Through collaborative research, faculty members across the consortium are creating rewarding opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to participate in exciting and innovative projects as well as with their colleagues from other 4-VA institutions. From mini grants to scale up projects, consortium faculty are sharing ideas, increasing cost efficiencies and bringing public attention and excitement to the research arena. Here’s what’s happening through 4-VA@Mason this year — PI Name: Project Title, and (Partner School):
-Younsung Kim: COS (via support from the entire 4-VA Statewide Consortium), Designing Experiential Learning Modules for Stormwater Management and Climate Adaptation via Spatial Analysis Tools (UVA, VT)
-Quentin Sanders: CEC, Enhancing Daily Living Activities in Stroke Survivors Through Semi-Autonomous Hand Exoskeletons with Multi-Modal Sensing (UVA)
– Shaghayegh (Shay) Bagheri: CEC, Bio-Inspired Metamaterials: Design for Additive Manufacturing (VT, VCU)
-Yanika Kowitlawakul: CPH, Development and integration of Escape Room games to enhance undergraduate nursing students’ collaboration, problem-solving skills, and academic performance (UVA, VCU)
The following researchers have received 4-VA Complementary Grants to support projects managed at partner schools (partner school in parentheses):
-Silvia Danielak: Carter School, Environmental Peacebuilding as an approach for promoting just and sustainable Data Center governance in Virginia (JMU)
-David Luther: COS, Sound Ecology: Acoustic Niche Partitioning and the effects of 17-year cicadas on avian communities across an urban gradient (JMU)
-Armita Kar: COS, Safe Streets: AI-Powered Digital Twin Framework for Enhancing Urban Pedestrian Safety (VT)
-Ziwei Zhu: CEC, Towards Fair Decision Systems: Augmenting LLMs with Causual Graph Discovery (UVA)
-Ethan Ahn: CEC, CMOS-CIM Collaboration on CMOS+Xarrays for Compute-in-Memory (UVA)
-Xijin “Emma” Zhang: CEC, Safety Machine Learning-Driven Bio-Upcycling of Waste Concrete into High-Value Materials (VT)
-Tamara A. Maddox: CEC, Designing a Classroom Platform for Accountable Use of Generative AI in Writing (VT)
-Gregory Stein: CEC, Leveraging Digital Twin Environments and AI-Embodied Reasoning Models for Human-Robot Collaboration in Construction Tasks (VT)
Additionally, George Mason University faculty members were awarded grants to support course redesign, created to bring updated/relevant materials cost-efficiently to students.
-Tammy Stitz, University Libraries (assisted by James Baldo, Bernard Schmidt, and Susan Lawrence): DAEN 690: Data Analytics Engineering
-Sara-Lynn Gopalkrishna: CEC CS 108: Introduction to Computer Programming