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George Mason joins arts research alliance

Colleen Rich — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 13:38:14 +0000

George Mason joins arts research alliance Colleen Rich Mon, 06/24/2024 - 09:38

��AV has joined the Alliance of Art Research Universities (a2ru) as an institutional member through a concerted effort by multiple colleges and the Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact (ORIEI). This action uniquely positions George Mason among other R1 institutions to support an emerging research culture in the arts.

George Mason's Center for Live Interactive Virtual Education uses the Window Wall™ system to connect leading artists with students from multiple institutions. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Justin Sutters, assistant dean of research and assessment in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA), is taking the lead on the membership and has already attended one of the alliance’s conferences.

Sutters sees participation in the alliance as generative in that it provides insight into other research universities and some of the challenges that they're encountering. “I think this also gives us a framework to share best practices to see how other colleges are navigating the current fiscal and political climate,” he said.

In this role, Sutters will also be working to elevate the research and collaborations already taking place in CVPA with a longer-term goal of “a vibrant and rigorous supported arts-based research structure at George Mason.”

“I think a lot of the arts-based research isn't fully visible across the university,” Sutters said. “And there are a lot of researchers in our university who are seeking interdisciplinary opportunities with units such as CVPA.”

CVPA Dean Rick Davis was one of the George Mason administrators championing this move. “Joining a2ru represents a pivotal moment for George Mason's profile as a major participant in the national conversation,” he said. “We've already both benefited from and contributed to the dialogue around the fast-changing world of research and creative production in the arts.”

Among the other universities participating in the a2ru are Dartmouth, Stanford and Georgia Tech. Other alliance members in Virginia are Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth University.

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Award-winning game helps young girls and women navigate and negotiate life choices

Shayla Brown — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 20:48:16 +0000

Award-winning game helps young girls and women navigate and negotiate life choices Shayla Brown Wed, 09/27/2023 - 16:48

When Susan Howard’s mother wanted to leave India for the United States in the 1950s, she had some negotiating to do.

“My grandparents were against it,” Howard said of her mom’s request, “but agreed on the condition that my mom be married. So, she compromised and said, ‘how about I get engaged?’”

That real-life scenario inspired the ��AV professor to create Go Nisha Go, an award-winning game that helps girls and young women in India navigate and negotiate life choices.

A poster for Susan Howard's game, Go Nisha Go. Photo provided.

“We're not trying to tell girls what is right or wrong. For some girls, listening to their parents is right for them,” said Howard, who teaches in the School of Integrative Studies. “Our aim with Nisha is to show players that their decisions matter and not to relinquish decisions to the father or their husbands or society even.”

The game, which was launched in June 2022, addresses public health concerns such as nonconsensual sex, reproductive health, relationships, contraception, and the detrimental stigmas that are attached to them, said Howard.

Go Nisha Go, which has more than 250,000 players in India, is a virtual experience that provides players with essential resources in the real world they can access directly from the game. It has 25 in-game partners from social entrepreneurs to private-sector companies and small businesses.

Susan Howard. Photo provided

These partners provide menstrual hygiene products, as well as legal and crisis helplines for women who are being bullied or abused.

“The technology of embedding these links was challenging, but it was really worth it because we felt that it was our responsibility to bridge the in-game experience with real life.”

Howard, who received a PhD in environmental science and policy from Mason in 2020, cited an example of an important app embedded in the game.

“There's a scene where Nisha is talking to her mentor about when she's most at risk for pregnancy and how does she know. The mentor shows her an app that’s called Cycle Beads where you can track your period. In real life, players can download this app to their phones.”

The game was originally only available in three states in India—Rajasthan, Bihar, and Delhi—because that’s where young girls are most at risk for early marriage and pregnancy, Howard said, but it is now available in all 11 Hindi speaking states in India through Google Play.

Go Nisha Go is an interdisciplinary effort, Howard said. College of Science PhD student Chih Hao “Andy” Huang handles the in-game analysis and data security management, Schar School PhD student Patrick Baxter helped design the game’s large-scale randomized control study that is being done among 1,900 girls, and Mason alumna Jeannette Cachan is the knowledge management and monitoring advisor on the project. Mason Board of Visitor member Dolly Oberoi, CEO of C2 Technologies Inc., has been a mentor and guide to Howard since the inception of the idea.

As a game data engineer, Huang ensures the game's structure and the data used are safe and updated.

“One of the features that we used in the game was creating different models and using predictive analytics. During the game, the players will make different decisions and select different answers for questions or situations,” said Huang.

“We use that data, run through different algorithms, and then we get results for personalized messages so players can have a more personalized experience instead of a ‘one game fits all’ kind of experience."

Go Nisha Go was awarded Best Learning Game in 2023 by Games for Change and made the list of 10 Fast Company Innovation by Design honorees in social justice interventions.

“All design begins with people and understanding people,” said Howard. “At the end of the game, you get to see the outcome of all the choices you have made for your character, and how in real life you can be inspired to be your ‘best self.’”

Howard credits the liberal arts and the humanities for her approach of putting people at the center of technological innovations. She is currently working on two additional games: one in Nepal and a game for boys in India.

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First-year of National Science Foundation-funded training project draws to a close with presentations on May 21

Martha Bushong — Tue, 11 May 2021 12:56:00 +0000

First-year of National Science Foundation-funded training project draws to a close with presentations on May 21 Martha Bushong Tue, 05/11/2021 - 08:56

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PhD students from a variety of disciplines have spent the year engaged in multi-disciplinary research projects as part of Mason’s first-ever National Science Foundation Research Traineeship grant. The students explored opioid use disorders, mental health in school-age children, and Parkinson’s disease. On May 21 from 2 to 4 p.m. they will present their project findings to the Mason community and other stakeholders.

The program is training the next generation of leaders to take on some of the most challenging problems faced by society today. These complex problems cannot be addressed by one individual or even one discipline. To address these challenges leaders will need to work together across traditional academic disciplinary boundaries to integrate engineering, data science, and social science knowledge, while meaningfully engaging with stakeholder communities in a mutually beneficial manner. The cohort included 11 students from seven different graduate programs.

“Working in multidisciplinary teams helped us gain a much deeper understanding of the real problem at hand, and freed us from the shackles of having to think within the silos of our science disciplines,” says Shriniwas Patwardhan, a PhD candidate in bioengineering. “We are able to think of a problem and how to solve it, without passing it through the filter of our individual disciplines. If not for multidisciplinary thinking, every problem looks like a nail because we have a hammer.”

Patwardhan and his fellow trainees became immersed in community settings to confront the traditional hierarchies between researchers and participants. They teamed up with community stakeholders as full participants in the research process and worked with them to identify challenges and needs, formulate research questions, and engage in participatory design to develop and test solutions.

“I have really enjoyed my experience with the trainees. Integrating patient input into every aspect of research and development is so necessary for success,” says Soania Mathur a physician, as well as a Parkinson’s patient and advocate.

“We are all really excited to share the progress we made on our projects over the past year despite the pandemic and look forward to the comments, questions, and feedback from the audience,” says Keri Anne Gladhill a third-year PhD who is studying cognitive-behavioral neuroscience concentration in the Psychology department.

For the NRT project, Gladhill and her team of Shriniwas Patwardhan and Lindsay Shaffer focused on understanding how people with Parkinson’s track and communicate both their motor and non-motor symptoms with their care team. The students sought to empower the patients (with Parkinson's) in their healthcare decisions by improving communication channels between the patients, their caregivers, and their physicians.

People with Parkinson's typically meet their physician one or two times a year, for 15-20 minutes. “In that short span of time, it is hard for the physician to get a good understanding of their varying symptoms throughout the year,” says Patwardhan, “That is why it would benefit the patients and their physicians greatly if the physician could see data related to their daily states in real-time.”

A wide variety of ways to track symptoms from pen and paper to wearable devices already exist; however, none of the existing methods allow for reliable, accurate, continuous, and accessible measurements. One approach to solve this problem is to establish a data-rich communication channel between the patients, their caregivers, and their physicians, by collecting data about motor and non-motor symptoms. The team members believe that If executed well, they could expand the same process to other chronic conditions and improve health outcomes while enabling mobile health solutions and more.

“The findings from our project could be interesting to people who are not interested in Parkinson's disease at all,” says Patwardhan. “We are trying to show that one way to overcome problems with multiple actors in a data-gathering loop is to establish data-rich and real-time communication channels. That may apply to anything from healthcare to solar power grids.”

Find out more about the projects and their teams.