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Both Amanda Madden, assistant professor of history at George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, and her colleague Rachel Midura at Virginia Tech have extensive experience as digital historians specializing in the history of information. Over the years, Madden and Midura have learned that while working with current or historical maps, it is important to ask the question, “What is not included in this map?  What past conditions — including settlement patterns, road networks, shifting political boundaries, and altered coastlines and waterways are not integrated that might tell a deeper story about the area?”

While Madden and Midura have developed the skills to look deeper at what is missing from maps, they know that is difficult to integrate these important skills into traditional classroom settings.  “Students often face a real psychological barrier when learning technical skills in formal instructional contexts – they are reluctant to ask questions, experiment freely, and are concerned about potentially faltering in front of instructors and peers,” explains Madden. However, Madden and Midura recognized the present and growing call for researchers to be proficient in digital mapping skills.

The two shared a passion to develop a framework which would give students an opportunity to learn these valuable skills in a meaningful way.  After receiving Madden’s proposal, “Historical Mapathons: Team-Based GIS Training and Transformation of Seventeenth-Century Maps,” 4-VA agreed, and the team was awarded a grant to address this challenge.  Madden solicited Jessica Otis of George Mason, and Midura called on Jessica Taylor at VT to work on the project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Together, they developed a model based on the mapathon concept — creating a low-stakes, hands-on environment where students could build digital skills through experimentation and peer learning, free from the evaluative pressures of a course setting. To do so, they piloted a collaborative model for the crowd-sourced creation of an open, authoritative repository of historical Geographic Information System (GIS) layers — one designed to be accessible to researchers and students across institutions and career stages.

The team held a series of meetings to build the structure and flow of the mapathons. They identified participant needs and designed the events to incorporate the broader objectives of building a shared historical GIS frame. In parallel, Otis and Taylor developed training materials tailored to participants at varying levels of GIS experience with the goal of creating an inclusive, collaborative environment for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Their next step was to put the plan into action. They scheduled a mapathon event at both George Mason University and Virginia Tech. 

The first mapathon at George Mason attracted 25 undergraduate and graduate students. The event introduced participants to collaborative historical GIS workflows, with hands-on training centered on the digitization of geospatial features from two seventeenth-century Venetian maps. Over the course of the day, students collectively produced a library of early modern shapefiles, contributing directly to a shared historical layer repository.

 

Participant feedback was strongly positive, with students noting both the accessibility of the training format and the value of working collaboratively on a shared dataset. “The response made it clear that this was a format students genuinely needed,” says Madden.

A decision was made to host a follow-up event at George Mason due to the interest generated by the initial session and the rejoinder from students unable to attend. Fifteen students participated at the second mapathon. Midura drove from Blacksburg to be part of the day, and saw firsthand the enthusiasm students showed for the collective approach to GIS learning.

A third mapathon was held at Virginia Tech. Three graduate teaching assistants from George Mason University — Cassandra Farrell, Savannah Scott, and Lazlo Taba — traveled to Virginia Tech to help facilitate the session, cementing the team’s commitment to build a truly collaborative, cross-institutional training model. At the third mapathon, participants were introduced to Recogito, a platform for annotating and georeferencing historical maps and texts. This addition allowed the expansion of the methodological range for the training series and gave students further hands-on experience with a complementary set of digital humanities tools.

All three mapathon events were well received, with students consistently noting the value of the collaborative, hands-on format and the opportunity to contribute to a real research dataset.

The interest generated by the series continues to expand. Students have subsequently reached out to request additional training opportunities, confirming that the mapathon model successfully fostered genuine ongoing engagement with historical GIS and digital humanities methods rather than just a one-time participation.

Grant funds were used to hire research assistant Katie Kania to develop tutorials and instructional resources based on the training materials and workflows piloted at the events, producing reusable, publicly accessible resources that would extend the reach of the project beyond the original participant cohort and support future historical GIS and Recogito training efforts.  The results are now available on an open platform to share with a broader audience.

Madden plans to continue releasing tutorials and instructional resources, with the goal of completing a publicly accessible suite of materials covering the full range of tools and workflows introduced across the mapathon series. In addition, Otis and Taylor are currently co-authoring an article on the project’s methodological and pedagogical contributions — including the viability of the crowd-sourced, cross-institutional mapathon model for building shared historical GIS infrastructure, the challenges of training participants with varying levels of technical experience, and the potential for scaling this approach to other regional and thematic contexts. The article will contribute to ongoing conversations in the digital humanities about sustainable, community-driven approaches to historical geospatial data creation.

The project’s impact has also extended beyond the university classroom. Farrell, one of the graduate teaching assistants who is a PhD student in the Department of History at George Mason and a librarian at the Library of Virginia, is drawing directly on her experience with the project. She has developed and hosted her own public-facing mapathon, demonstrating the model’s adaptability beyond an academic training context and its potential to engage broader public audiences in collaborative historical geospatial work.

“The mapathon model proved to be a demonstrably effective approach to digital skills training, both in terms of participant engagement and tangible research outputs,” says Madden. Building on this success, Otis and Taylor plan to expand the series during the next academic year, with several additional mapathon events planned across both institutions. These future events will expand the educational resources, refined workflows, and lessons learned from the inaugural series, with the aim of deepening the project’s reach among students and contributing further to the shared historical geospatial infrastructure the project has already developed.

Looking ahead, Madden plans to seek external funding to support the development of an interactive website that would serve as a comprehensive, publicly accessible hub for the project’s growing collection of historical geospatial resources. Explains Madden, “The platform will consolidate the tutorials, shapefiles, and educational materials produced through the mapathon series into a single, user-friendly environment, making them more discoverable and usable for researchers, educators, and students working with early modern historical data across institutions.”

Concludes Madden, “The gap between student interest and student confidence in this area has been something I have wanted to address for some time. This grant gave me the resources and the collaborative framework to do that.  Thanks to 4-VA and our team, we were able to successfully reach, and surpass, our goals!”

                   

 

Scientists have long recognized that both wild and captive populations of endangered species are at a high risk for loss of genetic diversity due to their rarity. With small or isolated populations, genetic diversity can be lost through stochastic genetic drift or breeding between close relatives. Therefore, proper management of captive populations is critical to ensure long-term sustainability. The struggle, however, is how to efficiently and economically collect and analyze high-resolution genetic data that can fill the knowledge information gaps in effective breeding practices.

Haw Chuan Lim, Associate Professor in George Mason’s College of Science, Department of Biology, saw an opportunity to combine the experience and knowledge of other experts in the field to develop a novel genomic tool to address this issue.

The researchers created and validated the application of a novel genetic probe-set. It was used to generate data from different types of genetic markers with complementary features such as ease of genotyping, presence throughout the genome, and high information content. The team reasoned that a study conducted on one animal could provide a platform for application to other endangered species.

The Eastern mountain bongo, a critically imperiled ungulate native to Kenya, was identified as a test species. Although fewer than 140 bongos remain In the wild, there are approximately 160 bongos in U.S. zoos and several hundred more on private ranches.  As such, breeding and transfer strategies that increase genetic diversity and reduce inbreeding of captive animals are critical for the survival of the species.

The 4-VA@Mason Advisory Board saw the value in Lim’s proposal, “Development of a novel genotyping panel for powerful and cost-effective evaluations of population structure and kinship in the critically endangered mountain bongo” and approved it for funding.

GMU researchers, Lim and his PhD student, Karen Holm, assembled their team — Aakrosh Ratan, Assistant Professor, University of Virginia; Klaus-Peter Koepfli, Senior Research Scientist, Smithsonian Mason School of Conservation; and Budhan Pukazhenthi, Research Physiologist, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. 4VA funding was used to purchase the necessary supplies, reagents and equipment including DNA tests and probe sets.

Four types of samples—whole blood, fecal swabs, tissues, and extracted DNA—from 39 North American conservation centers and zoos were collected to begin the project. This resulted in a total of 207 samples from both current and historical ex situ populations (populations outside of the native ranges). They evaluated the effectiveness of the probe-set in generating high-quality genetic data from different sample types and for different genetic marker types. The data obtained are now being accessed for their ability to produce accurate information on animal kinship, genetic diversity and population structure, which will ultimately be used to guide precise captive breeding programs.

Some preliminary data, as well as a chromosome-level genome assembly, have already been published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information and at https://www.dnazoo.org/copy-of-assemblies/tragelaphus_eurycerus_isaaci.  A high-quality genome serves as an invaluable resource for species conservation because it can be used for many types of research such as those focused on detecting deleterious mutations. All results from this study will ultimately contribute to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan for the species.

Concludes Lim, “The 4-VA@Mason funding got us started, and now we have obtained external funding to move the research even further.”

 

 

 

Green infrastructure (GI), utilizing plant or soil systems, permeable pavement, and other mitigators to filter and absorb stormwater where it falls, is a topic of interest to a variety of stakeholders. City and local government officials, utility and engineering companies, and environmental organizations as well as private citizens recognize the need to reduce potentially dangerous and contaminated water flows to sewer systems or surface waters.

Efficient stormwater management in highly urbanized communities is especially critical, considering how floods and droughts could be caused or exacerbated by climate change. However, creating an effective model to examine runoff possibilities requires careful consideration of a wide array of factors including climate data, soil types, water flow patterns, and current land usage.  Furthermore, it is imperative that other elements — geographic, demographic, economic, and ecological — be factored into the model.

That was just the challenge Younsung Kim in Mason’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy wanted to take on.  Kim, who has an extensive background in complex environmental and sustainability issues, saw the potential of incorporating freely available data from US Geological Society and Census Bureau along with the local county government land use zoning data to create a computational spatial model to help identify what works, and what doesn’t work, in GI.

Kim also recognized the importance of applying the prototype in a real-world setting.  To do so, she and her research team identified several eastern Fairfax County locations along the Route 1 corridor in Virginia, including the communities of Huntington, Waynewood, and Fort Hunt to illustrate how the model might work. Finally, Kim wanted to incorporate today’s trends in GI architecture in the research; identifying UVA’s School of Architecture as a leading source of urban planning and spatial analysis expertise.

This robust goal was brought to fruition after Kim’s proposal “Assessing Green Infrastructure Potential Using Multi-level Ecological and Economic Factors: The Northern Virginia Case” won a 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grant.  Kim’s co-PI at UVA, Vanessa Guerra, received a 4-VA Complementary Grant for her work on the project.

Kim also tapped a number of other sources, including Alex Iszard and Greg Farley in Mason’s Facilities Administration, who offered their GI perspective from a facility management standpoint.

Kim’s PhD student Colin Chadduck assisted in the development of the computational model, studying the ecological and economic factors important for GI site identification. Mason undergraduate students Caroline Miller, Dahvi E Hochman, and Nicolas Bataille provided data collection and literature review support.  Undergraduate Sunho Oh played the same role at UVA.  Additionally, Elizabeth Grant, formerly a professor at Virginia Tech, advised on the subject of experimental designs of green roof systems.

Together, the team developed a proven successful computational model incorporating ecological and economic dimensions for GI placement which has received national and international attention.

The research outcomes were presented at the American Society for Public Administration Annual Conference, the Midwest Political Science Association Conference, and at a Mason Earth Day event.  A paper entitled “Mapping Green Infrastructure from Stormwater” was published in Environmental Pollution and Climate Change.

Based on the spatial analysis method developed on the project, Kim won a grant from the Korea International Cooperation Agency to develop resilience enhancement action programs for climate refugee communities in the Philippines.

The project now extends to increase public awareness. Kim and her students are developing a GI webpage that will include resources and a video clip focusing on green infrastructure.

“This 4-VA@Mason grant has created results-oriented direction for GI within Fairfax County, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and beyond; and cemented a long-term collaborative relationship between our environmental policy research group here at Mason and the environmental planning lab at UVA,” noted Kim.  “We believe our results have far-reaching possibilities and impact on urban sustainability.”

 

 

Calls for proposals are now open for Mason faculty interested in launching pilot research projects in conjunction with colleagues at one or more of the universities within the 4-VA system in Virginia.  These Collaborative Research Grants (CRG) are designed to facilitate and support alliances which leverage the strengths of each partner university to improve efficiencies in research and higher education; reduce working in silos; and provide hands-on experiential opportunities for students. Other 4-VA institutions include William and Mary, James Madison, Old Dominion, Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia.

The program is designed to encourage the development of baseline research projects in the sciences and humanities which could help fuel future research and funding. “The 4-VA Collaborative Research Grant program provides our Mason faculty an important first step to bring to life a research endeavor that will benefit our students, higher education, and citizens statewide and beyond,” explains Vice Provost, Academic Affairs and 4-VA@Mason Campus Coordinator Janette Muir.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through February 15, 2024. Further information can be found at https://4va.gmu.edu/grants/.

 

Curbing the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and vaping among youth is a priority of public health agencies and health services to prevent this population from health complications and reduce the loss of productivity and healthcare costs in the future. For public health analysts concerned about the use of tobacco and e-cigarettes, it is insightful to look at how social media might play a role in affecting beliefs and behaviors. Further, to understand the complete picture of the social media landscape on tobacco and e-cigarettes, it is also important to consider how youth interact with and respond to conversations about e-cigarettes across platforms.  Armed with this information, appropriate, actionable, and effective social media-based intervention campaigns and policies can be implemented to combat the use of these harmful products.

Rather than utilizing the traditional approaches of simulation modeling and survey-based methods for public health research, which can be slower to collect and analyze relevant data, social media itself provides a unique opportunity to gather more timely, real-time information about youth’s daily activities. Although social media mining methods are routinely leveraged to understand customer behavior about brands, their use in public health research is underexplored. Faculty across multiple colleges at George Mason imagined that utilizing this non-traditional data could inform policy evaluation and implementation programs faster than what had been done in the past.

Thanks to a grant from 4-VA@Mason, a team with broad expertise in social media mining, public health policy, and epidemiology came together to examine the best way to move forward.  Lead PI Hemant  Purohit, Associate Professor in the College of Engineering and Computing, Department of Information Sciences & Technology at Mason, who studies Social Media Mining, connected with fellow Mason faculty member, Hong Xue, Associate Professor in the College of Health and Human Services, Department of Health Administration and Policy. Purohit and Xue then reached out to involve Bernard Fuemmeler of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center in an advisory role.  Fuemmeler is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine & Population Health, and Scientific Director for Health Communication and Digital Innovations. The team aimed to develop a social data-driven approach toward informing and evaluating intervention designs and policymaking to prevent e-cigarette/vaping use.

With the help of a former undergraduate student, Anuridhi Gupta (who has subsequently transitioned to the doctoral program at Mason) they began by reviewing theories used for guiding behavioral health interventions in public health literature and identified the relevant theory for this research, specifically Social Cognitive Theory. Based on this framework, they designed a study to look at a range of user intent classes in the conversations on e-cigarettes and vaping by examining behaviors across multiple social platforms, in particular, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. The team then created a novel resource of labeled data from Twitter and Reddit conversations to support research and development of social media mining tools to aid intervention designs for curbing e-cigarette/vaping usage.

From there, the team performed an extensive experimental analysis to examine the capability of machine learning-based automated classification systems to categorize social media posts into relevant intent classes, which could inform the development of a scalable analytical tool to assist public health analysts. Further, they identified insights on promoting or discouraging e-cigarettes and vaping on Twitter and Reddit by analyzing social media posts categorized with relevant intent classes using topic modeling and psychometric techniques. The analysis indicated that Accusational posts were the most prevalent on Twitter, indicating that the public often undermines the credibility of information sources, agencies, and officials by blaming them. Similarly, Anecdotal posts were the most prevalent on Reddit.

“Without this multidisciplinary research, it would not have been possible to achieve these insights and the resulting data-driven framework for scalable social media analytics in this short timeframe.  We are grateful to the 4-VA grant program for supporting us to kickstart our mission for healthy society and well-being,” Purohit said.

The research team has submitted a manuscript to a journal with a focus on a novel intent mining framework to understand online conversations on e-cigarettes to inform social media-based intervention design. Further, the team is currently working on a plan to write a National Institutes of Health proposal based on this preliminary work as a promising direction for data-driven policymaking for public health.

 

While 4-VA@Mason’s Collaborative Research Grants mantra is ‘two heads are better than one,’ Chao Luo, Assistant Professor in Mason’s Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, took this concept to the next level in his recent 4-VA research project titled “Metal sulfide-based nanomaterials for high-performance multivalent metal batteries.” For the task, Luo and his co-PI at UVA, Sen Zhang, assembled a team of 12 researchers, faculty, and students from five locations for an 11-month journey — yielding great success.

Luo’s primary research interest focuses on rechargeable batteries; however, he and Zhang were interested in exploring new materials and nanostructures for sustainable energy storage. Their goal? To design and synthesize polymer cathode materials and test the electrochemical performance of these materials in rechargeable magnesium and Aluminum-ion batteries, as well as redox-flow magnesium batteries, used for grid-scale energy storage.

With the 4-VA@Mason grant in hand, Luo assembled a team. He began in-house, identifying students who were interested in studying battery properties.  Luo selected a postdoctoral student, Dr. Kaiqiang Qin, who received specific training on the project from Luo, as well as PhD students Kathryn Holguin, Motahareh Mohammadiroudbari, Eric Youngsam Kim, and undergraduate student Annieka Reno, who each performed experiments for the research. In addition, Luo reached out to prominent scientists, Enyuan Hu at Brookhaven National Lab, Zhenzhen Yang at Argonne National Lab, and Tao Gao from University of Utah, who agreed to advise on the study. Two graduate students from Brookhaven and Utah also volunteered on the project.

Regarding the research, Mohammadiroudbari noted, “Developing novel materials is pivotal to meeting the ever-growing demand for high-performance and sustainable batteries. It has been an exciting journey working with such a great team to evaluate the nanomaterials in multivalent metal batteries.”  Team member Kim commented, “Research on sustainable batteries is important. It is exciting to research different types of batteries. This research was great to investigate various sustainable batteries.”

The research results were published in three journals – ScienceDirect, American Chemical Society, and Chemistry – and spotlighted via an in-person oral presentation at the 242^nd Electrochemical Society Conference.

Based on the reception and the success, Luo is now applying for continued research support with the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and Powerit.com.

Luo concludes, “The 4-VA@Mason grant offered me a valuable opportunity to collaborate with prominent scientists in Virginia and around the country. The team will continuously explore new materials and chemistries for sustainable batteries. This is the start of our journey to promote energy and an environmentally balanced future.”