Shayla Brown

Alumnus uses his creative voice to build connections, honor heritage, and foster peace

Shayla Brown — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 14:09:19 +0000

Alumnus uses his creative voice to build connections, honor heritage, and foster peace Shayla Brown Wed, 06/18/2025 - 10:09

Federico Frum, BA Art and Visual Technology ’05, believes in the power of art to bring people together. Known professionally as MasPaz—Spanish for “more peace”—Frum has spent his career fusing activism and creativity, using bold street murals, community engagement, and cultural storytelling to spread a message of unity.

Federico Frum/MasPaz poses in front of one of his murals. Photo credit Omar Garcia.

A multidisciplinary artist based in Washington, D.C., Frum most recently gained national attention for contributing to the design of a stamp for the Art of the Skateboard stamp series for the U.S. Postal Service, a project five years in the making.

“The graphic designer on the project had seen my work at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and really connected with it—especially coming from a Latino background himself,” Frum said. “When he reached out, I was thrilled. Skateboarding has been a part of my life for years—I even used to have my own skateboard company—so this project felt like home.”

That deep connection to skateboarding culture is more than a personal passion. Frum has worked in skate shops, helped manage an amateur skate team, and continues to sponsor local youth, offering them skateboards bearing his signature artwork.

While Frum’s work often appears on concrete walls, his art is rooted in something older and deeper—his Colombian heritage, Indigenous traditions, and a lifelong reverence for the planet. He draws inspiration from the intricate geometric designs of molas, the handcrafted textiles created by Indigenous peoples in Panama and Colombia.

“Growing up, my mother would hang molas around the house. They became my connection to our land, our ancestry,” Frum recalled. “Now I keep that tradition alive in a contemporary way—using a spray can or a paintbrush but always honoring that cultural lineage.”

His mural work is widely recognized for its themes of earth preservation, Indigenous identity, and community empowerment. But Frum’s impact goes far beyond public art. He visits high school classrooms, co-creating murals with students that are proudly displayed on campus—an invitation for young people to find their voice through art.

“I’ve always felt connected to Indigenous practices and the family dynamic,” Frum says. “And I’ve always respected the Earth. A big part of who I am is about protecting and preserving the planet.”

As a student at George Mason, Frum studied photography and digital art, with a thesis in 3D animation. He credits classes in web design and printmaking with giving him the technical foundation to support his creative vision. He also found mentorship from School of Art professor Chawky Frenn, a fellow advocate for art as a force for peace.

“My heart is filled with so much joy and gratitude to see that Federico is using his artistic voice for social change,” says Frenn, a two-time Fulbright Scholar whose own work explores art and peace. “As teachers, we never truly know what seeds we’re planting—but seeing Federico’s journey is a beautiful reminder of what’s possible.”

Frum’s work has been featured by ABC News, Telemundo, and The Washington Post, and he has collaborated with major institutions including Nike, National Geographic, Sierra Club, Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, and the New Museum.

Recently, Frum returned to George Mason’s Fairfax �� to install We All Belong, a 30-by-30-foot tapestry mural on the Art and Design Building. The vibrant piece weaves together earth elements, ancestral motifs, and community imagery to deliver a powerful message of inclusion.

“It’s about showing that we’re all connected—that we matter,” Frum says. “That art can help us remember: We all belong.”

Topics

Alumni

School of Art

Community Engagement

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

George Mason student composers create original pieces in this ongoing collaboration between School of Music and Special Collections

Shayla Brown — Wed, 28 May 2025 17:12:08 +0000

George Mason student composers create original pieces in this ongoing collaboration between School of Music and Special Collections Shayla Brown Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:12

�� music professor June Huang sees connections between musical collaboration and peacebuilding, and she and her students demonstrate those connections with The Spheres Project, a strings faculty and student collaborative space established in 2021.

The project aims to foster connection and conversation between different communities and the name emphasizes its constant state of evolution.

“I looked at how creativity is at the heart of peacebuilding and experimented with this concept with five of my string pedagogy students. We started exploring compositions of these concepts and having rehearsals,” said Huang, who is the director of strings and associate professor of violin in the Dewberry School of Music.

A string quartet including Professor June Huang (left). Photo by Emily Schneider/CVPA.

Huang earned her master’s certificate in contemporary dispute resolution from the Carter School of Peace and Conflict Resolution in spring 2023. She was part of the very first cohort, which focused on principles of conflict resolution as they pertain to our domestic front.

“I started to draw connections between music and the peace building concepts I was learning about in class. Studying conflict resolution inspired me to listen with curiosity, not assumptions, which helps parties appreciate different perspectives and discover solutions,” said Huang.

The group’s most recent event, Spheres of Engagement was a collaboration between project, Dewberry School director of composition Andrea Reinkemeyer, and the University Libraries’ Special Collection Research Center (SCRC), where the students sourced images on which to base their compositions.

“Classical music tends to be grounded in tradition, so our interpretation of a piece of music is essentially imitation. On this project, we worked with new compositions that had never been performed before,” said Huang.

“The writing in some of these student compositions was not idiomatic, so the project challenged us to create musical interpretations and explore a wide range of possibilities. The connection between curiosity and creativity was a significant component for both composers and performers in this project,” she said.

Abigail Onstott is a junior composition major and one of the students who presented their original works for written for electronics or a string quartet at the Spheres of Engagement performance in April. Onstott’s composition was based on soldier-medic Gustav Klemp’s World War I archive collection.

“Getting to look through all the archives was the coolest thing ever for me because one of the areas I really like to focus on with music is culture, history, and politics, so this project was right up my alley,” said Onstott.

The students learned how to search through the collections as well as how to properly handle the archival materials from Mieko Palazzo, SCRC’s research services coordinator, and Cindy Badilla-Meléndez, George Mason’s music and media librarian.

The string quartet presents Onstott's composition. Photo by Emily Schneider/CVPA.

The center also assisted Onstott in translating Klem’s letters from his native language, German, to English.

“Klemp was also a painter, so a lot of the things in the collection were actually artwork that he had done while he was overseas. As a composer that really fascinated me because it's not easy to work off of a physical artwork, but it's something that definitely helped with inspiration,” said Onstott.

Senior Stellan Hinz took an alternative path in the creative process, composing a fixed media piece using only electronics and human voices. Hinz gravitated toward a collection of letters that were sent to C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb.

“I wanted to explore compositionally using the human voice as the musical material. I got my roommates and some friends together to record a bunch of these letters and then chopped up the audio in order to bring voice to these letters,” said Hinz, a music composition major.

“You could see the progression of how people communicated [from the years 1809, 1978-2012], because there were some handwritten letters, some from a typewriter. It was from a very early stage of the world that we are now living in now where we're all connected and able to communicate all the time,” said Hinz, who plays the saxophone in George Mason’s Wind Symphony.

Another goal of this collaboration was to teach the students about the business side of composition. Students worked with their individual applied composition instructors to write project proposals, said Reinkemeyer, an associate professor in the Dewberry School.

“We tried to make the process very similar to applying for a grant,” said Reinkemeyer.

“The student composers loved working on this project, and I hope we get the work with The Spheres Project again soon,” Reinkemeyer said. “Our goal is to have events like this one every semester if we can. Music can interact with every discipline in surprising ways—data sonification, astrophysicists, biology. It's a really enriching place for connection.”

In This Story

Dr. Andrea Reinkemeyer

Prof. June Huang

Prof. Cindy Badilla-Meléndez

Topics

Dewberry School of Music

dewberry composition

Special Collections Research Center

Honors College course uses opera to explore landmark court case

Shayla Brown — Thu, 22 May 2025 18:28:04 +0000

Honors College course uses opera to explore landmark court case Shayla Brown Thu, 05/22/2025 - 14:28

Historical dramas may be nothing new to the theater, but an original opera based on a landmark Supreme Court Civil Rights case? Rick Davis knew this was something different.

After learning that Virginia Opera was planning to stage their new opera, Loving v. Virgina—based on the historic Supreme Court case striking down a Virginia law that banned interracial marriage—Davis seized the unique opportunity for his students. 

The result was HNRS 360 Opera as Social Change, an Honors College course taught by Davis, the dean of ��’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, that explored the role opera can play in presenting—and changing—a community’s shared history. 

“I love bringing the arts together with other subjects because I want to get people from the community interested in the arts by meeting them at their personal interest—in this case, through opera,” said Davis. “I pitched the idea for the class to the Honors College, and they're always so wonderful about backing experimental course design ideas.” 

Rick Davis poses with a student's project. Photo by Shayla Brown/Office of University Branding.

“[In the class] we focused on the intersection of arts and politics,” said government and international politics major Kayla Goldschmidt.  

“I’ve learned that opera is another way to tell important stories and it can make it more accessible to different populations. This course did such a great job of highlighting that,” she added.  

The course, which took place in fall 2024, culminated in the students creating final projects that represented the court case as expressions of public dramaturgy, the connection of theater and stagecraft with contemporary society. 

Goldschmidt used the system software ArcGIS to create an interactive story map using an assigned reading from the class: Race, Sex, and the Freedom to Marry by Peter Wallenstein. “I settled on this idea because I’m very passionate about geography and in the assigned reading, I felt that the geographical aspect was very present throughout the narrative,” said Goldschmidt. 

Kayla Goldschmidt poses with her project. Photo by Shayla Brown/Office of University Branding.

“[The book] takes us to every location of the Loving story, so I tried to simulate that with my final project. It was so different from anything I had done for a final before in college,” she said. 

For her final project, junior forensic science major Madison Dragon created a reference paper that spelled out “loving,” with each letter referencing other relevant court cases or people who were monumental in the Civil Rights movement. 

“People can pick out a letter, and I provided a little blurb on what the letter represented, so it was more educational. I had the court cases written as the foundation for different themes, so one was on marriage law, for example,” said Dragon, who is currently obtaining her bachelor’s and master’s degrees through George Mason’s Bachelor’s to Accelerated Master’s program. 

“Working in the CFA is actually how I met Rick. He knew of my love for the arts, so at one of the shows I was working, we talked about this course and I was immediately interested in joining,” said Dragon, who is the house manager at George Mason’s Center for the Arts. 

“The goal of opera is to make you question what you know and whether you should be taking action. Referencing this historic court case in class was amazing because we’re still seeing similar issues in today's society,” Dragon said. 

The course also featured guest speakers including George Mason faculty members LaNitra Berger, Wendi Manuel-Scott, Richard Leech, and Jennifer Casey Cabot. 

Berger, director of George Mason’s African and African American Studies Program, talked about the historical background of the Loving case with the students. “We discussed the segregation laws prohibiting interracial contact and the price the Lovings paid for falling in love across racial lines and refusing to back down when they wanted to get married.” 

The students' final projects. Photo by Shayla Brown/Office of University Branding.

“Unfortunately, I think that younger people, including our students, have real-world experience about what it looks like to discriminate against people for who they are,” Berger said. 

Guest speakers from Virginia Opera included composer Damien Geter, librettist Jessica Murphy Moo, and conductor Adam Turner, as well as Gregory Spears and Kevin Newbury, the composer and director, respectively, of the opera Fellow Travelers, staged by the company in 2023.

When Loving v. Virginia was performed in the Center for the Arts on May 3-4, the students’ final projects were on display in the Concert Hall. Read more about the world premiere opera performance here.

In This Story

Rick Davis

LaNitra M. Berger, PhD

Topics

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

Honors College

Center for the Arts

Bachelor’s/Acclerated Master’s Program

innovative classes

Students

George Mason student uses his passion for filmmaking to give back

Colleen Rich — Wed, 07 May 2025 19:43:49 +0000

George Mason student uses his passion for filmmaking to give back Colleen Rich Wed, 05/07/2025 - 15:43

�� Film and Video Studies student James Bah will graduate with a pretty impressive resumé.

James Bah (center right) directing his senior film, The Lick. Photo provided

At the 2024 Best of Film at George Mason showcase, he screened his music video, The Show, which he directed for rapper Bobby Feeno, also known as former NFL running back Arian Foster. Bah, who was a content creator and uploading his own videos, met Foster when they were both streaming on the platform Twitch, and made a cameo appearance in the video.

“He reacted to one of my videos and we eventually got acquainted. I started editing content for him when I was still in high school,” said Bah, who is from Washington, D.C.

Bah traveled to Houston to direct the music video. “It was a fantastic experience and it still feels surreal that it happened. It was also my first time participating in Best of Film and a lot of people seemed to really enjoy it.”

The music video was also featured at the Washington West Film Festival in October.

The College of Visual and Performing Arts senior started off with an editing concentration before transitioning to a directing focus. “As a kid I didn't have cable, so I would watch highlights on YouTube and then I started to recreate those highlights and really got into editing,” said Bah.

After attending predominantly Black schools growing up, Bah wanted to connect with other Black filmmakers, “so I founded the Black Filmmakers Association (BFMA), whose mission is to bring together Black storytellers on campus,” said Bah.

James Bah (left) directing a film project. Photo provided

“A lot of the times you’ll see the same producers, directors, and cinematographers working on multiple projects together. The experience of being on set, that networking and collaborative culture, is essential in the film industry. BFMA provides us with those kinds of opportunities to get more projects on our reels,” said Bah, who is the president of the organization.

In addition to the Best of Film showcase, Bah has participated in numerous George Mason film events, either featuring his own work or supporting the work of his peers and professors.

In 2024, Bah was the moderator for Professor Nikyatu Jusu’s film Nanny at George Mason’s Visiting Filmmakers Series. “I was nervous at first, but I’d watched the film multiple times and we have a good relationship, so after a while it just turned into a conversation and was smooth sailing from there,” said Bah.

“Professor Jusu has been such an instrumental figure into my development and into my craft. I joke all the time that she’s my ‘auntie’ because we're both Sierra Leonian,” said Bah, who took FAVS 475 Advanced Fiction Directing with Jusu.

Bah said his early academic advisor Lori Yi and current BFMA faculty advisor Leonard Collins were also really impactful in supporting him throughout his academic journey.

“James is a really passionate filmmaker. I’ve enjoyed so many of his projects, but my favorite is his senior thesis project, The Lick, about the challenges of growing up in Southeast D.C. Even with just the first draft, I was in awe. He has a gift and he has something special with this film,” said Leonard Collins, BA Film and Video Studies ’20, a FAVS adjunct professor and teaching assistant.

“I see James giving back to the students of George Mason and his community as an award-winning director, producer someday,” said Collins.

Bah has already been on a professional set as a location assistant on the Academy Award-nominated Netflix film Rustin. He learned about the opportunity while working at the nonprofit Life Pieces to Masterpieces as a videographer and mentor to grade school students.

“Location assistants are next to production assistants where they're essentially handymen doing what’s needed in order to keep everything on set moving. I spent a couple of weeks working 14-to-16-hour days on set. It was a lot of work, but I loved the experience. I was grateful for the opportunity and I had a blast,” said Bah.

In addition to working at Life Pieces to Masterpieces, Bah also worked at George Mason’s Student Technology Assistance and Resource Lab, and did digital storytelling work for Project Create and CityWorks D.C.

“After graduation, I hope to be working with an organization where I can use my creative ambition to give back to community and help others by any means,” said Bah.

Explore Film and Video Studies at Mason

Topics

Students

Graduation

College of Visual and Performing Arts Film and Video Studies

College of Visual and Performing Arts

This alumna was a production supervisor for the Oscar-winning film "Anora"

Shayla Brown — Fri, 02 May 2025 20:17:28 +0000

This alumna was a production supervisor for the Oscar-winning film "Anora"  Shayla Brown Fri, 05/02/2025 - 16:17

Only five years after graduating from ��, alumna Rhyan Elliott, Film and Video Studies ’20, was recently a production supervisor for the five-time Oscar-winning film Anora (2024), directed by Sean Baker.  

“I've always been interested in telling stories, but everything really started happening for me when I got to George Mason,” said Elliott. 

Rhyan Elliott. Photo provided.

When she first arrived on campus, Elliott joined the student organization Delta Kappa Alpha (DKA), which focuses on the professional growth of students who hope to work in the cinematic arts. 

Although Elliott initially pursued a screenwriting concentration and had hoped to work in video game production, she soon realized she liked working in film production. 

“[With] DKA, I learned a lot more about myself as a creative artist and discovered that I also loved the office side of things, since we’re required to do a lot of different paperwork for events and things like that,” said Elliott.

Elliott credits George Mason professor and award-winning filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu and her course FAVS 475 Advanced Fiction Directing for inspiring her. 

“Professor Jusu was very influential to me as a creative artist. I did a couple of projects for George Mason’s Best of Film that are the results of her classes and guidance,” said Elliott. 

The two projects were the student short film Close Call, which won a student Capital Emmy and the short film, Always Carry a Bible, which she screened at the Washington West Film Festival for. 

“I had the pleasure of teaching Rhyan and was immediately struck by her unshakeable confidence and ability to harness a room,” said Jusu. 

“She is a talented, unique storyteller and thinker who bravely made her way to New York after graduating from Mason. It comes as no surprise that she found her place in the crew of such a poignant indie film.”

George Mason’s Film and Video Studies Program also requires its students to complete an internship before graduation. 

Rhyan Elliott (bottom right) with the Anora film crew. Photo provided.

 “I went to New York in summer of 2019 and worked on two films, Naked Singularity and Black Lady Goddess, as a production assistant, and everything just snowballed from there,” said Elliott, who has worked on multiple indie films, television shows, and A24 productions since graduating. 

She was also a health safety officer on sets in the wake of the pandemic. 

“We started pre-production for Anora in November 2022, so this has been a years-long journey,” said Elliott. 

As production supervisor, Elliott worked closely with the film’s line producer, managing the finances and budget of the film, and making sure that spending was on track with projections. 

“The cast and crew members are still pretty close, so we had an Oscars watch party at a really cool bar in New York,” said Elliott, who also attended the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France. 

“It’s surreal to think that this little movie that we put all of our blood, sweat, and tears into and worked so hard and passionately on is now on the big screen and receiving so much praise. There have been so many big moments that you don’t realize are building up to something so amazing,” she said. 

In This Story

Nikyatu Jusu

Learn more about the College of Visual and Performing Arts

Listen to Access to Excellence EP 51: Nikyatu Jusu

Topics

Alumni

College of Visual and Performing Arts Film and Video Studies

Awards

Capital Emmys

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

Graduating community health student has her own floss-ophy

Shayla Brown — Fri, 02 May 2025 17:09:05 +0000

Graduating community health student has her own floss-ophy Shayla Brown Fri, 05/02/2025 - 13:09

Growing up, �� senior Haila Salaheddine was not a big fan of going to the dentist.

“I was initially very fearful of the dentist. When I was living in Lebanon, there wasn’t really preventative care for oral hygiene,” said Salaheddine, a community health major.

After high school, Salaheddine moved to the United States and discovered she had eight cavities.

“I got them filled in quadrants, which was not fun, but I paid close attention to what the dentist was doing; all the material he was picking up. I started asking questions and ended up shadowing the same dentist, and soon fell in love with it,” said Salaheddine.

Salaheddine is graduating this spring with a bachelor of science from George Mason’s College of Public Health and plans to attend dental school at the University of Maryland.

“Now it will be my responsibility to make sure that patients feel comfortable with me, which is something that I'm very excited for. Going to the dentist is a different experience for everybody and I want to help make the process as easy as possible,” said the Honors College student.

Haila Salaheddine. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding.

During her time on campus, Salaheddine was president of the Volunteers Around the World dental outreach program, vice president of Patriots for Public Health, and a member of the Pre-Dental Society, Chemistry Club, and Alpha Phi sorority.

“Our main goal with Volunteers Around the World is to get enough members to travel overseas for two weeks in the summer and provide dental care for underserved communities in countries like the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and Peru,” said Salaheddine, who has attended multiple national meetings.

She was also president of a student advisory group that advocated for more global and community health (GCH) courses in Peterson Hall.

“We met with President Gregory Washington on a monthly basis and discussed how having more courses in this building can help GCH students to integrate themselves more in the major and with fellow peers,” she said.

Salaheddine is in her third semester of being a learning advisor for College of Science professor Gwendolyn Fondufe, providing support to students in Fondufe’s classrooms.

One of Salaheddine’s favorite courses was organic chemistry taught by Greg Petruncio.

“Haila has a high capacity for memorization, something that is necessary to perform well in organic chemistry and is evidenced by her stellar performance in the course,” said Petruncio, a postdoctoral fellow in George Mason’s College of Science.

“She would show up to my office hours regularly and would often ask exam-focused questions to target her studying efforts,” he said.

Salaheddine describes the course as the climax of her college experience.

“It taught me a lot about myself, about my time management skills, and it was really impactful in me passing my dental admission exams,” she said.

What’s your best memory at George Mason? 

My freshman year in fall 2021. It was the turnover of the COVID-19 era and we were getting more social interactions, but it was still very quiet on campus. It was a really new and unique experience, and a critical point for me. I often question what it would be like if I was to go back freshman year and have it completely in person, and whether that would've changed my way of thinking or the places where I usually hang our and study now.

How have you grown at George Mason?

My senior year is when I found my love of joining clubs and trying to hold leadership positions because it was something that kept me intertwined with George Mason as a commuter. Something that’s important for me is being able to receive constructive criticism when working with others so being able to socialize and ask this from people was really significant for me, especially as I started applying to dental schools and interviewing for programs. I don't think I would be where I am now as a leader in two different clubs and admitted into dental school otherwise.

What advice do you have for incoming students?

As a learning advisor for BIOL 213 [Cell Structure and Function], a lot of my students are freshmen, and funny enough I oftentimes advise them to socialize and put themselves outside their comfort zone and make friends with people they wouldn't typically interact with. It builds a lot of personality and social awareness.

There are so many different perspectives surrounding us at all times and being able to keep an open mind while interacting with all these different individuals helps you, especially as a person who's still growing. We can't always control the environment we’re in and being able to communicate with others in a meaningful way is crucial.

What’s next for you? 

I'm very excited to finally go to dental school at the University of Maryland. As a dental assistant, you're shadowing professionals and helping on the sidelines. I finally get to say that I am pursuing my future career and providing firsthand care to others. That's something that's very heartwarming and amazing to hear.

Topics

Graduation

Community Health

College of Public Health

Criminology student interns at an adult detention center

Shayla Brown — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 20:28:26 +0000

Criminology student interns at an adult detention center  Shayla Brown Thu, 04/24/2025 - 16:28

When �� junior Megan Miller toured the Prince William-Manassas Regional Adult Detention Center, she didn’t realize she was being interviewed for an internship position. 

“It was a tour group of about eight of us, and we went into it very excited. For once, I wasn’t shy; I was talkative and outgoing, which is good because they were essentially evaluating us to see if we’d be a good fit for the environment,” said Miller, who is a criminology, law, and society (CLS) student in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and connected with the center through a CLS Internship Expo.

Megan Miller (back right) at a session in the detention center. Photo provided.

“No resumes were required. It was simply based on how we spoke and acted during the tour. I had never toured a jail before, but it was something that I was interested in because I do plan to work professionally in a prison or correctional facility one day,” she explained. 

 Miller interned from August to December 2024 in the center’s classification department and worked with inmate visitation and reentry programs, such as the center’s GED courses.  

 “They have different tiers in the adult detention center. [For example] orange is [maximum] custody, blue is middle custody, and green is lower-level crime. The classification department ranks where inmates should be placed based on their crime and prior offenses,” explained Miller. “It’s one of the most important jobs in the center, because if someone is classified wrong there could incidents that lead to injury or death because of it,” she said. 

Megan Miller. Photo provided.

 As someone who hopes to work with inmates on their reintegration into society after incarceration, Miller said she was fascinated by the center’s mental health facility. 

“I think that having a mental health unit in any type of correctional facility is extremely beneficial,” said Miller. “I hope to one day work with mentally ill inmates, evaluating their mental state and trying my best to understand mental illness and its correlation to crime.”

 Miller obtained this internship as a result of CLS professor Catherine Dobson’s CRIM 479 Introduction to Internship and CRIM 480 Internship courses. 

 Dobson is also director of the department’s internship program.  

 “Students are much more likely to have jobs after graduation if they do an internship, and many times the internship itself turns into a full-time job. [In the course] we do all the foundational work of putting together strong resumes with transferable skills and working closely with George Mason’s Career Services because they've got lots of great resources for the students,” said Dobson. 

 “Students will have a fixed idea of what they want to do, so I introduce them to different local, state, and federal options, and also nonprofit and private sector options. George Mason has a lot of great partners throughout the community for our students to reach out to,” Dobson said. 

Megan Miller (left) and her roommate, Sophia Figler. Photo provided.

Miller said they attended the internship expo as a class and were given the opportunity to speak to different organizations including the Fairfax and Loudoun County sheriff's departments.  

“I took the most interest in the adult detention center because of the sergeants who were there speaking that day. My roommate and I gave them our names, and we actually did the internship together,” said Miller. 

After she graduates, Miller hopes to continue her education at George Mason, earning her master’s degree in criminology, and become a full-time officer at the center.

Topics

internships

criminology law and society

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Students

George Mason bioengineering team’s start-up is the next wave of athletic rehabilitation and performance

Shayla Brown — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:09:36 +0000

George Mason bioengineering team’s start-up is the next wave of athletic rehabilitation and performance Shayla Brown Tue, 04/22/2025 - 17:09

Based on their years of research studying how student-athletes move, �� bioengineering professors Parag Chitnis and Siddhartha Sikdar have created a start-up called Myokinetics LLC with the goal of providing personalized rehabilitation programs for injured athletes that can help them recover faster and prevent them from getting injured in the future.

Erica King (left) and researcher testing the Myokinetics device. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding.

This effort builds on more than $5 million in funding from the Department of Defense for developing wearable ultrasound technologies that help rehabilitate musculoskeletal injuries through a Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs grant, and two Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium awards, which is a funding mechanism that supports fast translation and development of new technologies relevant for military health.

For the past 10 years, Chitnis and Sikdar have been developing the Myokinetics device “to understand not only when musculoskeletal injuries occur, but to help track the recovery process from the injury as well as prevent re-injury,” said Chitnis, who along with Sikdar, co-directs George Mason’s Center for Advancing Systems Science and Bioengineering Innovation (CASSBI), formerly the Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions.

Their device personalizes the treatments and rehabilitation that's provided so that users can recover in the most optimal manner. Chitnis and Sikdar are also working with multiple collaborators including George Mason PhD students, George Mason Athletics, and the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD).

Margaret T. Jones is the director of the Patriot Performance Lab within CEHD’s Center for Sport Management. The lab conducts research and provides services that focus on athlete health and performance.

Margaret T. Jones (center right) with student athletes. Photo provided.

“The wearable ultrasound allows you to look at what the muscles are doing underneath the skin when they contract and what the contraction looks like,” said Jones, who has been working with the George Mason men’s and women’s volleyball teams since August 2024.

“The research methods vary based on the sport, but [the volleyball players] wear the ultrasound device and we go to their practice facility once a week. Since the sport involves a lot of jumping, we have them jump on what's called a force plate, which is sort of a fancy scale, and collect data to share with the bioengineering team that way,” she said.

In addition, Jones and the team monitor the athletes during their practices and games via the wearable microsensor, which assist in the interpretation of their findings from the weekly jumps and ultrasound tests.

As the team’s research scientist, fourth-year PhD bioengineering student Erica King, BS Bioengineering ’21, works closely with Jones and the Patriot Performance Lab.

“I’m using the device for specific applications and testing and validating against other gold standards that are currently in the market,” said King, who spent all four years of her undergrad on George Mason’s women’s swim and dive team.

“I've seen my fair share of injuries as an athlete, either my own or my friends, and it’s a continuous cycle. You'll rehabilitate the injury, feel better, and then when you go back to your sport or activity, you'll get injured again,” said King, who was in the Honors College.

“Being able to have a device to help understand what's going on at the muscle level during your rehabilitation to ensure that you're doing the exercises correctly to get the desired results and perform your sport while mitigating the risk of reinjury is so beneficial,” she said.

Partner collaborators include North Carolina State University, Cephasonics Ultrasound, and Infinite Biomedical Technologies (IBT). IBT CEO Rahul Kaliki is also a co-founder of Myokinetics LLC.

A close up of the device. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding.

“At CASSBI, different people and resources are pulled in to work on multidisciplinary projects like this one. This collaboration enables a lot of iterative prototyping efforts, which would not have been possible without the center,” said Abhishek Aher, MS Bioengineering ’24.

“I would like to see the Myokinetics device being used nationwide on the fields of major sports leagues. This should enable more metrics for the players,” said Aher, who is the Myokinetics team’s research engineer.

“For example, metrics such as how many points a player scored or how many minutes they ran are discussed pregame or postgame, but with our device, Myokinetic metrics can become an essential conversation point. That’s where I would like to see this go in the next five years,” he said.

King hopes to continue researching human performance after injury and focus on the most safe and effective ways that athletes can get back to their optimal performance.

“I hope to stick with Myokinetics and implement the devices and the metrics that we're currently developing into the rehabilitation setting. This is for the general population, but athletes will always have a special place in my heart,” said King.

In This Story

Siddhartha Sikdar

Parag Chitnis

Learn the origins of Myokinetics LLC

Topics

entrepreneurship

College of Engineering and Computing

College of Education and Human Development

Mason Athletics

Honors College

Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions

Research

Students

Professor, students travel to Rwanda for peace-building mission

Shayla Brown — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:14:32 +0000

Professor, students travel to Rwanda for peace-building mission Shayla Brown Wed, 04/16/2025 - 10:14

This spring, �� Professor Al Fuertes traveled to Rwanda to facilitate workshops for former victims and perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan mass genocide.

“These are people who have extended forgiveness and reconciliation, something many of us might think is surreal or impossible,” said Fuertes, who teaches in the School of Integrative Studies in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “But this is proof that even against the backdrop of genocide, it’s possible.”

Al Fuertes (bottom center) at a peace-building workshop in Rwanda. Photo provided.

Fuertes, who has a background in conflict analysis and resolution and specializes in trauma healing, has previously traveled to Rwanda in March and November 2024, and has taken students with him on some of his excursions as part of a study-abroad program for which he is the faculty director.

His most recent trip was in collaboration with the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Protestant University of Rwanda (PUR) located in Huye District. Fuertes also connected and collaborated with the grassroots organization, "Light Group" in Remera, and the Aegis Trust, a program component of the Rwanda Genocidal Memorial.

Al Fuertes conducting a peace-building workshop. Photo provided.

“It's a different level of learning when students have the opportunity to meet firsthand those who were involved or impacted and are now sharing their stories,” said Fuertes.

“It is an extremely freeing and life-changing thing for students to experience, especially those who don't necessarily believe in forgiveness or who struggle to forgive.”

Each semester, Fuertes hosts a panel presentation of Rwandan survivors as part of the learning activities in my graduate courses CONF 695 Praxis of Forgiveness and Reconciliation amid Polarization and CONF 695 Psychosocial Trauma Healing. This spring semester’s panel resulted in increased participation from George Mason students.

“Knowing that one of the challenges to reconciliation in Rwanda is poverty, students from my trauma-informed and resilience-oriented practice class decided to donate 15 goats to families of both former perpetrators and former victims, now survivors,” said Fuertes.

Dianne Rambo, BIS in Peacebuilding and Well-Being Studies ’24, has been a federal contractor in the intelligence world for more than 20 years. She came back to George Mason to study the process of healing childhood trauma in adults in hopes of becoming a mental health counselor.

“I took [CONF 695 the Praxis of Forgiveness and Reconciliation] with Al, and the course material and experiential learning have really changed the course of my life and career goals,” said Rambo, who met Fuertes at an online workshop for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Rambo, who is currently a non-degree graduate student in George Mason’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution and part of George Mason's Working Group on Forgiveness and Reconciliation along with Fuertes, traveled to Rwanda with Fuertes for the 14-day winter study-abroad program focusing on genocide, healing, and reconciliation.

A healing circle. Photo by Al Fuertes.

“I met the Rwandans via Zoom panels while in Al’s class. We learned about their stories and it just blew my mind how they were facilitating this reconciliation as a nation and how it transformed their nation from this mass atrocity that happened just a couple decades ago,” said Rambo, who has also traveled to Northern Ireland, Scandanavia, and the Philippines for peace-building missions.

“Our program partners facilitated visits to the genocide memorials, and we were able to build a space that felt safe and comfortable. We'd debrief afterward where you can share the intense feelings that you may have experienced. We're seeing really hard things, but we're able to process our emotions,” said Rambo.

Rambo has been accepted into George Mason's CEHD Counseling degree program and will begin the cohort program this fall.

Rambo, Fuertes, and their program partners also have participants journal and conduct community-building activities.

“I thought of bringing healing through peace-building because it's not enough just to resolve the conflict,” said Fuertes. “If victimization is not healed, most likely, people may start embracing the victim narrative and eventually become the new perpetrator.”

In This Story

Al Fuertes

Discover the School of Integrative Studies

Topics

study abroad

Mental Health

Peacebuilding

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

Students

New art course teaches students how to think differently about design

Shayla Brown — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 15:49:48 +0000

New art course teaches students how to think differently about design Shayla Brown Wed, 04/02/2025 - 11:49

“Furniture isn’t just a tangible item that’s supposed to mold to your body, but it can also mold to your lifestyle,” said Katherin Salazar, a �� senior art and visual technology major.

She is currently taking a new College of Visual and Performing Arts special topics course, AVT 496, which focuses on furniture design and is offered through the university’s School of Art.

AVT 496 students discussing their sculptures. Photo by Ayman Rashid/Office of University Branding.

“The goal is to teach students about the power of furniture and how the built environment is constantly communicating and reorchestrating hierarchical structures,” said Mallory Kimmel, a Washington, D.C.-based interdisciplinary artist who created and teaches the course.

“We’re learning how to cultivate a greater awareness of the intended power dynamics in space, and also to become a curator of reshaping hierarchies in space to be more oriented to social justice ethos,” she said.

Salazar, who has contracts with Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Skate Folk creating competitive atmospheres that serve as a gateway for local skaters, is currently building a quarter pipe ramp for a class project.

AVT 496 student showcases the functionality of a sculpture. Photo provided.

“The techniques we’re learning in this course go hand in hand with building a lot of structures related to skating,” said Salazar, who works as a student monitor in the university’s Sculpture Studio under the supervision of Ben Ashworth, sculpture and foundations supervisor in George Mason’s School of Art.

“Mallory and Ben have taught me the ways of the art world and how it's constantly changing and growing. The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is to take pride in my skills and realizing the worth of them,” she said.

As a part of the course, the students will tour the National Gallery of Art and put what they’ve learned to practice by identifying and recommending ways to create a more welcoming environment for people to experience the art.

The students will also present how their finished sculptures address hostile architecture, which Kimmel defines as the “built environment containing features that aim to reject certain people or behaviors.”

An example of hostile architecture is public benches that have handrails in the center so that it's prohibitive for the houseless population to lay down, explained Kimmel.

AVT 496 student showcases the functionality of a sculpture. Photo provided.

“[This course] has allowed me to expand my thinking beyond just the functions of furniture, but about its design ethics and the body itself,” said Roland Payabyab, a senior art and visual technology major.

For Payabyab’s first project, he focused on posture in honor of his parents.

“I'm noticing as they age, they're developing a lot of back problems, so I'm creating a bench meant to relieve some of that pain by incorporating a function within this piece to move with them as they need, for example, when they’re bending over to put on shoes,” he said.

Payabyab was able to build his project with techniques, such as woodworking and joinery.

AVT 496 students discussing their sculptures. Photo by Ayman Rashid/Office of University Branding.

“Joinery was one of the things I was most excited to learn about, and it just so happened to be the first topic we would cover,” said Payabyab. “Now I know how to combine different materials without nails or screws to build my sculptures, which is great for me because that’s what I’d like to do as a career after I graduate.”

In This Story

Mallory Kimmel

Benjamin Ashworth

Topics

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA)

National Gallery of Art

Shayla Brown

Alumnus uses his creative voice to build connections, honor heritage, and foster peace

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