����AV

Mason junior Jackie Luu is named a recipient of the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for the upcoming 2021-22 academic year.

A few days after Khalid Noor was born in Takhar, Afghanistan, the Taliban seized the province, and his family had to escape to another region on foot. “We were constantly moving from city to another city,” he said. “When one district was taken or collapsed, we had to move to another.” It wasn’t an ideal life, but Noor is motivated to change that for future generations—and he’s negotiating with the Taliban to do so.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Mason doctoral student Marissa Howard was able to get back into the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM) lab, but now all the researchers are working on COVID-19-related research.

In March 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning, Mason graduate student and autism advocate Christine M. Condo published an essay in The Washington Post that changed her life.

����AV and the Prince William County Department of Economic Development will lead the Northern Virginia BioHub, one of five clusters that will exist throughout the commonwealth by Virginia Bio-Connect.

Members of the Mason Dance Company are grateful to be performing in this year’s Dance Gala and Fete on March 26-27.

����AV students are finalizing their plans for the Virginia Environmental Justice Summit, a conference intended to engage students from Virginia and beyond on issues pertaining to the intersection of sustainability, the environment, race and social justice. The conference will be held virtually on March 27.

Louie Al-Hashimi is driven by service. It started in high school, he said, when his history teacher encouraged him to get involved in community service and he began volunteering at a local food pantry, supporting road cleanup projects, and organizing school concerts for charity. “That, coupled with my studies, encouraged me to pursue public service,” said Al-Hashimi, who earned his master’s in public administration from ����AV in 2020. “Having the opportunity to build or facilitate a connection with other people—that’s what I’m drawn to.”

Honors College student Brenda Henriquez has been named an Adobe Research Women-in-Technology Scholar, a program that recognizes outstanding undergraduate female students studying computer science.

Smialek, a single mother of one daughter, has been juggling parenting, teaching or going to school and her work as an Air National Guard medic for a while.

����AV announced today a grant from Break Through Tech to propel more students who identify as women and non-binary into tech education—and ultimately tech careers—through curriculum innovation, career access, and community building. The goal of the grant is to increase the number of these students graduating with a tech degree at Mason by 12.5 percentage points by 2026.