MATH - Key Persons
Alathea Jensen is a participant in the GMU Industrial Immersion Program, sponsored by the GMU Provost Office, which funds 4 Ph.D. students per year to spend part of their time in research labs and industry. She has been working on a stochastic enumeration project with advisors Jim Lawrence and Isabel Beichl (NIST) for two years. Alathea has accepted a tenure track position at Susquehanna University starting fall 2018.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship
Arsah Rahman and Patrick Bishop captivated a crowd lining up to learn about math at Makerfaire NOVA. Topics included plane tessellations, one-sided surfaces, and the five regular solids, which come in pairs (even though there are an odd number of them).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
- Associate Director for Undergraduate Student Affairs
- Director, Undergraduate Student Affairs
Job Titles:
- Director of Development and Alumni Relations
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Director of Math Learning Center
- Director, Math Tutoring Center
- Term Assistant Professor
- Term Assistant Professor / Director, Math Tutoring Center
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Sociology
Calvin Stanley (left) is the co-winner of the 2019 Graduate Award for Excellence in Teaching. Graduate committee memeber Walter Morris presents Calvin with the award.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
- Associate Director, Facilities and Operations
- Associate Director, Operations and Facilities
Job Titles:
- Director of Undergraduate Studies
Job Titles:
- Student Support Specialist
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs
Job Titles:
- Serpin Pharma / Executive Chairperson
Cohava Gelber, PhD, MBA, is an executive with over 25 years of experience in discovery and development of immune therapeutics and diagnostics for cancer, autoimmune disease, allergies and infectious diseases. Dr. Gelber held various executive positions in academia (Duke University) and biopharmaceutical companies (ImmuLogic Pharmaceutical Corporation, Molecular Discoveries and MannKind Corporation).
Dr. Gelber has recently launched Caerus Discovery, LLC (CDL) with support from Biowa/Kyowa Hakko Kirin. CDL's mission is to discover and develop new antibody-based therapeutics and diagnostics. Prior to founding CDL, Dr. Gelber served as the Chief Scientific & Technology Officer of ATCC, VP of R&D for MannKind Corp- a public company developing therapeutics for diabetes, cancer and autoimmune diseases and was responsible for non-clinical development and clinical immune safety of drugs from pre IND through phase III clinical trials. Dr. Gelber received her Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute, her MBA degree from Cornell University and post doctorate training at Stanford University.
Dr. Gelber published numerous scientific manuscripts and textbook chapters and she is the inventor of 16 granted patents and 57 patent applications.
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor Emeritus
Professor Emeritus David Singman receives the rarely-awarded GMU Math baseball cap at the spring 2019 Mathematical Sciences luncheon. The prestigious honor was conferred by Chair David Walnut.
As we celebrate Women's History Month, I can't help but think back to the event I attended last semester sponsored by the college's Women Leaders in STEM organization. The event topic: Imposter Syndrome - Finding One's Fit. We also recently sponsored a Picture a Scientist documentary screening. Both discussed experiences and challenges female scientists face in the academic research environment. As part of our commitment to advancing access, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (AJEDI), this blog highlights the STEM journey and point of view from an interview with our own, Dr. Maria Emelianenko, Chair, Department of Mathematical Sciences.
Deborah Myung is the co-winner of the 2019 Amer Beslagic Award for outstanding performance in mathematics in the first two years. Tyrus Berry presents Deborah with the award.
Job Titles:
- Director of Actuarial Mathematics
- Term Assistant Professor
Evelyn Sander has been elected to the leadership Council of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
Mason professor Evelyn Sander has been elected to the leadership Council of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). SIAM is an international community of over 14,000 individual and over 500 institutional members. They are a non-profit organization committed to advancing research in, and application of mathematics and computational science. In her candidate statement she committed to helping SIAM make strides in D&I, saying, "Within mathematics, SIAM stands out for its attention to diversity and inclusion of members of groups who are traditionally underrepresented in mathematics, including diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, and geography. However, severe inequity remains, and the Council should focus on changes that encourage inclusion."
Job Titles:
- CMAI Director
- Director of the Center for Mathematics
- Director, Center for Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence ( CMAI )
- Professor, Mathematical Sciences
5. K. Carlberg, M. Barone, and H. Antil. Galerkin v. discrete-optimal projection in nonlinear model reduction. Journal of Computational Physics, 330, 693-734, 2017.
Harbir Antil, Professor, Mathematical Sciences, and Director, Center for Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (CMAI) recently received $300,000 from the U.S. Department of the Air Force for a research project. Antil and his research team aims to enable scalable automated design, data analysis and optimization of highly nonlinear dynamical systems with uncertainty.
Harbir Antil, Professor, Mathematical Sciences; Director, Center for Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, is studying optimization problems with partial differential equation (PDE) constraints.
Harbir Antil is the Director of the Center for Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (CMAI) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, George Mason University. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation, AirForce Office of Scientific Research, Department of Navy, and Department of Energy. He has published many articles in leading journals and has given numerous plenary lectures at national and international meetings.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- MEGL Outreach Director
Job Titles:
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
- Director of Educational and Career Pathways
Kerin Hilker Balkissoon brings over twenty years of experience engaging PK-12, community college, university, non-profit, and workforce sectors to address systemic inequities and barriers to college access, success and career attainment. Kerin's innovative efforts are grounded in Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI), integrating career pathways, high impact educational practices, asset-based approaches and developmental, holistic student supports. A NISTS Transfer Champion-Catalyst award winner, Kerin has a proven track record in designing data-driven interventions that enhance post-secondary inclusive excellence for underserved and minoritized groups. She specializes in supporting community college and transfer students, student-parents, first generation students, immigrant and international students, and post-traditional (adult) populations. At George Mason University, Kerin designs and implements College of Science pathways that enhance STEM access and success, and teaches in the Scientific Leadership and Practice program. She actively engages in university-wide efforts to enhance inclusive excellence, including service as co-chair of the Student-Parent Task Force, tri-chair to Mason's First Generation Task Force, the Undocumented Student Task Force, and the Transfer Advisory Council. Herself a first-generation Latina college graduate, Kerin actively gives her time to advocacy and support of the Hispanic and Autistic communities, including a leadership role with non-profit Friends in Need Virginia, and as a Board Member for the Virginia Latino Higher Education Network (VALHEN).
Current Research
With Dr. Padhu Seshaiyer, Kerin's STEM Education research focuses on identifying and addressing inequities in access to high impact educational practices and development of career capital for minoritized and underserved undergraduate students, with a particular focus on the community college transfer population.
Hilker-Balkissoon, K. and Seshaiyer, P. (in press) "Career pathways by design: An innovative framework to enhance professional preparation for STEM Transfer Students" Ensuring Success for Transfer Students: The Importance of Career and Professional Development.
Job Titles:
- Chief Data Scientist at BlackSky
Dr. Patrick O'Neil is the Chief Data Scientist at BlackSky, a global monitoring firm leveraging high resolution satellite imagery and advanced artificial intelligence to map global activity in real-time. In this role at BlackSky, he is responsible for building BlackSky's analytics business and developing cutting edge artificial intelligence systems.
With extensive technical expertise in statistical modeling, deep learning, and mathematical modeling, Patrick has spent his career building artificial intelligence solutions in the remote sensing domain. A a strong proponent of STEM education, Patrick teaches university courses on machine learning for remote sensing and is an advisor to the Virginia Department of Education's data science initiative. Prior to working at BlackSky, Patrick worked as a research scientist for geospatial intelligence companies including SPADAC, GeoEye, and OpenWhere.
In 2017, Dr. O'Neil received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from George Mason University where his research concerned analyzing point clouds using methods in topological data analysis. While at George Mason, Patrick led industry outreach efforts for the Mathematics department and worked alongside researchers at Berkeley National Laboratory developing high performance computing solutions for materials science research. Prior to his Ph.D. work, Patrick received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Virginia Tech.
Job Titles:
- Professor, Mathematical Sciences
George Mason University President Gregory Washington has announced the recipients of the 2023 Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence, honoring 12 Mason faculty members for their work on behalf of the university, students, and the broader community.
Job Titles:
- Outreach Coordinator for the Mason Experimental Geometry Lab
Jack Love is the outreach coordinator for the Mason Experimental Geometry Lab, where he helps to develop and deliver fun and engaging mathematics activities for local elementary through high school students. He was interviewed by Fairfax County Television (view youtube) before leading a workshop on symmetry at Patrick Henry Library.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor Emeritus
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs and Strategic Enrollment
Job Titles:
- Director of Finance
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
Jiajing Guan received an honorable mention in the 2018 Goldwater Scholarship competition. She is the fourth math major in four years with this recognition, following Lucas Bouck, Harout Boujakjian, and Austin Alderete. Jiajing, a GMU EXTREEMS participant, has been accepted in the prestigious UCLA Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) program to continue research this summer
Jiajing Guan (left) is the recipient of the 2019 Mary Cabell Award. Research mentor Tim Sauer presents Jiajing with the award. Jiajing will use her NSF Graduate Research Fellowhip to attend the Ph.D. program in applied math at the University of Maryland in the fall.
Job Titles:
- Instructor, Associate Chair for Teaching
Congrats to Mathematics faculty Joanna Jauchen for receiving the prestigious 2022 Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching. This award is presented to a faculty member whose teaching inspires and stimulates students in the finest tradition of higher education. Evaluation criteria include growth and development as an educator, student and learner engagement, assessment of student learning and teaching effectiveness and evidence of transformative impact. Joanna's leadership and dedication to teaching and learning has impacted thousands of students as well as all faculty in Math department and in many other units. She has been a tireless advocate for active learning and the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion both as an educator and in her role as Associate Chair for Teaching and Equity. Well deserved!
Harbir Antil selected by the National Academies to serve as a member of the Intelligence Science and Technology Experts Group (ISTEG)
Congrats to Mathematics faculty and CMAI Director Harbir Antil for being selected by the National Academies to serve as a member of the Intelligence Science and Technology Experts Group (ISTEG). The Intelligence Science and Technology Experts Group (ISTEG) is a large, diverse group of experts across the broad range of science, technology, and medicine, each of whom are available to provide occasional quick response technical advice to ODNI and the other federal government agencies that comprise the Intelligence Community (IC). This selection reflects high level of achievement by Prof. Antil and is a recognition of his status as a top expert in the field.
Studying compression and randomization for extreme-scale training and optimization by Elizabeth Grisham - May 18, 2022
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director of Development
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
Julian Benali is a co-recipient of the 2019 Klaus Fischer Award for Academic Achievement in Mathematics. Research mentor Rebecca R.G. presents Julian with the award.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
- Assistant Director, Marketing and Communications
Lucas Bouck is a 2018 awardee in the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program. He has done research on multivariable equation solvers at NIST in Boulder CO, and on fractional PDEs with GMU mentor Harbir Antil. Upon receiving his B.S. degree in spring 2018, Lucas plans to attend the Ph.D. program in applied mathematics at the University of Maryland in the fall.
Job Titles:
- Professor, Mathematical Sciences
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Chairman and Professor, Mathematical Sciences
- MasonScience Mathematical Sciences Professor
Maria Emelianenko, Chair and Professor, Mathematical Sciences, is set to receive $42,000 from the Simons Foundation to study mathematical methods for materials and biological network analysis.
Meet #MasonScience Mathematical Sciences Professor Maria Emelianenko. Emelianenko is an interdisciplinary mathematician who applies mathematical theory to a wide range of problems across the sciences. She directs Mason's Industrial Immersion Program and advises the Women in Mathematics student organization George Mason University. She is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Additionally, Emelianenko researches the interface between mathematics and other areas of science and engineering, such as materials science, chemistry, and biology.
Marilyn Vazquez is a Ph.D. student in the GMU Industrial Immersion Program and spends one day a week as a guest scholar at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD. She expects to finish her degree this summer and has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship with ICERM at Brown University in the fall.
Job Titles:
- President, COS Alumni Chapter
Starting his career as a laboratory technician for Fairfax County government, Mark is retired from Virginia state government in Richmond after nearly 40 years of service to the citizens of the Commonwealth. While in Richmond, he served a number of state agencies where his responsibilities included all aspects of administrative, finance, and support services, ranging from training to budgeting and accounting to strategic planning and disaster recovery to procurement and contracting to human resources and information systems to fleet and physical plant management to the operation of state government offices in foreign countries. Mark retired from the Department of Health Professions in 2014 where he served as Deputy Director, responsible for the agency's administration, finance, licensing, and support services. Mark served 2 terms (2015-2022) as a citizen member of the Virginia Board of Nursing, first appointed by Governor Terry McAuliffe then reappointed by Governor Ralph Northam. In addition to being a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni award from George Mason University's College of Science, Mark is a recipient of the Patrick Henry Award for distinguished service to the Commonwealth, given by Governor James Gilmore.
Mark received his BS in Biology from George Mason University in 1974, an MSA with a concentration in Public Administration from The George Washington University in 1977, and a certificate in Information Systems from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1990. Mark is also a graduate of the Commonwealth Management Institute, the Virginia Collaborative Leaders Program, and the Virginia Executive Institute.
Mark is a very active Mason alumni, currently serving as President of the College of Science alumni chapter and was the alumni representative on Mason's Master Plan Steering Committee. As a donor, Mark has established 3 endowments through the GMU Foundation. A firm believer in life-long learning, he takes classes at Mason each semester through the Senior Citizens Tuition Waiver program.
Mark is the first of 8 of his extended family who are Mason alumni, including his brother, his 2 children, his son-in-law, and his step daughter. Mark lives in Fairfax with his partner Alice and has two grandchildren (whom he hopes will both be Mason alumni one day).
Job Titles:
- Undergraduate MEGL Member
Undergraduate MEGL member Marvin Castellon (left) won best poster/presentation at the Spring 2018 GMU COS Undergraduate Research Colloquium. His project team includes undergraduate Seth Lee, graduate student Cigole Thomas, and faculty supervisor Sean Lawton. The project concerns asymptotic properties of families of dynamical systems governed by algebraic structures.
Marvin Castellon, an undergraduate MEGL participant, has been accepted in the mathematics Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley with the Chancellor's Fellowship. Marvin has been a central member of Sean Lawton's MEGL research team exploring dynamics on algebraic varieties over finite fields since summer 2017. He has written powerful exploratory programs and created important visualizations leading to provocative conjectures and helped direct the search for proofs of those conjectures.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor Emerita
Job Titles:
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
- Director, Graduate Programs
Advisor, Michael Crone, PhD, Math, Dynamics of harvested resources, with emphasis on commercially exploited fisheries, January 9 2015.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor Emeritus
Congratulations to Micheal Belete for his Outstanding Poster Award at the 2019 Joint Mathematics Meetings. Micheal presented his work on equilibrium stability in a model for diblock copoloymers mentored by Dr. Sander and Dr. Wanner as part of the EXTREEMS-QED undergraduate research program. The research was part of a team project with Andrew Hornstra.
Job Titles:
- Director of Human Resources
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
Congratulations to Orton Babb and Aneesh Malhotra on their Outstanding Poster Award at the 2019 Joint Mathematics Meetings. Their work on diffusion maps for dimensionality reduction was mentored by Dr. Berry in the Mason Experimental Geometry Lab (MEGL).
Job Titles:
- Professor, Mathematical Sciences
Padmanabhan Seshaiyer was recently named the winner of the 2022 Inclusivity Award presented by the Mathematics and Computer Sciences Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR).
Professor Padmanabhan Seshaiyer (left) traveled to Tanzania as part of the Volunteer Lecturer Program of the International Mathematical Union. He taught mathematical modeling to students and professors, and helped to strengthen STEM infrastructure in Tanzania as well as establish a new research program for M.S. students in the country. He wrote an article on his experience, which can be found in the August 2018 issue of the Notices of the AMS.
Professor Padmanabhan Seshaiyer and SIAM student chapter members Amy Tucker, Samuel Cogar, Ratna Khatri, Cigole Thomas from GMU and other nearby universities promoted mathematics and its applications at the 2018 USA Science and Engineering Festival on April 6-8 in Washington, DC. Prof. Sehsaiyer's article on the experience can be found in the May 2018 issue of SIAM News.
Professor Padmanabhan Seshaiyer and other faculty and students from GMU were volunteers for the largest regional MATHCOUNTS event in the nation on Feb. 2, 2019. The competition included 520 mathletes from 58 schools including Fairfax, Northern Virginia and Washington school districts. Winners from the competition will compete at the state level in Richmond.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean for Research Operations
Patrick Bishop, graduate student and Math Makerlab member, showed Lanier Middle School students how to design 3D printed mathematical objects in OpenSCAD. Although it was the last week of school, the 7th graders showed great enthusiasm for 3D printing and design.
Job Titles:
- Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Peter Rizzi (left) is the co-winner of the 2019 Graduate Award for Excellence in Teaching. Graduate committee memeber Walter Morris presents Peter with the award.
Ph.D. student Ratna Khatri spent the summer of 2017 at Argonne National Lab as part of the prestigious NSF Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship Program. This summer, she will return to Argonne as a Givens Associate.
Job Titles:
- Director of Graduate Studies
- Director of Graduate Studies and Graduate Advisor
- Director of Graduate Studies, Mathematical Sciences, Received Funding from the National Science Foundation for the Project
- Mason Professor
- Professor
Goldin and her collaborators aim to resolve long outstanding problems, develop modern extensions of Schubert calculus to concepts such as equivariant quantum K-theory, and extend algebraic structures arising in Schubert calculus to other G-varieties such as the cotangent bundle of a homogeneous space or a Hessenberg variety.
Mason professor Rebecca Goldin has been elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society for "contributions to differential geometry and service to the mathematical community, particularly in support of promoting mathematical and statistical thinking to a wide audience." Rebecca is the first GMU math professor to be so honored. Congratulation, Rebecca!
Job Titles:
- President of Decision
- Workforce Development Specialist
Richard G. Morris is the President of Decision-gates and a retired federal official who worked in support of the United States Department of Labor's Division of Youth Services in Washington, D.C.
As a Workforce Development Specialist Richard was in the labor resource and youth development fields for over twenty years. He has worked with such organizations as the National Job Corps Coalition, the Home Builders Institute, members of Congress, the National Office of Job Corps, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention/ Coordinating Council.
Mr. Morris provided extensive oversight, technical assistance, and analysis on behalf of a wide variety of partners and stakeholder groups involved in youth programming. Government investments in both formula-funded and discretionary grant programs fostered the Labor Department's highly regarded Youth Opportunity grants; a $1 billion, five-year initiative. More recently focus shifted to reentry-based programming for at-risk, justice-involved youth, and adults following a period of out-of-home placement or incarceration.
Undergraduate math major Robert Argus spent summer 2018 at the Park City Mathematics Institute in Utah, run by Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. Robert has done research as part of the GMU EXTREEMS-QED program and has participated in several research programs in the last couple of years, including NIST SURF, the UCLA RIPS program, and a Math in Moscow semester.
Job Titles:
- Aneesh Malhotra, Orton Babb
Graduate student Ryan Vaughn and undergraduates Aneesh Malhotra and Orton Babb discuss a project on data analysis in the Mason Experimental Geometry Lab (MEGL). They are supervised by faculty member Tyrus Berry.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director of Math Testing Center
- Term Assistant Professor
Savannah Crawford is the winner of the 2019 Genevieve G. Feinstein Award in Cryptography. Anton Lukyanenko presents Savannah with the award.
Job Titles:
- Founder, Mason Experimental Geometry Lab
- Professor
Stephanie Mui won a first place award of $2000 from the American Mathamtical Society at the 2016 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for her research on visualizing geometric surfaces with the Mason Experimental Geometry Lab (MEGL). Her work and a wider discussion of MEGL and similar labs across the country can be found in the October 2018 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Administrative Faculty and Staff
- Operations and Administrative Manager
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean, Strategic Communications
Yemeen Ayub is the winner of the 2019 Clarke Family Award for Excellence in Analysis, Algebra, or Topology. Graduate coordinator Flavia Colonna presents Yemeen with the award.
Zachary Richey is the co-winner of the 2019 Amer Beslagic Award for outstanding performance in mathematics in the first two years. Chair David Walnut presents Zachary with the award.