Science & Technology

Thema Monroe-White

Andrew J Schappert — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 13:05:07 +0000

Thema Monroe-White Andrew J Schappert Mon, 07/15/2024 - 09:05

Associate Professor

Contact Information

tmonroew@gmu.edu
Van Metre Hall, Room 631
3351 Fairfax Drive, MS 3B1
Arlington, Virginia 22201

Personal Websites

Google Scholar

ORCID

ResearchGate

Biography

Thema (pron: Tay-mah) Monroe-White is an Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Policy in the Schar School of Policy and Government and Department of Computer Science (joint) at ��AV. Her broad interests include bias mitigation in artificial intelligence (AI), critical quantitative and computational methods, and racial equity in innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E). As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work explores the systemic biases that affect the workforce and educational journeys of racially minoritized groups within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. She is particularly concerned with understanding the pathways to achieving social and economic empowerment for minoritized groups via I&E, AI literacy, and emancipatory data science.

She has received multiple NSF awards to investigate issues of racial equity in the STEM ecosystem, including serving as a lead member of the research team for the Inclusion in Innovation Initiative (i4), a $3.5 million cooperative partnership to develop a national infrastructure for diversity and inclusion within the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) Program. Inspired by her collaborative research on intersectional inequalities in science, she has also received funding to investigate the harms of structural racism on the scientific enterprise, and the benefits derived by the inclusion of historically marginalized groups in the scientific workforce.

Dr. White is a Fellow of the Institute in Critical Quantitative and Mixed Methodologies (ICQCM), and in 2021 she was appointed a three-year term as a special government employee data scientist on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Technical Advisory Committee (BLSTAC). She serves as a senior advisor for multiple non-profit, community, and philanthropic agencies on equitable pathways in data science education, race and gender equity in the AI workforce, and fostering diversity in STEM entrepreneurship. She is a sought-after speaker at several national and international conferences, including invited panels at the National Academies, and the White House.

Thema holds a Ph.D. in science, technology, and innovation policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as Master's and Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology from Howard University.

Areas of Research

Artificial intelligence
Comparative Studies
Critical Quantitative and Computational Methods
Data Science Education
Economics, Development & Public Finance
Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Methods & Data Science
Public Private & Nonprofit Management
Racial Equity in STEM
Science & Technology

Degrees

PhD, Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Master of Science, Developmental Neuropsychology, Howard University
Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, Howard University

Select Publications

Kozlowski, D., Monroe‐White, T., Larivière, V., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2024). The Howard‐Harvard effect: Institutional reproduction of intersectional inequalities. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.
Shieh, E., Vassel, F. M., Sugimoto, C., & Monroe-White, T. (2024). Laissez-Faire Harms: Algorithmic Biases in Generative Language Models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.07475.
Monroe-White, T., & McGee, E. (2024). Toward a race-conscious entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy 7(2), 161-189.
Monroe-White, T., & Lecy, J. (2023). The Wells-Du Bois Protocol for machine learning bias: building critical quantitative foundations for third sector scholarship. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 34(1), 170-184.
Kozlowski, D., Larivière, V., Sugimoto, C. R., & Monroe-White, T. (2022). Intersectional inequalities in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(2), e2113067119.
Kozlowski, D., Murray, D. S., Bell, A., Hulsey, W., Larivière, V., Monroe-White, T., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2022). Avoiding bias when inferring race using name-based approaches. Plos one, 17(3), e0264270.
Monroe-White, T.^*(2021, June). Emancipatory Data Science: A Liberatory Framework for Mitigating Data Harms and Fostering Social Transformation. In 2021 ACM SIGMIS Computers and People Research Conference, June 2021.

Mason Department of Statistics welcomes new faculty

Rena Malai — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 16:32:42 +0000

Mason Department of Statistics welcomes new faculty Rena Malai Tue, 12/14/2021 - 11:32

In This Story

The ��AV Department of Statistics welcomed eight new faculty members in 2020 – 2021.

“The research portfolios of these new faculty members are excellent, representing wide-ranging important fields in modern statistics and data science,” says Jiayang Sun, department chair.

The new faculty members, listed alphabetically, are as follows: Jonathan Auerbach, Isuru Dassanayake, Inchi Hu, David Kepplinger, Ben Seiyon Lee, Mary Meyer, Kenneth Pasiah, and Lily Wang.

According to Kepplinger, the Department of Statistics, which is a part of the School of Computing within Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing, is poised for growth.

“The research culture at Mason and the statistics department, in particular, is built around the idea of collaboration,” he says. “Everyone is open to sharing ideas and joining forces.”

A recent article in AMSTAT News describes the background of each of the eight new hires, who are internationally recognized experts in the areas of health care, economics, technology, clinical trials, and public policy. 

Topics

Department of Statistics

health care

economics

Science & Technology

Jonathan L. Gifford

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 22:10:54 +0000

Jonathan L. Gifford Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/04/2021 - 17:10

Professor; Director, Center for Transportation Public-Private Partnership Policy

Contact Information

jgifford@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-2275
Fax: 801-749-9198
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 527
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Personal Websites

Center for Transportation Public-Private Partnership Policy

Biography

Jonathan L. Gifford is a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at ��AV, and the director of the Center for Transportation Public-Private Partnership Policy.

His primary area of expertise is transportation and public policy, with a particular focus on transportation and infrastructure finance. His recent research investigates transportation finance and the role of public private partnerships.

Gifford's book Flexible Urban Transportation (Pergamon 2003) examines policies to improve the flexibility of urban transportation systems. He has also studied the role of standards in the development and adoption of technology, particularly technological cooperation across jurisdictional boundaries through coalitions and consortia. A case in point is the E-ZPass highway toll tag, now adopted by millions of households in the U.S. Mandatory standards setting processes, which are more common in Europe and Asia, have met with less successful adoption and serious implementation problems.

He has twice chaired committees of the National Academy of Sciences that reviewed the U.S. Department of Transportation standards program for intelligent transportation systems (2002-03 and 2006-07).

Gifford teaches master's classes in transportation policy in the Schar School. He has also taught a course on the interstate highway system as a socio-technical system as part of the Mason's Honors in General Education, which examines the history and development of the interstate highway system, and the role it has played in the development of modern America.

He received a BS in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MS and PhD in civil engineering (transportation) at the University of California, Berkeley, with doctoral minors in economics and urban and regional planning. His dissertation examined the history and development of the interstate highway system from its origins in the 1930s through its design and deployment in the 1960s and beyond.

View Jonathan L. Gifford's CV

Areas of Research

Civil Engineering
Development and Delivery
Federalism/State and Local Government
Fiscal Policy and Budgeting
Infrastructure Finance
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs or P3s)
Regional Development
Transportation Policy
Urban Policy

James K. Conant

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 21:11:38 +0000

James K. Conant Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/06/2020 - 17:11

Professor Emeritus of Policy and Government

Contact Information

jconant@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-1416
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 631
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Biography

James K. Conant is Professor Emeritus of Policy and Government at ��AV. His research and publications are focused on public budgeting and financial management, executive branch organization and management, homeland security, and environmental policy and management.

His work has been published in Public Administration Review, Public Budgeting and Finance, Municipal Finance Journal, Review of Public Personnel Administration, The International Journal of Public Administration, State and Local Government Review, Journal of Environmental Practice, and other journals and edited books. He is coeditor of Dollars and Sense: Policy Choices and the Wisconsin Budget (1991), the author of Wisconsin Politics and Government: America’s Laboratory of Democracy (2006), and the lead author of the Life Cycles of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency: 1970–2035 (2016). Conant has contributed original research to two national commissions on the public service (Volker Commission; Winter Commission), and he has served as a consultant to a variety of organizations in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors, including environmental protection, transportation, education, human services, and homeland security organizations.

Conant has been a member of the faculty at Mason since 1996. At Mason, he has served as associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and as MPA director. Before joining the faculty at Mason, he served on the faculties at Rutgers University, New York University, and the University of Oklahoma, and as a Visiting Professor at the LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He received his PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Areas of Research:

Environmental Policy
Environmental Protection
Executive Branch Organization and Management
Federalism/State and Local Government
Leadership
Organizations
Public Administration
Public Budgeting
Public Law
Homeland Security

Kenneth J. Button

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 20:56:20 +0000

Kenneth J. Button Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/06/2020 - 16:56

University Professor Emeritus of Policy and Government

Contact Information

kbutton@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-4647
Fax: 703-993-1574
Fairfax Campus, Aquia Building, Room 539
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
MSN: 3F4

Biography

Kenneth Button is a professor of public policy at the ��AV Schar School of Policy and Government and a world-renowned expert on transportation policy. He has published, or has in press, some 80 books and more than 400 academic papers in the field of transport economics, transport planning, environmental analysis, and industrial organization. Some of his recent books include Airline Deregulation: An International Perspective (David Fulton Publishing), Flying into the Future: Air Transport Policy in the European Union (Edward Elgar Publishing), Handbook of Transport Modelling (Pergamon Press), Transport, the Environment and Sustainable Development (E & FN Spon publishing), Meta-analysis in Environmental Economics (Kluwer), and Air Transport Networks (Edward Elgar Publishing).

Before coming to the Schar School, Button was an advisor to the Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development where he headed up the OECD work on International Aviation (which produced The Future of International Air Transport Policy: Responding to Global Change).

He has previously held visiting academic posts at the University of British Columbia and the University of California at Berkeley. In the two years prior to his secondment to the OECD, he completed consultancy work for the ICAO in Brazil as well as studies for the European Union, Transport Canada, the European Conference of Ministers of Transport, the UN-DDSMS, and the World Bank. Button was a director of the transport consultancy firm Pearce, Sharp and Associates which specialized in work on transport. He was the Special Advisor to the U.K. House of Common Transport Committee between 1993 and 1994. In 1990, he had been seconded to the OECD to assist in the preparation of documentation for its five yearly meeting of Ministers of Environment.

Since 1996, Button has contributed invited presentations to international conferences in the U.K., Canada, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Cyprus, Belgium, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Chile, Italy, South Africa, and Korea as well as in the U.S. he has testified before the U.S. Congress on air transport issues. He serves as editor of the leading international academic journals Transportation Research Part D: Transport and the Environment and the Journal of Air Transport Management, and sits on the editorial boards of nine other journals. He is on the scientific committee of the World Conference on Transport Research and the Advisory Board of the Air Transport Research Group.

View CV

Areas of Research

Economics of Privatization and Regulation
Environmental Economics
Regional Economics
Transport Planning
Transportation Economics
Urban Economics

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 20:17:50 +0000

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/06/2020 - 16:17

Associate Professor

Contact Information

sbenouag@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-1109
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 668
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Biography

Organization and management of weapons programs; tacit knowledge and weapons development; Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) terrorism, ethics and science; WMD export controls; WMD-related trafficking in the former Soviet states; sanctions and proliferation financing; bioweapons dissuasion.

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley is an associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at ��AV. She holds affiliations with Mason's Biodefense Program, Center for Global Studies, and the Department of History and Art History’s Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) program.

Prior to joining the Mason faculty in 2008, Ben Ouagrham-Gormley was a senior research associate with the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). While at CNS, she spent two years at the CNS Almaty office in Kazakhstan, where she served as director of research. She also was the founding editor-in-chief of the International Export Control Observer, a monthly publication focusing on proliferation developments and export controls around the globe. From 2004 to 2008, she was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Ben Ouagrham-Gormley has conducted research and written on such topics as nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons proliferation, organization and management of weapons programs, WMD trafficking in states of the former Soviet Union, biosecurity and bioterrorism, bio-dissuasion, export controls, defense industry conversion, transfer mechanisms of WMD expertise, and redirection of WMD experts. She has received several grants from the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy, as well as from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Carnegie Corporation of New York to conduct research on WMD proliferation and contribute to remediation programs such as the DOD-funded Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.

She received her PhD in development economics from the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris; a graduate degree in strategy and defense policy from the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Paris; a master’s degree in applied foreign languages (triple major in economics, law, and foreign languages—Russian and English) from the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and a dual undergraduate degree in applied foreign languages and English Literature from the University of Paris X-Nanterre. She is fluent in French, English, Russian, and spoken Arabic, and possesses beginner competence in Kazakh.

View Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley's CV

Areas of Research

Arms Control and Nonproliferation
Biodefense
Ethics and Weapons Development
Former Soviet States
Health and Security
Illicit Trade
International Security
Knowledge Management
Qualitative Methods
Science and Technology Studies
Weapons of Mass Destruction

Edmund Zolnik

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 19:58:22 +0000

Edmund Zolnik Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/05/2020 - 15:58

Associate Professor

Contact Information

ezolnik@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-1144
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 653
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Biography

Edmund J. Zolnik is an associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at ��AV. His major areas of expertise are community and regional development; safe and sustainable transportation; and multilevel modeling.

Zolnik is involved in numerous research projects supported by federal agencies such as the United States Geological Survey, the Economic Development Administration, and the General Services Administration. He is also involved in research projects supported by the following local agencies: Loudoun County; Parking and Transportation Services at ��AV; and INOVA Hospital.

Prior to joining the Schar School, Zolnik was a member of the faculties of the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science at Mason and of the Department of Geography at Binghamton University in New York.

View Edmund Zolnik's CV

Louise I. Shelley

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 17:43:24 +0000

Louise I. Shelley Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/05/2020 - 13:43

Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy, University Professor; Director, Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center

Contact Information

lshelley@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-9749
Fax: 703-993-8193
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 714
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Biography

Louise Shelley is the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair and a University Professor at ��AV. She is in the Schar School of Policy and Government and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) that she founded.

Shelley is a leading expert on the relationship among terrorism, organized crime, and corruption as well as human trafficking, transnational crime, and terrorism with a particular focus on the former Soviet Union. She also specializes in illicit financial flows and money laundering. She was an inaugural Andrew Carnegie fellow. While on the Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio fellowship, she wrote the book, Dark Commerce: How a New Illicit Economy is Threatening our Future, on illicit trade, the new technology, and sustainability, published by Princeton University Press in November 2018.

Her previous books include Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism, published by Cambridge University Press, and Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge 2010). She has also authored Policing Soviet Society (Routledge, 1996), Lawyers in Soviet Worklife, and Crime and Modernization, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on all aspects of transnational crime and corruption. She is also an editor (with Sally Stoecker) of Human Traffic and Transnational Crime: Eurasian and American Perspectives.

From 1995-2014, Shelley ran programs in Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia with leading specialists on the problems of organized crime and corruption. She has also been the principal investigator of large-scale projects on money laundering from Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia and of training of law enforcement persons on the issue of trafficking in persons as well as wildlife trafficking She has testified before the House Committee on International Relations Committee, the Helsinki Commission, the House Banking Committee, the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Task Force on Terrorist Financing on transnational crime, human trafficking and the links between transnational crime, financial crime, and terrorism. Shelley served on the Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade and Organized Crime of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and was the first cochair of its Council on Organized Crime. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has spoken at various international fora and at many universities both in the United States and abroad on transnational crime, terrorism, human trafficking, illicit trade, and corruption. Additionally, she often appears on television and radio, including appearances on CNN, NPR’s Marketplace and Takeaway, PBS, A&E, the History Channel, C-Span, Tavis Smiley, Kojo Nnamdi and 60 Minutes as well as in the European media such as BBC, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Die Welt.

Shelley received her undergraduate degree cum laude from Cornell University in penology and Russian literature. She holds an MA in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. She studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University on IREX and Fulbright fellowships and holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. She held a Fulbright and researched and taught on crime issues in Mexico. She has also taught on transnational crime in Italy. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim, NEH, IREX, Kennan Institute, and Fulbright fellowships and received a MacArthur grant to establish the Russian Organized Crime Study Centers and completed a MacArthur grant studying nonstate actors and nuclear proliferation. In 1992, she received the Scholar-Teacher prize of American University, the top academic award of the university.

View Louise I. Shelley's CV

Areas of Research

Corruption
Eurasia
Human Trafficking
Illicit Trade
International Security
Terrorism
Transnational Crime

Laurie Schintler

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 07:53:21 +0000

Laurie Schintler Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/05/2020 - 03:53

Associate Professor of Public Policy; Director, Data and Technology Research Initiatives, Center for Regional Analysis

Contact Information

lschintl@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-2256
Fax: 703-993-0811
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 537
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Biography

Laurie A. Schintler is an associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at ��AV, where she also serves as director of data and technology research initiatives in the Center for Regional Analysis.

Her primary areas of expertise and research focus include big data, emerging technologies, transportation, critical infrastructure, and quantitative methods. In these areas, she has numerous peer-reviewed publications, reports, and conference proceedings, coedited volumes, and grants and contracts.

Schintler is area editor for Journal of Networks and Spatial Economics, associate editor for Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, and a councilor-at-large for the Regional Science Association International (RSAI, 2017-19). She is a founding member of the Regional Science Academy (tRSA) and a holder of a U.S. patent.

She received her PhD in regional and urban planning in 1996 from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

View Laurie Schintler's CV

Areas of Research

Gender
Quantitative Methods
Regional Development
Science and Technology Policy
Transportation Policy
Social Media
“Big Data”
Information Technology

Stephen Ruth

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 07:46:52 +0000

Stephen Ruth Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/05/2020 - 03:46

Professor Emeritus of Public Policy

Contact Information

ruth@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-1789
Fax: 703-536-4121
Mason Square, Van Metre Hall, Room 541
3351 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
MSN: 3B1

Biography

Stephen Ruth is a professor emeritus of public policy at ��AV and director of the International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology (ICASIT). His research interests are focused on the problems of policy and strategic planning associated with leveraging the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in large organizations, particular emphasis on telecommunications policy, green IT, return on investment metrics for e-Learning and telework.

Ruth’s consultancies include U.S. Department of State, National Archives and Records Administration, Inter-American Development Bank, Price Waterhouse Coopers, American Management Systems, Inc., Carolina Population Center at University of North Carolina, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Ateneo S.A.(Argentina), National Training Laboratories, The World Bank, Soros Foundations, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, United Nations Development Programme, Navy War College, General Services Administration, Fairfax County (Virginia), and others.

As director of ICASIT, Ruth has received close to 30 grant and contract awards totaling over $3 million and has also served as associate director of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s $2 million Internet Technology Innovation Center project, which linked Virginia’s university research centers to the high-tech businesses in the state. His international IT projects cover over 20 sites in Africa, Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe.

He has been chair, Technical Committee on Personal Computing, IEEE Computer Society, and was elected to a three-year term to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Council of Affiliates for International Programs. He has also served as vice president of the American Society for Cybernetics and on the Board of Advisors for the Czech Management Center, an MBA-granting school near Prague affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh.

Ruth was a Distinguished Lecturer for the Association for Computing Machinery for 10 years and was selected for two senior Fulbright lectureships, both in Argentina. He has received a Distinguished Professor award at ��AV, and was a Virginia Outstanding Professor honoree, with a prize of $5,000. He is author or coauthor of more than 120 published articles and four books.

He received his BS from the U.S. Naval Academy and MS from the Navy Postgraduate School, and served 23 years in the Navy, retiring with the rank of Captain. His PhD is from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

View Stephen Ruth's CV

Areas of Research

Carceral Studies--Introducing Tablets and Imbedded Instruction in Jails and Prisons
Learning Technology Interventions in Postsecondary Education
Public Policy and Abrahamic Faith Traditions
Science and Technology
Social Policy