.gmu.edu/.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Mason Square (Arlington) Campus
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Educational Technology
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Engineering Education, Personalized learning with AI Technologies, LLMs, ML, Cognitive Assistants, Collective intelligence
Information Systems and Operations Management
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Economics of AI, economics of agentic AI, economics of blockchain, decentralized governance. I am looking for mentees with strong interest in economics of emerging technology and a strong data analysis skillset and/or willingness to self-learn (e.g., desired but not required: Python, R, Excel, basic understanding of machine learning and statistics).
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Application of GenAI in information system (need to know coding in python)
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: 3D motion tracking of laboratory mice; analysis of behavioral data; Python; Matlab. Also affiliated with the Bioengineering Department. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Mathematics
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Mathematical Modeling, Computational Mathematics, Mathematical Biology, Scientific Computing, Machine Learning, Physics Informed Neural Networks.
Mechanical Engineering
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Nanomaterials, Laser Manufacturing and Synthesis of Nanomaterials, Nano Sensors
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus
Physics and Astronomy
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Spectroscopy of Solar Magnetic Loops Using Satellite data. Students should expect to do quite a bit of Python programming.
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Atmospheric, space, and planetary science
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: NASA Landolt mission, exoplanet astronomy. Learn more about the Landolt mission here: https://landolt.gmu.edu
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.
School of Systems Biology
Format: Remote/Online Internships ONLY
Research interests: Molecular dynamics simulations of biomolecules; artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning in bioinformatics. Learn more at my lab website, here: lockhartlab.org
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: Virology, HIV, HTLV, transcription, Extracellular Vesicles. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Plant pathology, microbiomes, beneficial fungi, DNA sequencing, proteomics, horticulture, agriculture. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: In-person Internships ONLY
Research interests: Virology and Immunology. Interns must be 16+ to work in my wet-lab.
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: SciTech (Manassas) Campus.
Systems Engineering & Operations Research
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Computer simulation, digital twin, AI, machine learning, electric vehicles, transportation. Learn more at https://mason.gmu.edu/~jxu13/
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus
Format: Hybrid internships (A combination of remote work and in-person work during an average week)
Research interests: Optimization, Machine Learning, Game Theory, and Simulation with applications to resilient infrastructure systems, water security, and AI-augmented training games. Learn more at my website: https://mohebbilab.cec.gmu.edu/
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Mason Square (Arlington) Campus.
Virginia Serious Games, Computer Game Design
Format: For the right candidate, I am flexible on internship format.
Research interests: Serious Game, AI, Metaverse, XR (AR/VR).
Any in-person interns in my group will be expected to commute to the following campus: Main (Fairfax) Campus.