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Arctic Resilience: NSF, ��, and collaborators seek solutions for the future

Martha Bushong — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 11:07:26 +0000

Arctic Resilience: NSF, ��, and collaborators seek solutions for the future Martha Bushong Wed, 10/08/2025 - 07:07

In 1967, Alaska adopted the slogan "North to the Future" for its centennial. Now, as researchers at �� collaborate on an National Science Foundation planning grant, they look north to Alaska and the future. The planning grant lays the groundwork for the development of an Alaska Innovation Incubator (AI²) for Resilient and Smart Infrastructure in Extreme and Changing Environments.

“The Arctic presents both challenges and opportunities, demanding strategic planning and robust infrastructure support," said Professor Elise Miller-Hooks, who is spearheading the team for George Mason. "With AI², we're not only responding to environmental changes; we're proactively shaping a resilient future for the region. We’re hoping to create forward-thinking solutions for maritime development, performance of civil infrastructure, climate hazards, and workforce development.”

Professors Elise Miller-Hooks and Celso Ferreira on the Alaska's North Slope. They will return later this year to meet with planning grant collaborators. Photo provided.

Though still in its early stages, the planning grant outlines five interrelated thrusts. These thrusts will develop smart sensing technologies for the changing Arctic environments; new technologies that lead to innovative, economical, and resilient infrastructure; adaptive and economical solutions and system-level decision-making tools for securing Arctic coasts; a prototype for an automated digital twin of community-scale coastal infrastructure and permafrost systems; and a pipeline for workforce development of future scientists, engineers, and skilled workers with expertise in U.S. Arctic environments.

The George Mason researchers are part of a larger effort to develop resilience solutions and technologies through close collaboration with Indigenous communities, industry partners, government agencies, and six academic institutions. The societal impacts of this initiative could be far-reaching, promising enhanced well-being and resilience for U.S. Arctic communities, increased economic competitiveness, improved national security, and greater public engagement with science and technology.

To achieve this, through AI², the team aims to deliver a suite of transformative solutions. One example is the development of Arctic coastal hazard early warning tools, designed to provide timely alerts to communities facing environmental threats. The project will also pioneer innovative foundation insulation technologies and thermosyphon systems, specifically tailored for permafrost regions, alongside economical pre-thawing techniques for construction in warmer permafrost areas.

The researchers hope to create adaptive solutions and system-level decision-making tools to ensure the security of Arctic coasts for the future. With the potential of new shipping lanes opening, Alaskans see opportunities for new ports, and the team will explore both the opportunities and challenges. A prototype for an automated digital twin of community-scale coastal infrastructure and permafrost systems will be developed, offering a cutting-edge approach to monitoring and managing the environments.

Finally, the initiative led by Penn State University, a long-time research partner, will focus on workforce development, nurturing future scientists, engineers, and skilled workers with expertise in the unique challenges of U.S. Arctic environments. “Through the envisioned AI², it will be possible to generate new insights into the interactions between the natural and the built environment—including regional weather dynamics, permafrost, and coast-land interfaces—and the built and sociocultural systems, laying the groundwork for effective solutions,” said Miller-Hooks.

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Engineering better vision: George Mason professors lead $1.17M NIH project

Martha Bushong — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:12:10 +0000

Engineering better vision: George Mason professors lead $1.17M NIH project Martha Bushong Wed, 07/30/2025 - 15:12

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Ningshi Yao

Quentin Sanders

Qi Wei

Understanding and treating complex eye movement disorders like strabismus has long been a challenge for clinicians. Now, researchers at �� are pioneering a new approach using robotics and artificial intelligence to engineer a better future for vision care.

Ningshi Yao, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious $1.17 million R01 grant to lead a groundbreaking four-year project. The award comes from the joint National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) "Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science (SCH)" program.

The funded project, "Study Coordinated Human Eye Movement and Strabismus Using a Novel Artificial Muscle-Driven Robotic Eyes," will be conducted in collaboration with co-investigators Qi Wei and Quentin Sanders from George Mason’s Department of Bioengineering and consultant Joseph Demer in the Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

From left: Qi Wei (Bioengineering Department), Ningshi Yao (Electrical and Computer Engineering Department), and Quentin Sanders (Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering Departments). Photo provided

At the core of the research is the creation of robotic eyes powered by artificial muscles that replicate the precise, coordinated movements of human eyes. “Strabismus affects more than 18 million Americans, yet current treatments often fall short, with success rates ranging from 30 to 80%,” said Yao. “Our goal is to use robotic systems and artificial intelligence to better understand how the eyes work—and ultimately improve how we diagnose and treat these disorders.”

The research team will build robotic eyes that closely mimic human biomechanics and use them as tools to study the underlying causes of strabismus. These systems will allow for a level of control and repeatability not possible in human subjects, offering a unique window into how eye muscles and connective tissues—especially the so-called “pulleys”—work together to guide vision.

To make the robotic system truly intelligent, the project will also apply reinforcement learning, a type of artificial intelligence, to discover how humans naturally control eye movements. By training the robots with real patient data and expert-informed objectives, the team hopes to reverse-engineer the strategies humans use—leading to better understanding and new treatment pathways.

In the final phase of the project, the team will integrate patient-specific data into the robotic system to simulate different surgical outcomes. This will allow ophthalmologists to test and refine treatment strategies before operating, increasing precision and improving long-term results.

The project’s impact extends beyond eye health. The robotic muscle actuators and control models developed here could advance robotics, AI, biomechanics, and even the design of soft, adaptive machines.

In addition to scientific discoveries, the research team will build educational tools and training platforms using the robotic eyes, helping to prepare the next generation of vision specialists.

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George Mason researchers and NASA investigate melting mountains

Martha Bushong — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 13:26:27 +0000

George Mason researchers and NASA investigate melting mountains Martha Bushong Wed, 07/30/2025 - 09:26

��’s civil engineers are assessing the climate change challenges facing some of the world’s highest mountain ranges, creating better ways to measure the melting ice in high elevations where temperatures are rising faster than the average, putting pressure on the livelihoods of fragile cultures and ecosystems.

Viviana Maggioni (on right) and colleagues from the Italian National Research Council at the headwaters of the Ganga River in Devprayag, India. Photo provided.

Funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and led by Associate Professor Viviana Maggioni, the researchers teamed up with Chile’s Universidad de la Frontera. Together, their analysis encompasses the mountain regions of Asia, which include the world's highest mountains and support drinking water and food production for nearly three billion people. Their efforts also stretch across the globe to the Andes of South America: the highest mountain range on Earth outside of Asia.

“It is essential to understand how these high mountain areas are responding to climate change, since their melting permafrost has major impacts on surrounding regions and the people living nearby,” said Maggioni.

The 'Godly Confluence’ where the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi streams meet to form the holy Ganga River.
Photo provided.

To access and analyze these remote and geographically diverse locations, the researchers use advanced data assimilation algorithms, multiple satellite-based sensors, and NASA’s Glacial Melt Toolbox: a cutting-edge collection of remote sensing, digital elevation, and mapping technologies that help measure and forecast changes in ice, water, snow, and other natural phenomena.

The research aims to identify regional hotspots in the high mountain areas of Asia and the Andes where the permafrost is melting rapidly. Those hotspots are where local communities and natural cycles are most threatened, especially as climate change and the warming continue.

“The melting and permafrost loss in these areas has not been widely studied before,” Maggioni said. “This is alarming, since water availability and security are at risk.”

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Center for Advancing Systems Science and Bioengineering Innovation (CASSBI) takes on a new focus

Martha Bushong — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 11:51:21 +0000

Center for Advancing Systems Science and Bioengineering Innovation (CASSBI) takes on a new focus Martha Bushong Sat, 03/29/2025 - 07:51

Marvel superheroes use their superpowers to leap tall buildings and break through walls. Heroes at ��'s Center for Advancing Systems Science and Bioengineering Innovation (CASSBI) heroes use their "superpowers" to break through disciplinary silos and improve human health.

“It’s very unique the way CASSBI brought so many disciplines together,” said Amy Adams, executive director of the Institute for Biohealth Innovation. “Their human-centered approach has attracted faculty from all over the university, leveraging the expertise from so many fields of study.”

Professor Siddhartha Sikdar. Photo by Office of University Branding

CASSBI leaders have always understood research efforts don’t take place in a vacuum—the more collaboration, the better. And since its inception in 2019, CASSBI has leveraged faculty from disciplines as diverse as mathematics and social work, or kinesiology and mechanical engineering, all to improve human health.

Professors Siddhartha Sikdar and Parag Chitnis, both from the Bioengineering Department in the College of Engineering and Computing, are co-leaders of the center that recently refreshed its mission and zeroed in more tightly on its translational research. They say that the new vision of CASSBI is advancing system science and integrating innovation with medical technologies.

“Our work has always been translational,” said Sikdar, “In our earlier version, the translational focus was more on centering the priorities of our community partners and addressing their needs through research and creating and disseminating tools that would benefit them directly right now. For example, one success story is a nonprofit we created called iConnect, which works with our community partners to support individuals in recovery from substance misuse. Now we are also working on supporting translation of technologies from the lab to the marketplace, and we will prioritize that equally," he said.

The center will emphasize spin-offs and start-ups from the technology developed at CASSBI in addition to community-engaged research.

Parag Chitnis. Photo by Office of University Branding

Sikdar and Chitnis are off to a good start with a new company that grew out of a Department of Defense grant on tendon and joint injury prevention and reduction using wearable ultrasound systems. In this case, the researchers saw that what they had developed for the military had a broader use and could improve more people's lives by marketing it to a civilian population.

“We’re trying to pursue research of consequence in a way where we are trying to understand the entire pipeline A-Z and how the activities that can be pursued at the academic level and the research lab or center level can eventually be brought to real world,” said Sikdar.

To the CASSBI team, this means all aspects of translation including preclinical, translational studies, clinical trials, commercialization, development of patents, and intellectual property.

Another important aim for CASSBI is to create a support structure for faculty, staff, and researchers to engage in these additional activities. Sikdar and Chitnis want to build out the enhanced support system for devise fabrication, and for navigating the regulatory pathway when working with federal agencies, or for obtaining grant funding that is not traditional academic grants. “We’re becoming more geared towards translational, entrepreneurial, and industrial activities,” said Chitnis.

Chitnis summarizes the new direction: "We're looking at a more holistic approach and how the impact of our science, research, and development can be felt outside of the university.”

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Transforming emergency response training through AI and interactive games

Katarina Benson — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 20:42:18 +0000

Transforming emergency response training through AI and interactive games Katarina Benson Tue, 12/17/2024 - 15:42

Emergency management training doesn’t usually involve game controllers or artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, but at ��, faculty and students are redefining what it means to prepare for crises. Through cutting-edge, AI-augmented games, they’re transforming complex challenges into interactive learning experiences that build skills and resilience.

The project, led by Shima Mohebbi, an assistant professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research at George Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing, along with PhD student Pavithra Sripathanallur Murali and Nischal Newar, MS Computer Science ’24, began as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative to develop simulation-based games for resilient infrastructure. Inspired by a webinar hosted by George Mason’s Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC), where the Arlington County Department of Public Safety Communications and Emergency Management (PSCEM) shared their training needs, Mohebbi and her team expanded the project’s focus to emergency preparedness.

This shift led to the creation of two interactive AI-powered games—Go-Repair and Go-Rescue —which were developed over the course of a year to train utility managers and volunteers to make critical decisions in scenarios like infrastructure repairs and hurricane disaster evacuations.

The games simulate emergency scenarios and provide participants with tailored insights into their decision-making process. By using advanced algorithms, the games create a dynamic learning environment where strategies can be tested and adapted in real time.

“Go-Repair and Go-Rescue aim to provide volunteers and utility managers with realistic emergency scenarios in a comfortable environment, free from the stress and panic of an actual crisis,” said Mohebbi. “Through AI optimization and reinforcement learning models, players can assess whether their decisions lead to better or worse outcomes compared to the AI-generated solutions, helping them improve their skills in making science-formed decisions.”

From left, Nischal Newar, Shima Mohebbi, and Pavithra Sripathanallur Murali. Photo provided

Traditional emergency training has relied on Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) guidelines and in-person role-playing sessions known as “war gaming.” While valuable, these methods have limitations in scope, flexibility, and interactive feedback. The AI-powered games introduce a new dimension to address these gaps.

The project’s impact is already gaining recognition. Go-Repair: Resilient Infrastructure Learning Game to Evaluate Restoration Decisions was named as one of four finalists in the 2024 Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Data Analytics and Information Systems (DAIS) Student Mobile App Competition. Presenting the project at the conference in Montreal, Canada, this past May provided an invaluable opportunity to gather feedback and engage with other researchers tackling similar challenges. This exchange of ideas offered fresh perspectives and inspired new approaches to improve the game’s design and effectiveness.

“The feedback and engagement we’ve received, from Arlington County to the IISE community, are vital to advancing this project,” said Mohebbi. “The collaboration fosters innovation and ensures that our work aligns with the real needs of emergency responders and volunteers.”

“The gamified approach to emergency response training provides us with a unique tool to build the skills and confidence needed to serve our residents when they need us most,” said Hannah Winant, Arlington County deputy director, Department of Public Safety Communications and Emergency Management. “We’re deeply grateful for George Mason’s proactive, innovative work, and the opportunity to collaborate on this important effort. This project reflects our belief in the power of local partnerships to drive impactful, real-world solutions for the benefit of our community.”

Looking ahead, the team is incorporating feedback to introduce more complex resource allocation tasks and expand participation to include more George Mason students and utility managers. By continuously refining the games with fresh input, the goal is to develop a versatile and effective training tool emergency response and preparedness. As the project evolves, the team aims to expand its reach, offering a smarter, more scalable solution for communities nationwide.

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Interprofessional George Mason researchers awarded more than $1 million to improve outcomes for patients with depression

Jennifer Pocock — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 18:25:35 +0000

Interprofessional George Mason researchers awarded more than $1 million to improve outcomes for patients with depression Jennifer Pocock Tue, 12/10/2024 - 13:25

Researchers Farrokh Alemi and Kevin Lybarger receive ��’s first Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) award to develop innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, including large language models, for improving antidepressant recommendations.

Farrokh Alemi and Kevin Lybarger

AI will soon receive a dose of empathy with the goal of helping to match people with depression to their best-fit medication. A team led by Farrokh Alemi, a professor in the College of Public Health (CPH), and Kevin Lybarger, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received $1,049,998 in research funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to continue their work on developing an AI system that helps patients find the right depression medications.

With this funding support, Co-PIs Alemi and Lybarger will hone large language models (LLMs) to address known challenges in AI, including mitigating biases, reducing the potential for inaccurate information, and incorporating an empathetic tone, according to Alemi.

The new study will introduce an innovative way for AI to help patients make medication decisions. The AI system will engage patients in natural-language conversations to collect information about their medical history. The system will draw upon more than 10 million patient experiences with 15 different oral antidepressants and a National Institutes of Health All of Us database, which includes records from more than 80,000 participants with major depressive disorders, to help create a plan that is statistically likely to succeed. Alemi and Lybarger believe this will help alleviate the trial and error that can lead to negative patient outcomes.

The researchers will also introduce a first-of-its-kind patient simulator capable of mimicking various medical, linguistic, and behavioral characteristics. This simulator will be used to test and refine the AI system by simulating diverse patient scenarios, including infrequent but critical events such as suicidal ideation, to ensure the system’s recommendations are safe, culturally sensitive, and empathetic.

“This study was selected for its potential to address a high-priority methodological gap in patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela L. Cook. “We look forward to following the study’s progress and working with George Mason to share the results.”

This is the first PCORI-funded study that George Mason has received. “Depression is a major public health problem and we are excited to see the development of new AI-based decision tools, leveraging the multidisciplinary talents of our college to help tackle it,” said CPH Associate Dean of Research Alison Cuellar.

"This innovative study promises to generate methodologies for using AI for medical decision-support and for empowering patients to make critical health decisions beyond mental health,” says Özlem Uzuner, chair of CEC’s Department of Information Sciences and Technology.

This study is one of the latest funded by PCORI to examine which medical treatments work best, where and when treatment falls flat, and how to address the gaps. These studies deliver results that guide researchers in planning future studies and provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed health and health care decisions.

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Kevin Lybarger

Alison Evans Cuellar, PhD, MBA

Özlem Uzuner

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Mason professors are researching hacker psychology to defend against cyberattacks

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

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

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

Illustration by Getty Images

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

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

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

Daniel Barbara. Photo by Office of University Branding

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giuseppe Ateniese. Photo provided

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gerald Matthews. Photo provided

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mason receives $4.85 million gift to increase intimate partner violence detection and reporting

Colleen Rich — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:38:51 +0000

Mason receives $4.85 million gift to increase intimate partner violence detection and reporting Colleen Rich Tue, 03/05/2024 - 10:38

�� today announced an anonymous $4.85 million gift to advance groundbreaking research on bruise and injury detection for individuals who experience interpersonal violence.

The research team (from left) Janusz Wojtusiak, Katherine Scafide, and David Lattanzi. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

The funding will help develop new tools in imaging technology using a light source that is five times better than white light for identifying and visualizing bruising across all skin tones for use by forensic nurses, social service providers, and law enforcement.

“This single largest gift to support research in the College of Public Health’s history underscores Mason faculty’s leadership in life-changing work affecting those who experience interpersonal violence,” said Melissa J. Perry, dean of the College of Public Health. “A gift of this magnitude brings transformative resources to Mason’s cross-disciplinary research and collaborative approach that takes ground-breaking research to new heights with the potential for greater use and impact.”

Mason’s acclaimed interdisciplinary research in using Alternate Light Sources for bruise detection, as featured on NBC Nightly News, is led by researchers Katherine Scafide, David Lattanzi, and Janusz Wojtusiak. The funding will expand the team’s bruise detection system that leverages artificial intelligence (AI), imaging and light technologies, forensic reports, and clinical expertise to increase data collection and access to care for trauma victims. The technology can be used across all skin tones and responds to deficits in the identification of physical injuries particularly among people with darker skin tones.

"By improving documentation of physical trauma, we hope to address disparities in clinical care which can lead to improved healthcare for all as well as legal recourse for all survivors of violence," said Scafide, forensic nurse, research leader, and an associate professor of nursing in Mason’s College of Public Health. “This gift expands Mason’s leadership in developing new technologies to empower vulnerable communities.”

One in three women worldwide experience physical trauma at the hands of an intimate partner or stranger. In the United States, more than 10 million women and men grapple with intimate partner violence each year. Among domestic violence survivors, bruises and soft tissue trauma are the most reported injuries. When injuries are accurately documented, survivors are more likely to participate in the criminal justice process, according to recent studies on interpersonal violence and reporting. In addition, family and partner violence and elder abuse can lead to a host of other public health issues, such as infectious and noninfectious diseases, mental health trauma, and reproductive health problems.

"A vital piece to success is ensuring that any AI tool has access to in-depth data from all skin tones and skin characteristics alongside human expert analysis,” said Lattanzi, an associate professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering in the the College of Engineering and Computing.

Supporters working on ending domestic violence commended the announcement.

Ruth Glenn, president of Survivor Justice Action, applauds the groundbreaking work. “In a nation where domestic violence disproportionately impacts communities of color, this innovative research holds immense promise. By prioritizing inclusivity and recognizing the unique challenges faced by survivors with darker skin tones, Scafide’s research aligns seamlessly with our vision to end domestic violence in our lifetime. Continued research on this technology not only has the potential to revolutionize the identification of bruising in diverse populations but also signifies a vital step toward justice and empowerment for those who have long been marginalized. Survivor Justice Action stands firmly in support of initiatives that demand systems change and establish resources for survivors and advocates.”

“The Scafide team’s research and findings are revolutionizing medical forensic examinations. The ability for medical professionals to visualize and identify previously ‘invisible’ injury substantively advances quality medical assessment and patient care. Visibility and documentation of trauma/ injury provide valuable forensic corroboration for law enforcement and the courts to hold offenders accountable,” said Ann Burdges, CEO of End Violence Against Women International.

This project is led by Mason’s College of Public Health in collaboration with the College of Engineering and Computing. More information on the study can be found at bruise.gmu.edu.

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Teaching humans to play safe

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:02:44 +0000

Teaching humans to play safe Nathan Kahl Mon, 03/04/2024 - 16:02

Autonomous systems can be programmed to always make the logical, “best” decisions, given a set of circumstances. But what happens when human judgment and decision-making is introduced to a system? Xuan Wang, an assistant professor in ��’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, is asking this question as part of a recent $344,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Wang stressed that this research is particularly important given technologies on the horizon. “The operation of many real-world systems involves the co-existence of human and autonomous agents. Inadequate coordination among these agents can lead to significant performance degradation or safety risks.”

Wang is turning the idea of humans controlling machines on its head. “The key novelty of this research is, instead of thinking about how humans can program robots, we are thinking about the ways that the autonomous agents can impact humans," he says. "Assuming human response can’t be coded in the way we can control a robotic agent’s behavior, then how we can design the robot’s behavior so they're impacting human behavior in a way that is beneficial for the overall system?”

In one of Wang's simulations, a human and robot carry a cup of hot water, testing programmed guarantees so that when the cup spills, it only spills to the robot side of the board, protecting the human. Photo provided.

Because human agents, who are very diverse, use observations to see occurrences in the world around them and respond accordingly, traditional optimization approaches are less effective at predicting behavior. Wang says that he’ll use a framework relying on game theory, which assumes each agent has their own objective function, and that function is coupled with another agent’s decisions and actions. Then both human and autonomous agents ideally will optimize their overall behavior to coordinate across a whole system, creating a better output.

This human-response alignment mechanism is bidirectional, allowing for communication moving in opposite ways at the same time. For robots, they will investigate new approaches that allow them to adapt more intelligently to human behaviors with uncertainties; for humans, they will study how they can be incentivized during human-robot interaction so that human responses favor the efficiency and robustness of the entire system.

But how can systems—autonomous or controlled by humans—ever guarantee safety, say in the use of unpersoned vehicles?

Wang says, “When we are deriving safety criteria, there might be some uncertainties, so given the inputs of the system there will be an upper and lower bound that allows you to know what is the worst case that will happen. Given that, if all assumptions are satisfied, one can guarantee that there will be no crash.”

Wang and team are also working with the Army Research Lab to develop collaborative autonomous vehicles working in unknown environments, ensuring the vehicles can coordinate and gain advantage when there are potential threats in the environment.

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New noninvasive tests may help pediatric heart recipients

Nathan Kahl — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 15:08:18 +0000

New noninvasive tests may help pediatric heart recipients Nathan Kahl Thu, 02/15/2024 - 10:08

Each year, approximately 500 children in the U.S. undergo heart transplantation. These children face considerable stress.

Undergoing a biopsy—an invasive procedure using a catheter to remove a piece of the transplanted heart to test it—is just one way such patients are poked and prodded. Cardiac biopsies are a necessary evil, serving as the primary way doctors detect if a heart is likely to be rejected. But now �� and the Inova Health System are teaming up to develop ways to make that determination with noninvasive techniques.

Jason Goldberg. Photo provided

“On average, children pediatric heart transplant patients undergo approximately 10 biopsies within the first year of transplant…and more if they have rejection,” said Jason Goldberg, MD, MS, a pediatric cardiologist and research fellow at Mason. “That's a big deal, especially since taking a child to the hospital is no small thing. They have to go under anesthesia, they have to have needles stuck in them. It's quite traumatic, and diagnosing rejection in a noninvasive manner may help start treatment before the patient is sick and not feeling well.”

Cardiologist Palak Shah, MD, an adult heart-transplant specialist who serves as Goldberg’s research mentor at Inova, has worked with colleagues both at Inova and Mason to evaluate the potential of microRNA (miR) to provide clues on whether heart transplant recipients are at risk for rejection. miR are small, noncoding RNA molecules that impact the regulation of gene-expression.

Shah and his team published a paper in 2022 that was cause for optimism. The researchers found that “miRs are promising genomic biomarkers in cardiovascular medicine, have the potential ability to detect heart transplant rejection, and may provide mechanistic insights into molecular pathways modulated during rejection.”

“MicroRNA is a type of transcription factor, which is a protein that turns specific genes ‘on’ or ‘off’ by binding to nearby DNA,” explained Goldberg. “And it's encoded to a certain degree to do what the body needs, so when you measure the microRNA, you can get a sense of what the body is doing—essentially it's a molecular biomarker. What Palak and others found is that there are microRNA signatures correlating with heart transplant rejection.”

Goldberg is now using the technique to test children who have received new hearts. He and his colleagues at Mason and Inova received a grant from the Enduring Hearts Foundation, which includes collaboration with colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who have bio-banked blood samples taken at the time of biopsy. The biomarkers are validated by looking simultaneously at the microRNA taken at the same time as a rejection or nonrejection biopsy.

Testing microRNA allows doctors to determine the likelihood of a successful heart transplantation

The new pediatric developments are being supported by a partnership between Inova and the Mason Statistics Collaboration Core (SCC), which is providing the mircoRNA analysis. This and other collaborative projects require machine learning and other advanced statistical techniques utilized by Mason faculty and graduate students.

Goldberg said that the collaboration is mutually beneficial. “Mason has great research and science but no medical school, whereas Inova has great medicine but lacks significant biomedical academic partnership," said Goldberg. "With the two organizations working together it creates a lot of runway for research.”

Goldberg is one the first members of a postdoc program for Inova clinician-scientists interested in developing skills in statistics and data science. “I'm a pediatric heart transplant physician and I've been taking care of patients for nearly 15 years,” he said. “But I was at a point in my career where I really caught the research bug, and it hasn’t gone away."

Palak, Goldberg's mentor, has ongoing collaborations with Jiayang Sun, chair of Mason's Department of Statistics, and Carolyn Drews-Botsch, chair of the Department of Global and Community Health in Mason's College of Public Health. Sun is the Mason PI and Drews-Botsch is the Co-PI for this special joint postdoc program with Inova Health System.

“This pioneering program between Mason and Inova uniquely trains the next generation of medical research scientists in collaborative research and some essentials in data science, statistics, or epidemiology to address the challenges of the AI and information revolution," said Sun. The program features dedicated mentors from Mason in the fields of statistics, epidemiology, and global health, along with top physicians and researchers at Inova.

Goldberg is enthused about the new development, and most importantly, the increased longevity it may bring to young patients with critical heart disease. “When I was in my cardiology fellowship, we thought that the big change in heart transplantation would be that we wouldn't have to do it anymore, that there would be stem cells and other fancy machines that wouldn't require the use of donor organs. But time and time again, nothing has really worked to replace heart transplantation.

“It has become clear that the next frontier for our patients includes personalized medicine where molecular biomarkers and therapies can evaluate ongoing pathology and define specific treatments before significant illness develops. I am proud to be part of this work at Mason and Inova.”

In This Story

Jiayang Sun

Carolyn Drews-Botsch, PhD, MPH

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