Mason Momentum

George Mason scientist secures $1.4M DTRA grant to study viruses’ impact on organ health

Colleen Rich — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 16:30:04 +0000

George Mason scientist secures $1.4M DTRA grant to study viruses’ impact on organ health Colleen Rich Mon, 10/14/2024 - 12:30

��AV researcher Aarthi Narayanan recently secured a $1.4M grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to investigate how an infection spreads between organs, and how a therapeutic will impact connected organs. The work will initially focus on mosquito-transmitted viruses while Narayanan hopes to expand the implications from these studies to other human disease states.

Aarthi Narayan. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

The study will utilize the organ on a chip platform—an emerging technology that more closely replicates human organ-based parameters—to understand how disease affects the body. The focus of this multiorgan effort will be to explore the interactions between the brain, the lung, and liver.

“When you look at an infection like West Nile Virus, for example, it affects the brain early. But that does not mean it only impacts the brain,” said Narayanan, a professor in the Department of Biology in the College of Science. “There is often multiorgan involvement in later states of disease, but we still don’t have a full understanding of how one organ reacts to another’s infection to then know how to provide more effective treatments.” This research seeks to better understand to what extent inflammation from one infected organ will affect another organ that is perhaps not infected.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic underscored how diseases affecting specific organs can disseminate throughout the body, leading to multiorgan failure at various states of disease progression. However, developing specific treatments for each emerging virus takes time, and there is an intense push toward finding broadly applicable solutions that may be used to treat different infections. This study will also explore repositioning existing FDA-approved medications as treatment options for several mosquito-transmitted viruses that do not have treatment strategies at this time.

Narayan will utilize CN-Bio’s organ on a chip platform at George Mason’s Biomedical Research Laboratory to investigate questions that are directly relevant to human disease caused by these mosquito-transmitted viruses.

“This approach will also help us position our therapeutic strategies better and hopefully decrease points of failure down the road, as we strive to come up with rapidly deployable solutions to address the national and global needs for pandemic preparedness,” said Narayanan.

“While technology is expanding in the biomedical field, one of the important differentiators that puts George Mason and its Biomedical Research Laboratory (BRL) at the forefront of this research venture is our ability to ask these globally impactful questions in high containment settings, specifically biosafety level 3 conditions,” said Cody W. Edwards, George Mason College of Science interim dean.

Established through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the George Mason BRL is one of 12 Regional Biocontainment Laboratories in the United States that offer Biosafety Level-3 (BSL-3) facilities.

The study, “Development of human-based, connected multiorgan microphysiological system in vitro models to study alphavirus infection and support countermeasure development,” will take place over the next five years.

Learn more about research at ��AV

Topics

Research

College of Science

Defense and Security

Biomedical Research Lab

Strategic Direction

Mason Momentum

When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 14:42:32 +0000

When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing Jennifer Anzaldi Wed, 09/04/2024 - 10:42

Thanks so much for reading this article all the way to the end! No, that wasn’t an editorial error. It’s a savvy managerial motivation strategy lurking somewhere in almost every employee’s inbox or Slack channel.

Mandy O’Neill, an associate professor of management at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at ��AV, has discovered a potential new addition to the annals of managerial motivation techniques: anticipatory gratitude.

Mandy O'Neill

We all know that thanking people for a job well-done, or a much-needed favor, is an effective form of positive reinforcement. Psychology researchers classify gratitude as a “socially engaging emotion” that promotes prosocial behavior and strong interpersonal relationships. In the course of exploring how employees cope with high-stress or frustrating work situations, O’Neill and her co-author Hooria Jazaieri of Santa Clara University discovered an interesting wrinkle in what we thought we knew about this popular emotion: Gratitude can be used as a form of emotion regulation and, when expressed ahead of time instead of after the fact, can produce that extra “oomph” when it comes to employee resilience and persistence.

Their paper is in press at Academy of Management Discoveries.

The researchers stumbled upon the power of anticipatory gratitude while researching organizational culture and change within the intensive care units of a leading U.S. hospital. It’s difficult to imagine a more gut-wrenching, high-stakes work environment: The ICU units in question receive what one employee called “the sickest of the sickest” from throughout the region. To decompress and process their emotions after especially difficult shifts, employees routinely emailed the group using an internal listserv. O’Neill and Jazaieri were forwarded four years’ worth of messages, which they analyzed with the help of direct experience gained from extensive site visits to the hospital.

In addition to writing heartfelt outpourings of post facto gratitude, ICU colleagues thanked one another for rising to occasions that had not yet occurred. Some of these emails were pre-emptively apologetic (“I may have to take a day or two off from time to time…Thank you for your patience and understanding”). Others seemed to function as pep talks, inspiring teams to keep up the good work (“Thank you…for bringing your a-game to work every day”).

As O’Neill describes it, “The ‘thanks in advance’ phenomenon involves an awareness that you’re going to be annoyed or upset by what I’m asking you to do, so I infuse you with the positivity of that feeling you get when someone expresses gratitude to you. Think about it as an emotional buffer. It helps with the inevitable distress of the task that’s going to happen later. It makes those negative emotions less salient, less powerful, and less insidious.”

The researchers launched several follow-up studies to learn more about the effects of anticipatory gratitude. They chose a context—Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) gig-work platform—that was in many ways the polar opposite of the ICU. “You go from the ultimate interdependent work environment to the ultimate transactional work environment,” O’Neill explains.

“The ‘thanks in advance’ phenomenon involves an awareness that you’re going to be annoyed or upset by what I’m asking you to do, so I infuse you with the positivity of that feeling you get when someone expresses gratitude to you. Think about it as an emotional buffer."

The MTurk workers were assigned to solve extremely difficult puzzles. After completing the paid task, they received negative feedback about their performance and were offered the opportunity to do additional puzzles without being paid. MTurkers who had seen a message of gratitude before the main task voluntarily took on significantly more unpaid work than those who received a similar message after the paid exercise.

“What’s so compelling and surprising for us is that anyone who does work with experienced online gig worker populations knows it’s nearly impossible to induce workers to go beyond their assignment, even by 30 extra seconds, which is about what we were asking for,” O’Neill says.

Questionnaires administered during the study revealed that anticipatory gratitude enhanced feelings of communal self-worth, which contributed to the participant’s resilience, that is, their ability to “bounce back” after the initial failure. In a third study, the researchers found anticipatory gratitude was better than a related positive affect—anticipatory hope—at motivating MTurkers to persevere at (i.e., spend more time on) a different set of challenging puzzles.

At this point, the potential for managerial manipulation should be crystal clear. Indeed, it was evident even to some of the gig workers, who wrote private messages such as, “It may be partial trickery for academic purposes but it was still nice to hear.”

"Gratitude can’t be a substitute for fair pay and decent work conditions...But our findings are clear: anticipatory gratitude works; it is effective.”

For O’Neill, these findings show that gratitude is more complicated than we previously thought. “This paper is one of the very few to show that gratitude isn’t always authentic and prosocial. It can be used strategically, especially for managers,” she says.

Sincerity and strategy are not mutually exclusive. Empathic managers whose feelings of gratitude are so strong that they have to be expressed beforehand could still be taking advantage of the “thanks in advance” phenomenon.

“In all organizations, you need people to stick with difficult or thankless or boring tasks. The challenge, of course, is how to do so ethically. Gratitude can’t be a substitute for fair pay and decent work conditions, for example. But our findings are clear: anticipatory gratitude works; it is effective,” O’Neill says.

In This Story

Olivia (Mandy) O'Neill

Topics

Costello College of Business News

Costello College of Business Faculty Research

Management Faculty Research

Research

Mason Momentum

Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan

Sarah Holland — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:26:43 +0000

Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan Sarah Holland Wed, 08/21/2024 - 09:26

On April 15, 2023, intense violence erupted in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum between the state-run military and a non-state militia group. Over the past 16 months, the conflict has continued to expand in scale. Peace negotiations have collapsed. Civilians have experienced catastrophic humanitarian conditions.

��AV’s Daniel Rothbart has for many years investigated the plight of civilians in war globally. He believes that out of the 59 protracted violent conflicts around the world, the civil war in Sudan is among the most horrific.

“This conflict has had catastrophic humanitarian implications,” explained Rothbart, the Druscilla French Chair in Conflict Analysis and Resolution in the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. “There have been an estimated 16,000 fatalities and numerous cities destroyed. Right now, Sudan has the largest number of internally displaced persons in the world at 10.7 million people.”

As peace talks failed and conflict escalated, the Conflict Observatory, managed by the MITRE Corp and funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization operations, approached Rothbart and the Carter School to support an investigation into the human rights violations associated with the civil war.

In areas of violent conflict, scholars like Rothbart must find remote methods of data collection. One such method is through Open Source Investigations (OSINT), where publicly and commercially available information, such as satellite imagery, social media posts, and news reports, are collected and analyzed.

Because the Conflict Observatory specifically requested satellite imagery evidence, Rothbart enlisted a team of researchers from the College of Science’s Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, including department chair Dieter Pfoser, to gather and analyze the images. Through this method, they can show side-by-side images of the large-scale destruction of civilian areas over the course of the conflict, such as markets, neighborhoods, and health care facilities.

Comparison photos of an area of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan showcasing the destruction of civilian property as a result of the ongoing civil war, as featured in the Sudan Conflict Observatory Situation Report "Impact on Civilians from Fighting in El Fasher, North Darfur, May 9-27, 2024"

This is a valuable kind of data for understanding the impact and trend of protracted violence, Rothbart said. “It captures the evolution of events over time in a particular region, and the amount of detail these experts are able to gleam from these images has been used to great effect.” As detailed in the report, the experts can distinguish between a building burned and a building bombed: important evidence for building a future case in prosecuting human rights violations.

But satellite imaging only tells part of the story of the destruction and devastation. Other information comes from witness testimonies, which Rothbart and his team gather with the help of the Sudan Human Rights Hub. By combining these two methods of data collection, they can paint a more robust picture of the breadth and depth of violence.

“For example, with both testimonies and open-source intelligence, we have documented that some militant forces have systematically killed civilians, bombed hospitals, and engaged in large-scale gender-based violence, ” Rothbart said.

Through these reports, Rothbart and his team are the primary source of evidence of civilian devastation in the war in Sudan. And while the evidence submitted by the team is under the discretion of the State Department, it could be used to prosecute the perpetrators of the described human rights violations.

The project is also an opportunity for students to gain valuable experience. Current conflict analysis and resolution PhD student Beltina Gjeloshi, and alumnus Mathieu Bere, PhD Conflict Analysis and Resolution ‘22, are both supporting members of Rothbart’s team.

“I’ve learned best practices in open-source investigations, a myriad of new digital tools, and how to capture evidence via different channels, such as satellite images and social media,” said Gjeloshi. “Coupling the training with my human rights and conflict resolution background has allowed me to formulate unique insights and use tools transdisciplinarily.”

“This deliberate violence against civilians requires that the international community takes measures to enforce international humanitarian law, protect civilians, and hold perpetrators accountable. The work that we have been doing in this project contributes to the fulfillment of that moral and legal requirement,” said Bere.

Daniel Rothbart. Photo by Creative Services/Office of University Branding

"On a purely academic and scientific side, we have been using, and hope to contribute to improve, some innovative technological tools, especially OSINT and GIS tools, for remotely monitoring and documenting what is happening in conflict zones, and for conducting real-time conflict research,” said Bere. “For example, we are exploring the possibility of developing an AI model that will facilitate some of the steps of the data-gathering process that may be automated. The project is an interdisciplinary work, which requires collaboration between experts from various disciplines."

Every conflict is unique, but there are repeated patterns in motivations, actions, and strategies. Rothbart hopes that the global peace community can learn from why and how peace talks have been unsuccessful in Sudan to improve their approaches to other protracted conflicts.

“We must be prepared to recognize that under certain conditions human beings can commit horrific acts,” Rothbart explained. “But in every case of protracted violent conflict, we find human beings who show an enormous degree of courageous compassion in the face of horrific violence. And that’s important to keep in mind.”

Find pathways to peace at the Carter School

In This Story

Daniel Rothbart

Dieter Pfoser

Topics

Research

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

College of Science

Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science

George Mason to Launch Nation’s First Center for Small Business AI Innovation with $1M Grant

Andrew J Schappert — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 14:40:17 +0000

George Mason to Launch Nation’s First Center for Small Business AI Innovation with $1M Grant Andrew J Schappert Fri, 06/28/2024 - 10:40

In a groundbreaking move set to bolster the economic competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across Virginia, ��AV has been awarded a $1 million grant to establish the nation’s first Center for AI Innovation for Economic Competitiveness (CAIIEC).

J.P. Singh: ‘Small and medium enterprises are the backbone of the U.S. economy at the local level.’ Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

This pioneering initiative aims to place Virginia at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption among SMEs, which often fly under the radar in discussions dominated by federal and big-tech AI advancements.

The $1 million grant, which was sponsored by Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, is directed through the U.S. Small Business Administration. The center will draw expertise from several George Mason colleges, including the Schar School of Policy and Government, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the College of Engineering and Computing.

“Small and medium enterprises are the backbone of the U.S. economy at the local level,” said the Schar School’s J.P. Singh, the Distinguished University Professor serving as principal investigator. “We will work with SMEs to strengthen their efforts in AI adoption all over Virginia and learn from global cases such as Germany, where its famed SMEs have been called ‘the hidden champions.’”

“I'm excited George Mason’s Center for AI Innovation for Economic Competitiveness is receiving $1 million in federal funding, which I was proud to have helped secure in the recent government funding bill,” said Senator Kaine. “This will help prepare small businesses and Virginians to harness AI and lead to new opportunities for economic growth and jobs in the commonwealth.”

The new center promises to provide much-needed leadership, support, and training to these enterprises, ensuring they do not get left behind in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. George Mason’s interdisciplinary team, comprising computer scientists, public policy experts, economists, environmental and medical scientists, and ethicists, is uniquely positioned to drive this initiative.

“I am proud to have helped secure funding for the Center for AI Innovation for Economic Competitiveness at George Mason,” said Senator Warner in a statement. “This investment will help position Virginia as a leader in AI development by creating programs to help small businesses and communities thrive in the digital market, marking a huge win for Virginians across the commonwealth.”

The university has long been a leader in AI research, and the center aims to extend this expertise beyond academia to make a tangible impact on local businesses.

Amarda Shehu: ‘This is much needed to better position industry in an innovative and competitive environment.’ Photo by Office of University Branding

“Here is another great example of how George Mason continues to deliver on our commitment to access and community-engaged technology diffusion, partnering with diverse communities in new and innovated ways,” said Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact Andre Marshall. “What better way to broadly support our local and national economy by providing our small businesses with the disruptive tech and best practices that will shape our future?”

The center will both train and encourage students at George Mason to work with SMEs in Virginia, Singh added, highlighting the initiative’s educational component.

Co-principal investigator Amarda Shehu, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and a longtime AI researcher, emphasized the practical benefits the center will offer.

“As an AI researcher, I see firsthand how fast AI is moving,” said Shehu, who is also associate dean for AI Innovation in the College of Engineering and Computing and associate vice president for research at George Mason's Institute for Digital Innovation (IDIA). “I also get to see through my various interactions with industry that such a pace can be challenging, particularly for small businesses. So, we thought about how Research 1 universities, such as George Mason, can unlock the power of AI for small and medium enterprises.”

This center will do that, she said.

“To respond to AI technologies and regulatory requirements moving rapidly, the center will develop an AI toolkit to help small and medium enterprises capture and operationalize the value of AI for the enterprise,” she said. “This is much needed to better position industry in an innovative and competitive environment.”

The center is a collaboration between the Schar School, IDIA, the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, and the Center for Regional Analysis (CRA). These four entities will leverage their existing collaborative connections to jointly oversee and manage the project.

Project leaders include Singh, who is also codirector of George Mason’s Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnership and a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow with the Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin; Shehu; Terry Clower, CRA director; Naoru Koizumi, Schar School professor and associate dean of research and grants; and Jesse Kirkpatrick, research associate professor and codirector of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center.

In This Story

Amarda Shehu

J.P. Singh

Join the Mason Nation

Topics

Center for Regional Development

Center for AI Innovation for Economic Competitiveness

Schar School of Policy and Government

Schar School Featured Stories

Schar School News for June 2024

Research

Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA)

Mason Square

Artificial Intelligence

Strategic Direction

Mason Momentum

��AV announces its first NASA Space Mission, which seeks to uncover the secrets of dark energy

Jeannine Harvey — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 13:34:19 +0000

��AV announces its first NASA Space Mission, which seeks to uncover the secrets of dark energy Jeannine Harvey Mon, 06/10/2024 - 09:34

��AV will be the home of the $19.5 million recently approved Landolt NASA Space Mission that will put an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth. This artificial star will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies. By establishing absolute flux calibration, the mission will begin to address several open challenges in astrophysics including the speed and acceleration of the universe expansion.

"This mission marks another first for ��AV, a milestone that proves our impact as a major public research university truly knows no bounds,” ��AV President Gregory Washington said. “It's an honor for George Mason to lead this unique team seeking to expand the boundaries of knowledge through College of Science associate professor Peter Plavchan’s collaboration with NASA, one of George Mason's most prestigious research partners.”

Scientists know the universe is expanding, which is measured by calculating the brightness of numerous stars and by the number of photons-per-second they emit. According to Plavchan, a George Mason associate professor of physics and astronomy and the Landolt Mission primary investigator, more accurate measurements are needed for the next breakthroughs.

Landolt Mission Principal Investigator Peter Plavchan, associate professor of physics and astronomy at ��AV's College of Science. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Named for late astronomer Arlo Landolt, who put together widely used catalogs of stellar brightness throughout the 1970s through the 1990s, this mission will launch a light into the sky in 2029 with a known emission rate of photons, and the team will observe it next to real stars to make new stellar brightness catalogs. The satellite (artificial star) will have eight lasers shining at ground optical telescopes in order to calibrate them for observations. The effort will not make the artificial stars so brightly to see with the naked eye, but one can see it with a personal telescope at home.

“This mission is focused on measuring fundamental properties that are used daily in astronomical observations,” said Eliad Peretz, NASA Goddard mission and instrument scientist and Landolt’s deputy principal investigator. “It might impact and change the way we measure or understand the properties of stars, surface temperatures, and the habitability of exoplanets.”

The artificial star will orbit earth 22,236 miles up, far enough away to look like a star to telescopes back on Earth. This orbit also allows it to move at the same speed of the Earth’s rotation, keeping it in place over the United States during its first year in space. “This is what is considered an infrastructure mission for NASA, supporting the science in a way that we’ve known we needed to do, but with a transformative change in how we do it,” Plavchan explained.

Landolt Mission contributor Peter Pachowicz, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in George Mason's College of Engineering and Computing. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

The payload, which is the size of the proverbial bread box, will be built in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a world leader in measuring photon emissions. “This calibration under known laser wavelength and power will remove effects of atmosphere filtration of light and allow scientists to significantly improve measurements,” said Piotr Pachowicz, associate professor in Mason’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who is leading this component of the mission.

George Mason faculty and students from Mason’s College of Science and College of Engineering and Computing will work together with the NASA and NIST and nine other organizations for a first-of-its-kind project for a university in the Washington, D.C., area.

“This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for George Mason and our students," said Pachowicz. "Our team will design, build, and integrate the payload, which—because it’s going very high into geostationary orbit—must handle incredible challenges.”

With mission control based at George Mason on its Fairfax Campus, the team also includes Blue Canyon Technologies; California Institute of Technology; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Mississippi State University; Montreal Planetarium and iREx/University of Montreal; the University of Florida; the University of Hawaiʻi; the University of Minnesota, Duluth; and the University of Victoria.

With more accurate measurements, experts will use the improved data from the project to enhance understanding of stellar evolution, habitable zones or exoplanets in proximity to Earth, and refine dark energy parameters, setting a foundation for the next great leaps in scientific discovery. “When we look at a star with a telescope, no one can tell you today the rate of photons or brightness coming from it with the desired level of accuracy,” Plavchan, who is also the director of Mason’s Observatories in Fairfax, said. “We will now know exactly how many photons-per-second come out of this source to .25 percent accuracy.”

"Flux calibration is essential for astronomical research.” explained NIST’s Susana Deustua, a physical scientist in the NIST Remote Sensing Group. “We constantly ask: ‘How big? How bright? How far?’ and then ponder: ‘What is the universe made of? Are we alone?’ Accurate answers require precise measurements and excellent instrument characterization,” Deustua said.

Learn more at landolt.gmu.edu

Learn more about the mission

Landolt partners weigh in on importance of this mission

Did You Know

The Landolt Space Mission is named for the late astronomer Arlo Landolt, one of the most recognizable American astronomers. Renowned throughout the astronomical community for his discoveries, astronomers and physicists worldwide continue to use his series of papers, which established the “Landolt Photometric Standard Star Catalog,” and his standard stars are among the most heavily used photometric standards throughout the globe.

Find out more >>

Topics

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST

College of Engineering and Computing

Mason Momentum

George Mason, Howard receive $1 million from Google to launch Cybersecurity Clinic

Colleen Rich — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 19:11:38 +0000

George Mason, Howard receive $1 million from Google to launch Cybersecurity Clinic Colleen Rich Wed, 06/05/2024 - 15:11

The National Security Institute’s Cyber and Tech Center (CTC) at ��AV’s Antonin Scalia Law School and Howard University School of Business (HUSB) have been selected to receive $1 million in support from Google’s Cybersecurity Clinics Fund to establish the NSI CTC – HUSB Cybersecurity Clinic. The funding from Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, is part of a $25 million collaboration with the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics.

Hazel Hall at Mason Square. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Cybersecurity clinics at higher education institutions provide free digital security services to under-resourced organizations, similar to how law or medical schools offer free community clinics. The new NSI CTC – HUSB Cybersecurity Clinic will give students from George Mason and HUSB the opportunity to learn cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) skills in an effective, hands-on manner while simultaneously helping to protect vulnerable organizations and critical infrastructure, such as local small businesses, hospitals, schools, and nonprofit organizations, from cyber attacks.

The added opportunities for George Mason students come at a critical time and could prove beneficial in fueling the growing tech talent workforce needed for the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. Forty-one percent of the undergraduates of the Class of 2024—and 44 percent of the graduate students—earned degrees in STEM fields and the health sciences. Computer science was among the top five majors for bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degree recipients.

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Risks Report, cyber insecurity remains one of the top 10 global risks over the next 10 years. Currently, there are nearly 450,000 open cybersecurity jobs available in the United States, including more than 90,000 cybersecurity jobs across the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and demand for cyber professionals is projected to grow 32% by 2033. To ensure that communities, critical infrastructure, and businesses big and small across the United States are secure, a skilled, diverse, and AI savvy cybersecurity workforce is needed.

The NSI CTC – HUSB Cybersecurity Clinic is a jointly developed and run multidisciplinary clinic that educates and trains students from both universities on cybersecurity in a classroom and clinical setting. Thanks to the generous support of Google, the clinic will be able to provide students critical hands-on practical experience from faculty, lecturers, and mentors, enabling them to provide direct cybersecurity assistance to public critical infrastructure organizations, including state and local governments, K-12 schools, utilities, public hospitals, and small businesses within the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area—all of which are facing a barrage of cybersecurity threats without the resources to address these threats.

The region is not only a thriving tech hub, but it also houses numerous universities and other educational institutions that are training the next generation of cybersecurity practitioners. The new clinic seeks to ensure that tomorrow’s workforce is diverse, capable, and motivated to strengthen the overall cybersecurity resilience of the broader communities.

“Scalia Law is thrilled to be partnering with the Howard University School of Business and Google.org on this important effort to educate young leaders and drive positive cybersecurity outcomes in the local community,” said Ken Randall, Allison and Dorothy Rouse Dean and ��AV Foundation Professor of Law at the Scalia Law School.

“This funding from Google for a new cybersecurity clinic allows both institutions to extend our efforts to support workforce development in the region and increase exposure to this technology. The work of the clinic promises to be very impactful in addressing an important educational need in a critical technology area,” said Anthony D. Wilbon, PhD, dean of the Howard University School of Business.

“Both universities have deep ties to cybersecurity and innovation—from expert faculty to students eager to tackling tomorrow’s technology challenges—and the clinic will be a great step forward to broadening and diversifying the technology education pipeline in the region,” said Jessica Jones, deputy executive director of the National Security Institute.

“The world is in a moment where emerging technologies, like AI, are creating both new opportunities and threats in the world of cybersecurity,” said Heather Adkins, vice president of Security Engineering at Google. “It’s essential that we invest in growing a strong, diverse and widespread cybersecurity workforce to help protect everyone—from critical infrastructure to small businesses and schools.”

The NSI CTC – HUSB Cybersecurity Clinic is one of 15 new clinics set to launch in 2024 at higher education institutions across the country, thanks to a collaboration from Google and the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics. In addition to the Google.org support, the tech company is offering NSI CTC and HUSB volunteer mentorship from Google employees, Google Titan Security Keys, and scholarships for the Google Career Certificate in Cybersecurity. Learn more on Google’s blog and the consortium’s website.

The announcement builds on Google’s 2023 support for 10 clinics, part of a combined commitment to launch 25 Google-supported cyber clinics nationwide by 2025. With the latest round of funding, Google.org has now committed more than $25 million toward creating the diverse and AI- and digital-security savvy workforce needed to protect critical U.S. infrastructure from cyber-attacks.

Learn more about cybersecurity at George Mason

George Mason’s government contracting center is helping the Pentagon enter the 21st century

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 30 May 2024 16:17:30 +0000

George Mason’s government contracting center is helping the Pentagon enter the 21st century Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 05/30/2024 - 12:17

When the Pentagon attempts to field innovative technology, its contracting decisions are largely dictated by a process that predates personal computing. Known as the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) resourcing system, it betrays its mid-20th-century origins in its extreme emphasis on long-range management and sequential planning over more agile and rapid program execution.

Jerry McGinn

Calls for PPBE reform are nothing new in the halls of the Pentagon, but recent geopolitical threats have contributed to a general recognition within the federal government that change is badly needed to speed the development and acquisition of new military capabilities.

Hence Congress’s formation in 2022 of an independent commission tasked with closely assessing the current process and making specific recommendations for reform.

The Commission on PPBE Reform promptly engaged the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at ��AV as a key research partner. The center was awarded a $645,000 Department of Defense (DoD) research contract consisting of two projects.

First, the research team, headed by the center’s executive director Jerry McGinn, prepared six case studies documenting PPBE’s effect on DoD’s work with both research and development centers and industry to develop and adopt new technologies.

“We set up hypotheses and did background research on the programs,” McGinn says. “Our conclusions were based on a number of interviews with government and industry officials.”

For example, one of the case studies dealt with the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, for the development of AI-piloted combat drones. Five Air Force officials involved in CCA told the Baroni research team that PPBE complicated necessary collaborations with the Navy and other agencies, due to siloed budgeting protocols making it difficult to align priorities and make resource decisions in a timely manner.

Next, the Baroni research team turned their attention to three inter-related subtasks delving into specific rules governing PPBE’s application.

“For this project, we used a mixture of non-public DoD unclassified databases as well as information available to the general public,” says McGinn.

The researchers investigated whether PPBE should vary based on DoD’s acquisition categories or remain the same for all categories, concluding that the categories were similar enough to warrant a unified process. They were also asked to evaluate how military departments and agencies use PPBE’s various acquisition pathways, resulting in a determination that “budget justification documents, particularly for RDT&E (research, development, testing and evaluation), are overly complex, unnecessarily intricate, and lack standardization”. Finally, the researchers performed an extensive analysis of PPBE’s legal underpinnings and the wider governmental implications of reforming the process.

The team’s final report, submitted to the commission early in 2024, contained a consolidated list of dozens of findings and recommendations. In its own report issued in March 2024, the PPBE Reform Commission cited the Baroni team’s research numerous times.

“Our work played a large role in informing the Commission’s findings and reinforcing their policy recommendations,” McGinn noted. “These inputs are today being considered as Congress debates 2025 appropriations and DoD concurrently develops and vets the budget for 2026 and 2027.

Shortly after the release of the Commission’s report, the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting hosted a rollout event at Mason Square featuring the Commission’s chair, vice-chair and executive director. A series of additional events around PPBE reform are being planned for the summer.

“Our report reflects the strategic vision with which George Mason established this research center. Our research and analysis inform the federal government as well as the large government contracting industry here in the national capital region. Our relationships and location make the center uniquely situated to benefit policy-makers and entrepreneurs, alike,” McGinn says.

In This Story

John G. (Jerry) McGinn

Learn more about the Costello College of Business

Topics

Costello College of Business News

Costello College of Business Faculty Research

Center for Government Contracting

Center for Government Contracting News

Research

Mason Momentum

Campbell joins George Mason’s research enterprise

Colleen Rich — Thu, 23 May 2024 21:11:59 +0000

Campbell joins George Mason’s research enterprise Colleen Rich Thu, 05/23/2024 - 17:11

Sarah Campbell, ��AV’s new associate vice president of research for defense and security initiatives, joined the university in February 2024. She comes to George Mason with close to 20 years of experience in academia, government, and defense, most recently serving as the chief of staff at University of Maryland’s Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security. A George Mason alum, Campbell graduated with a master’s in international commerce and policy in 2011.

Sarah Campbell. Photo provided

What attracted you to this position at Mason?

I was attracted to this position and George Mason writ large because of the impact the university is making, and I wanted to be part of the future growth potential as we drive transformative change. George Mason is a young university so the faculty and staff here have a growth mindset and are adaptable to change faster than most organizations. My background aligns with the cross-disciplinary collaborative approach to achieving ambitious research and development goals. I have experienced successes at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the University of Maryland in large-scale research operations and strategic partnerships that will help propel the objectives of the Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact (ORIEI) well.

Yours is a new role in the Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact. What have you been charged to do in this role?

Over the course of the last year, ORIEI has been on an internal realignment/reorganization project to better serve the greater George Mason research community. To that effect, I will be working closely with the VPR [Andre Marshall] and the other members of his executive leadership team on this effort with the shared goal to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness, enhance Mason’s ability to scale research and build infrastructure, and improve risk management and compliance. I am also responsible for managing special projects that strengthen George Mason's position as a leader in innovation and research.

I will also focus on organizing and elevating the various defense and security initiatives to enhance the university's research profile. I will work closely with university leadership and the respective academic units to identify university-wide applied research goals, key resource needs, and funding sources to support defense and security programs at George Mason. I hope to advance a shared university-wide vision and execution for defense and security projects.

In your first weeks, you've been taking a deep dive into George Mason's research enterprise. What have you discovered?

I’ve confirmed what I already knew—George Mason is a wonderful and supportive community of incredibly accomplished and respected intellectual leaders. It is also clear the university has seen significant growth in research expenditures, furthering its competitive advantage as a large player in the area of research.

In those individuals with whom I’ve had the pleasure of connecting in my first few months, the dedication to breaking down silos for enhanced collaborative research is refreshing and something that will only continue to expand the research activity on campus in a way that benefits our faculty and students. This vibrant environment is ripe to further strategic initiatives, especially in the biohealth, sustainability, and quantum and digital innovation domains, which often have interesting intersections in the defense and security space.

What do you hope to tackle first?

My initial focus will be to enhance the infrastructure and systems supporting research collaboration, and ensure it is fully integrated with Mason's strategic objectives. As the research enterprise has grown significantly over the last several years, our infrastructure and supporting systems have not necessarily kept up, and we need to take a look at how we scale effectively and how we manage the ever-changing compliance environment for federal research for greatest impact.

What do you do for fun?

For fun I am usually consumed by the activities of my three very energetic school-aged sons. As a family, we also like to travel, go to the beach, attend sporting events, and spend time with friends. I personally enjoy cooking and exercising to decompress, along with getting outside when I can for long walks.

Join the Mason Nation

Topics

Faculty and Staff News

Research

Mason Momentum

George Mason receives $1.2 million to revolutionize Lyme disease testing

Colleen Rich — Wed, 15 May 2024 18:42:12 +0000

George Mason receives $1.2 million to revolutionize Lyme disease testing Colleen Rich Wed, 05/15/2024 - 14:42

��AV researchers have received $1.2 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of the Army to revolutionize Lyme disease detection and diagnosis with urine testing. Scientists from George Mason’s College of Science and College of Public Health aim to harness the many advantages of urine testing over other methods and increase mainstream adoption.

Photo by Getty Images

“We have developed a urine test for Lyme disease that detects the bacteria (Borrelia species) that causes Lyme disease, making it a direct test to confirm an infection soon after the tick bite,” said principal investigator Alessandra Luchini. "This leads to earlier treatment when necessary and could prevent the long-term debilitating effects of the disease.”

The current standard of care test for potential Lyme disease is an antibody blood test, which measures the immune system response to the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. In contrast, the George Mason test detects molecules derived from the bacteria themselves, which have the advantage of high specificity (accuracy) and early detection. The test matches the exact amino acid sequences (the building blocks of the bacterial molecules) that are found only in Borrelia and not in other organisms. For example, one of the proteins the George Mason scientists studied is part of the Borrelia flagellum, which allows the bacterium to move around the body.

In Mason’s clinical research trials, urine tests had a 90% true positive rate (sensitivity) and close to 100% specificity (true negative rate).

Researchers will use banked samples from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of acute Lyme patients from the Lyme Disease Biobank and banked specimens from Johns Hopkins University, respectively, who are recognized leader in clinical Lyme disease research.

Utilizing her 15 years of Lyme disease bacteria (Borrelia) research, Ashley Groshong, PhD, unit chief of the Bacterial Physiology and Metabolism Section of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institutes of Health, is collaborating on the project by evaluating the suitability of diagnostic indicators based on bacterial physiology.

Additionally, the George Mason study will pilot a collapsible urine collection cup shipped to a lab through the mail, making collection and diagnosis easier for more people to access through telehealth.

"A urine cup will offer a private, comfortable and convenient way to collect the sample at home without compromising the accuracy of the lab test,” said Lance Liotta, professor in the College of Science, co-director of Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, and co-principal investigator on the study. “Shipped in a semi-dry state that will preserve target proteins and protects again specimen degradation, this approach will improve specificity, which has been a weakness of previous testing approaches."

Lyme disease is the most common animal-to-human transmitted disease in the United States with approximately 476,000 people diagnosed and treated each year—and it is on the rise. If not treated quickly and properly, those bitten can suffer from prolonged symptoms (called Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome), such as concentration and memory issues, dizziness, fatigue, body aches, depression, and difficulty sleeping.

“This is a significant collaboration to advance diagnostics for Lyme disease,” said Melissa J. Perry, dean of the College of Public Health and co-investigator of the study. “This study will have a major impact on the timely diagnosis of Lyme. In my capacity as an epidemiologist, I am thrilled to work with Drs. Luchini, Liotta, and [Virginia] Espina, and Dr. [Jenna] Krall in her capacity as a biostatistician.”

This three-year study will take place in the same Mason CAP/CLIA Clinical Proteomics Laboratory that implemented the innovative saliva COVID test. The lab is run by Espina, who is a collaborator on the grant.

In 2022, Luchini, Liotta, and the CAPMM team were one of 10 Phase 1 winners of the LymeX Diagnostics Prize by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation.

In early 2023, CAPMM received $820,000 in federal funding to establish a clinic that will help combat Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. The project, championed by U.S. Representative Jennifer Wexton, was part of the federal omnibus appropriations bill that President Biden signed into law to fund the government through Fiscal Year 2023. The federal funds will be used to launch the clinical deployment of diagnostic testing that will allow for a quicker and more efficient diagnosis.

This work will be supported by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs through the Tick-Borne Disease Research Program, endorsed by the Department of Defense. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Department of Defense.

Did you know...

George Mason's Lyme disease test started as a student project in the Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program. Watch our original discussion with Temple Douglas on our YouTube channel.

Build your own research experience with ASSIP

Topics

Research

College of Public Health

College of Science

Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM)

Strategic Direction

Mason Momentum

Mason professors are researching hacker psychology to defend against cyberattacks

Colleen Rich — Thu, 02 May 2024 13:39:13 +0000

Mason professors are researching hacker psychology to defend against cyberattacks Colleen Rich Thu, 05/02/2024 - 09:39

A team of ��AV researchers is probing the psychology behind cyberattacks as part of a U.S. intelligence community program aimed at turning the tables on hackers.

Illustration by Getty Images

As the prevalence and severity of cyberattacks continue to grow, the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity (IARPA) has turned its focus on how best to exploit the weakest link in cyberattacks: the human factor.

Under a new IARPA program, researchers hope to better understand cyber attackers’ cognitive vulnerabilities and decision-making biases and use those vulnerabilities to derail future attacks.

Researchers Daniel Barbará, Giuseppe Ateniese, and Gerald Matthews were recently selected as part of a broader team of computer science, cybersecurity, and psychology experts to forge new research pathways and deliver cutting-edge technology as part of IARPA’s Reimagining Security with Cyberpsychology-Informed Network Defense, or ReSCIND, program.

Daniel Barbara. Photo by Office of University Branding

The team of researchers will build defensive tools that first cue in on hackers’ human limitations and use those weaknesses to delay or derail the attack while it is underway.

“You want to make them waste their time,” said Barbará, a computer science professor at George Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing. “The more they waste their time, the least damage they’re going to do.”

This can be accomplished by luring hackers with decoys such as false networks or documents to distract them.

But the trick is two-fold. The decoys must first and foremost appear to be real. They also need to entice the hackers away from their original aim. The latter is where understanding the psychological factors that influence hackers is essential.

As part of the first phase of the ReSCIND program, researchers will aim to fill gaps that exist in the current understanding of human cognition and decision making that influence cyber attackers’ behavior.

“It’s a challenging topic to address because hackers, of course, tend to be somewhat secretive,” Matthews, a professor of psychology at George Mason, said. “There aren’t many opportunities to study hacker psychology.”

Giuseppe Ateniese. Photo provided

Matthews said the current understanding of hackers’ behavior that provides the baseline for their research comes from several areas of study in psychology. Key among those areas is human performance and in particular how emotional states might influence performance.

“Hackers themselves are under pressure and potentially anxious about getting caught,” Matthews said. “They’re anxious about looking foolish to the people that they are working with.”

Cultural factors that motivate hackers are also important to consider and may vary greatly among hackers. Thrill-seeking college-age hackers, for example, would have different cultural norms and motives than highly trained professionals acting on behalf of a nation-state adversary, Matthews said.

Researchers hope to further understand the full scope of psychological factors that influence hackers, including how to measure, predict, and induce their cognitive vulnerabilities.

“There’s a certain amount of psychology that allows you to link the emotional reactions that hackers might have to cognitive biases and other vulnerabilities in performance,” Matthews said. “So, in this first part of the research, we’re trying to sketch out what some of those vulnerabilities might be.”

As part of the second phase, researchers will further define when cyberpsychology-informed defenses can best be used and how to determine the success of those defenses. The final phase will focus on modeling, adapting, and automating those defenses.

Ateniese, a computer science professor and eminent scholar in cybersecurity, said the ReSCIND program reflects the growing importance of cyberpsychology research in shaping emerging technology.

Gerald Matthews. Photo provided

“I see a myriad of excellent applications, not just this project,” Ateniese said. “As you can imagine, people today are building AI systems that either mimic or seek to improve upon human behavior. So, the psychology perspective is very intriguing.”

The ReSCIND program will run for nearly four years and is being carried out through research contracts awarded across five teams.

Barbará, Ateniese, and Matthews’ research will contribute to a ReSCIND contract awarded to SRI International, an independent nonprofit research institute headquartered in California.

The George Mason team will work alongside experts from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Margin Research, Research and Assessment Design: Science Solution, Two Six Technologies, University of Florida, and Virtual Reality Medical Center.

In many ways, the project is a natural progression for the three professors who have worked together on several previous projects requiring a multidisciplinary approach.

They were first introduced in 2021 by Amarda Shehu, a computer science professor and co-director at the time of the George Mason’s transdisciplinary Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships (CAHMP).

A call for proposals from Virginia’s Commonwealth Cyber Initiative for a project that sought to bridge cybersecurity and human factors research to help users build secure passwords immediately brought to mind Barbará, Ateniese, and Matthews’ expertise.

“I always had the agenda of putting teams together and finding some funding opportunities so that then they could obtain preliminary results through which to demonstrate credibility for larger projects,” Shehu said.

The match has led to a series of successful projects by the team, including the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative password project and a project focused on distinguishing authentic videos from deepfakes.

“The IARPA project is, in some sense, an example of the culmination of an activity, how you put a team together,” Shehu said. “They find some funding so that they can start that relationship and then that kind of blossoms into a larger project. It's really a perfect example of what we want to see in […] in general at Mason in terms of transdisciplinary research and the fruit of that research.”

Shehu, now associate vice president for research for Mason’s Institute for Digital Innovation, said bringing teams together with broad collective expertise is critical to solving the most complex impediments to technological progress.

“The most challenging problems nowadays don't reside specifically within one discipline,” she said. “They bridge disciplines.”

In This Story

Amarda Shehu

Daniel Barbará

Giuseppe Ateniese

Mason Momentum

George Mason scientist secures $1.4M DTRA grant to study viruses’ impact on organ health

Learn more about research at ����AV

Related Stories

Topics

When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing

In This Story

Related Stories

Topics

Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan

Find pathways to peace at the Carter School

In This Story

Related News

Topics

George Mason to Launch Nation’s First Center for Small Business AI Innovation with $1M Grant

In This Story

Join the Mason Nation

Related News

Topics

����AV announces its first NASA Space Mission, which seeks to uncover the secrets of dark energy

Learn more about the mission

Landolt partners weigh in on importance of this mission

Did You Know

Topics

George Mason, Howard receive $1 million from Google to launch Cybersecurity Clinic

Learn more about cybersecurity at George Mason

Related News

More from Mason Spirit Magazine

George Mason’s government contracting center is helping the Pentagon enter the 21st century

In This Story

Learn more about the Costello College of Business

Related News

Topics

Campbell joins George Mason’s research enterprise

What attracted you to this position at Mason?

Yours is a new role in the Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact. What have you been charged to do in this role?

In your first weeks, you've been taking a deep dive into George Mason's research enterprise. What have you discovered?

What do you hope to tackle first?

What do you do for fun?

Read more about Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact

Join the Mason Nation

Related News

Topics

George Mason receives $1.2 million to revolutionize Lyme disease testing

Did you know...

Build your own research experience with ASSIP

Related News

Topics

Mason professors are researching hacker psychology to defend against cyberattacks

In This Story

Related Stories

More from Mason Spirit Magazine

Learn more about research at ��AV

��AV announces its first NASA Space Mission, which seeks to uncover the secrets of dark energy