Inquiring Minds

Engineering professors develop human-AI colorization tool for cartoonists

Shayla Brown — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:28:34 +0000

Engineering professors develop human-AI colorization tool for cartoonists Shayla Brown Mon, 03/03/2025 - 12:28

George Mason �鶹�� professor Sungsoo Ray Hong has always been a huge fan of cartoons, comics, and animations. By combining his passion with his research area of human-computer interaction, he has created a new tool for cartoonists, ShadowMagic.

Hong, his colleague Yotam Gingold, and their PhD students published a paper, “ShadowMagic: Designing Human-AI Collaborative Support for Comic Professionals’ Shadowing,” elucidating the need for the tool, which aims to boost product quality and designer productivity through study-informed human-AI interaction.

The team worked with professional cartoonists to find common workflow of colorization that is shared within the industry as a reference point for their research, which examines the evolution of designing technology as cartoonists transitioned from using PCs in the 1980s to artificial intelligence, said Hong, who is an assistant professor at the Department of Information Sciences and Technology.

Creating a comic book is a team effort as there are many roles throughout the process including story drafting, sketching, colorizing, editing, and sending to a production company, said Hong.

“Professional cartoonists are sometimes producing content every other day,” said Hong, who is also director of George Mason’s Alignment Lab. “You cannot commit to these kinds of deadlines doing everything by yourself. That's why the colorization industry is so helpful to professional cartoonists.”

Colorization is a sequential process of line drawing, flatting, base colorization, shadows and/or lighting, background and other special effects. The tool stems from a previous project, FlatMagic, another AI-driven tool designed to improve the creative process for digital comic professionals.

“This is a fairly standardized process, especially in South Korea and growing throughout the United States as well,” he explained. “The solutions to these network visualizations should be contextualized, but we have the limited resources. We can’t build everything for everybody. That’s my motivation here.”

Gingold also specializes in human-computer interaction and “has always been interested in sketching and how computers can help us express ourselves,” said the Department of Computer Science associate professor.

Yotam Gingold (left) and Ray Hong in Research Hall, presenting their colorization tool. Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of �鶹�� Branding.

“We looked at artistic challenges, usually tedious things that aren’t so fun for the artists and break down those problems, so that they can focus more on the creative parts of it,” said Gingold, who is the director of George Mason’s Computational Reality, Creativity, and Graphics Lab.

There are millions of pixels in an image, and if an artist wants to move or change the color of a building for example, they point at one pixel among the millions. The artist wants the rest of the pixels to follow along naturally so the rest of the building should also change, he explained.

“The computers will do the math where we can write formulas to update all the other millions of pixels. Another example would be keeping lines parallel and corners perpendicular, and that’s where a lot of my research comes in,” said.

While a doctoral student at George Mason, Chuan Yan, PhD ’24, was recruited by Gingold for this project and conducted research on sketching and painting. Yan’s area of expertise encompasses computer graphics fundamentals and sketch-related computer vision techniques, which he had learned extensively from Gingold, he explained.

The ShadowMagic tool was built as an Adobe Photoshop plug-in, and since its release, the team “has garnered significant interest from artists inquiring about updates and expressing a strong desire for a tool that could free them from the labor-intensive flatting process,” said Yan, who is currently a postdoc researcher at Stanford �鶹��.

“This response is both exciting and humbling. It confirms that our research is addressing a real need in the industry yet also highlights the remaining challenges in making [the tool] ready for widespread adoption.”

Yan believes that as more sophisticated generative AI systems continue to emerge, AI-human collaboration will become increasingly vital.

“I am excited to witness and contribute to this transformation, helping to shape a future where AI acts as a powerful tool that amplifies human creativity rather than replacing it,” he said.

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Sungsoo Ray Hong

Yotam Gingold

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George Mason scientist identifies 1,000-year-old seedling linked to biblical myrrh

Katarina Benson — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 19:50:37 +0000

George Mason scientist identifies 1,000-year-old seedling linked to biblical myrrh Katarina Benson Wed, 01/08/2025 - 14:50

George Mason �鶹�� researcher Andrea Weeks played a key role in identifying an ancient seedling linked to the biblical myrrh. The seed, a yellow and fragrant resin from the Commiphora tree, was discovered in the Judean desert and revived by a team of researchers.

The ancient seedling. Photo provided.

Weeks was invited to join the project, led by Hadassah �鶹�� Medical Center in Jerusalem, because of her expertise in the evolutionary biology of Commiphora. Her extensive DNA sequence database played an instrumental role in analyzing the genetic makeup of the ancient specimen. Morgan Gostel, Weeks’ former PhD student and current research botanist at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, also played a critical role in this research.

While the team confirmed the seedling’s genus, they have yet to pinpoint its precise species. “Its exact species remains unclear, highlighting the need for further biodiversity research. No lab has yet tested every species of Commiphora,” said Weeks, who is an associate professor in the Department of Biology in the College of Science and the director of George Mason’s Ted R. Bradley Herbarium.

One of the most puzzling aspects of the discovery is the seed’s location. Found in a Levantine cave, the seed had been preserved for centuries in an area far outside the modern range of Commiphora.

Andrea Weeks. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of �鶹�� Branding

“Radiocarbon dating reveals that this seed formed long after biblical times, but that doesn’t explain how or why it ended up in a cave in the Judean desert 800 to 1,000 years ago,” said Weeks.

Funding from previous grants awarded to Weeks by the National Science Foundation (NSF) helped lay the groundwork for her involvement and impact in this discovery of the ancient seed, which the researchers selected to call “Sheba.” “The use of NSF-funded data in identifying Sheba shows how foundational research can have lasting, unexpected benefits,” she said.

The study’s findings could significantly influence future research on biodiversity by enhancing our understanding of historical flora and their evolution within current ecosystems.

The interdisciplinary nature of the research, combining archaeology, ethnobotany, chemistry, and plant taxonomy, contributed to the team’s success. Moving forward, Weeks and her lab plan to deepen their exploration of Commiphora diversity. “Like most scientific inquiries, this project leaves us with more questions than answers,” Weeks said. “It sheds light on the complexity of biodiversity and also serves as a reminder of life’s interconnectedness across time.”

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AI on call: George Mason and Fairfax County dial up emergency response

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 13:26:41 +0000

AI on call: George Mason and Fairfax County dial up emergency response Nathan Kahl Mon, 11/25/2024 - 08:26

When you have a dire emergency you want help from wherever you can get it. Even if it’s from an AI voice assistant.

George Mason �鶹�� received a grant of nearly $1 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for enhancing emergency response, specifically using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve training and other capabilities of the emergency communication systems in Northern Virginia. The funding was made possible through the efforts of Congressman Gerry Connolly, who sponsored the proposal.

“As we strive to improve our emergency preparedness and response capabilities, it is absolutely critical that we recognize the potential of new and emerging technologies—including AI,” said Connolly. “By utilizing this technology safely and effectively in our public safety systems, we can reduce response times, lighten the workload for 911 call centers and first responders, and better communicate with the community during emergency situations. I am so proud to have secured this important funding, and I look forward to seeing these federal dollars put to good use for the betterment of all of us who call Fairfax County home.”

This work will be performed by George Mason’s transdisciplinary Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) team. “This work is only possible by engaging a unique transdisciplinary team representing three different colleges, toward enhancing emergency communications resiliency and effectiveness with AI,” said Paul Houser, C-RASC executive director. “We thank Congressman Connolly and the George Mason transdisciplinary vision for the realization of this project, and look forward to making a difference in Fairfax emergency management and beyond.”

Linton Wells II, executive advisor to the Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities and to the C5I Center at George Mason, said that the university is actively engaged with the Fairfax County Department of Public Safety and Communications (Fairfax County’s 9-1-1 Center), as well as other emergency management organizations.

Fairfax County's 9-1-1 center receives around 400,000 emergency calls annually. Photo provided by Fairfax County

“We talked to public safety officials around Fairfax and the most receptive entity was the 9-1-1 call center,” he said. “We were invited to join operators on the call center floor and observe them taking calls and dispatching people, which was very impressive. They really are interested in training and would like to spend more time talking to the community about what they do.”

Wells added that AI can improve public safety effectiveness in numerous ways.

“It could help reduce delays in processing calls, enhance caller experiences, and improve dispatching efficiency, for example. The plan is to begin by using it to improve training, which is an excellent place to get immediate gains and learn more about how it best can be used.”

George Mason will work with local communities to make citizens more aware of what’s being done in emergency preparedness and will provide feedback to public safety officials. The technology can also help officials interpret public sentiment as a disaster is occurring, supporting another goal of the project, which is to improve stakeholder engagement and enhancing support to underserved communities.

Karina V. Korostelina, professor and director of the Sustainable Peace Lab at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, said that the university will work with local officials on further outreach and communication efforts in support of the project.

“�鶹�� task is to create a systemic community engagement plan that involves Neighborhood and Community Services, Immigration Services, Fairfax County Public Schools and libraries in educating community members about the use of 911 and the role of AI," Korostelina said. "We also will conduct multiple focus groups and townhalls to understand community concerns and facilitate participatory approaches to the improvement of public safety and communications." Her team, which includes PhD student and a post-doc, will implement cutting-edge practices of co-creation and community empowerment to enhance collaboration between communities and government agencies in Fairfax.

Other project investigators from C-RASC and CEC include Kathryn Laskey, professor emerita of Systems Engineering and Operations Research, and Hemant Purohit, associate professor of Information Sciences and Technology, who will closely work with a CEC doctoral student and industry partners to design an AI assistant to enable personalized conversation-based training for call-takers to go through various real-world scenarios at their own pace while accounting for complexities such as varying incident descriptions and multilingual callers.

“Since 9-1-1’s inception in 1968, voice communication has been the cornerstone of 9-1-1 emergency services,” said Andrew Clarke, assistant director of operations in the Department of Public Safety Communications, Fairfax County 9-1-1. “However, with the rise of smartphones, smart homes, and AI, our community has moved beyond traditional voice-based interaction.”

Clarke said this new partnership with George Mason will allow Fairfax County to reimagine workflows, not just improving service, but setting a new benchmark for community engagement. "We are transforming the 9-1-1 landscape to ensure we are as innovative and forward-thinking as the technologies that surround us today.”

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Karina Korostelina

Paul Houser

Hemant Purohit

Songs from adolescence and early adulthood enhance mood and social engagement among people with dementia, according to new study

Mary Cunningham — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 21:18:46 +0000

Songs from adolescence and early adulthood enhance mood and social engagement among people with dementia, according to new study Mary Cunningham Mon, 06/24/2024 - 17:18

Around 46% of residents in U.S. nursing homes have Alzheimer's or other dementias, and 13% of them are treated with antipsychotic medications, according to the National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care in Nursing Homes.

Photo by Getty Images

Antipsychotic medications that affect a person’s mental state have been widely prescribed for people living with dementia in nursing facilities to treat their behavioral (social) and psychological (mood) symptoms, though positive results are limited, and the drugs can come with serious side effects. George Mason �鶹�� College of Public Health faculty are part of a growing group of researchers who are seeking therapeutic ways to improve the quality of life of these residents without medication.

New research, led by principal investigator Megumi Inoue, found that personalized music intervention is effective at reducing the use of antipsychotic and antianxiety medication, alleviating agitation levels, and enhancing mood and social engagement among residents.

Personalized playlists were developed based on family member suggestions regarding what songs, artists, and/or genres the participants listened to when they were around 15 to 25 years old, an age when more memories are available for potential recollection. Facility staff played the personalized playlists for the intervention group twice a week, aiming for at least 30 minutes each session, for four weeks. Participants in the control group continued their usual schedule during these four weeks.

Associate Professor of Social Work Megumi Inoue

“This study provides evidence that personalized music intervention can be used to manage distressing behavioral and psychological symptoms associated with dementia,” said Inoue, an associate professor in the Department of Social Work. "This low-cost, easily implementable intervention, requiring no special licensure for administration, can significantly enhance the quality of life for nursing facility residents

Overall, the intervention group experienced a decrease in average antipsychotic medication use after the intervention, and the control group, which did not receive any music, had an increase in medication use during the same time period. The observational data also revealed that this intervention can improve the mood of residents living with dementia and help them connect with others, while surveys from administrative staff and activity directors highlighted their positive views of the intervention.

“In addition to improving patients’ quality of life, this intervention can create an improved environment throughout the nursing home,” said Inoue. "For example, if personalized music helps reduce residents’ challenging symptoms, they will become easier to work with for direct care workers. In addition, the reduction of medications to treat residents’ psychological and behavioral symptoms will contribute to creating an overall safer facility because such medications have sedating effects that can cause falls."

She added, "Using the personalized music intervention may be perceived as extra work by some staff members, but ultimately, it can ease their work processes as its positive effects have indirect impacts on their work and facility environment."

“A Personalized Music Intervention in Nursing Home Residents Living With Dementia: Findings From a Randomized Study” was published online in the Journal for Applied Gerontology in June 2024. This research was supported by a Civil Money Penalty (CMP) Fund from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services through the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services.

Additional authors include Emily S. Ihara, Catherine J. Tompkins, Shannon Layman, Sarah Nosrat, Morgan Moore, and Kimberly A. McNally from George Mason’s College of Public Health; Meng-Hao Li from George Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government; Samreen Mehak from George Mason’s Department of Biology; George Mason alumna Kendall Barrett from Wise Mind Psychotherapy; and Catherine Magee from Paving the Way MSI.

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Megumi Inoue, PhD

George Mason researchers receive $1.78M from NIH for work improving the health of mothers, children

Shayla Brown — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 16:57:43 +0000

George Mason researchers receive $1.78M from NIH for work improving the health of mothers, children Shayla Brown Wed, 06/05/2024 - 12:57

George Mason �鶹�� scientists, nurses, and researchers in the College of Public Health have just entered the second cycle of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) program called Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO).

The NIH grant provides ECHO teams across the country with a total of $7 million a year for seven years to research five outcomes of women and children: pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes; upper and lower airways; obesity; neurodevelopment; and positive health. George Mason will receive $1.78 million every year throughout this cycle.

An ECHO researcher taking measurements of a child participant. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of �鶹�� Branding.

The cohort, which includes Boston Children’s Hospital, is led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. George Mason is the only university in Virginia participating in the project. The research being done for the ECHO project is part of a new set of research initiatives made possible with the opening of the Population Health Center on the Fairfax Campus.

They are currently re-recruiting participants from the first cycle. They have confirmed just over 300 participants out of 1,512. The youngest participant is under one year old and the oldest is 12.

“We’re aiming to gather information about women and children in a longitudinal manner to compare to our data to that of Omaha, Nebraska, or Iowa. Learning about the regional disparities will then allow us to use them to influence national policy,” said principal investigator Kathi Huddleston, PhD ’08, an associate professor in the College of Public Health.

Huddleston said George Mason’s robust PhD nursing program and her dissertation research on pediatric emergency preparedness helped to prepare her for this extensive project.

The team studied the effects of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever” chemicals, as well as air pollution modeling, sleep patterns, nutrition, and COVID-19, gathering real-time data and look at their associations with child health outcomes, such as child obesity, immunization rates and more.

This research from the first cycle of ECHO revealed that school lunch consumption was associated with increased obesity in children and prompted policy change that strengthen the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA). This resulted in a significant decrease in the overall body mass index among school-aged youths and will have substantial health benefits on generations of children.

More results from the first cycle included changes in sleep patterns due to COVID-19 and disparities in sleep patterns between children of different racial/ethnic backgrounds. The team also found that there is a strong relationship between the health of the mother at pre- and early conception and the overall health of children. For example, babies born to mothers with higher levels of toxic metals were more likely to be underweight, which could lead to future health issues.

“If we want to have healthy kids, we have to have healthy moms,” said Huddleston.

As part of cycle two, the researchers will recruit more pregnant women to gain additional insight, including women who were patients at Inova Health System and have also been working with a lot of the same kids for many years, said Grace Lawrence, PhD ’18, director of research clinical operations for the ECHO project.

Student researchers Daisy Posada, Seema Poudel, and Shiva Zarean. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of �鶹�� Branding.

Also on the team are Alma Fuller, nursing student Shiva Zarean, and research project administrators Daisy Posada BA ’13, MA ’18, and Bruna Mayen, a biology major who also acts as the project and lab manager. Mayen’s role as lab manager includes collecting teeth, hair, and urine samples to test the progression of health and well-being in the participants as they grow.

“I ensure samples are stored at required optimal conditions and freezers are monitored daily,” said Mayen. “I also perform data entry and quality assurance/quality control of all data and samples.”

“Each interaction with the participants is so special, it brings potential for new connections and enriches the overall experience and impact they have on the study and us on their development,” said Mayen.

The families come into the research facility once a year so researchers can record each family member’s weight, height, and head and waist circumferences, as well as their body fat percentage.

“We were in the ECHO study when my first child was a newborn. Then my second child was born, and we just kept going,” said Cassie Gallagher, a mom of three young children, all of who participate in the ECHO study. “We’ve been very active in the study, we send in nails, teeth, everything.”

“I also appreciate how thorough the questions are in the surveys that they send us because they’re trying to get the important answers. Especially when they ask about our stress level and different environmental aspects,” said Gallagher.

The project encompasses the concept of citizen science as the participants provide all of the information being used to create an impact in public health. They also receive quarterly updates with the researchers’ findings.

“One of the understated benefits of this study is that children are encouraged to participate firsthand in science and gather an understanding of science in a very personal way,” said Huddleston. “We have received wonderful feedback from the kids about how they feel giving new information to better all children’s health.”

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Dr. Kathi Huddleston, PhD, MSN

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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 George Mason �鶹�� 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 �鶹�� 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, �鶹�� 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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Amarda Shehu

Daniel Barbará

Giuseppe Ateniese

Research will aid law enforcement officer decision-making in high-stress situations

Colleen Rich — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 17:54:37 +0000

Research will aid law enforcement officer decision-making in high-stress situations Colleen Rich Tue, 04/09/2024 - 13:54

George Mason �鶹�� researchers are using immersive virtual reality to examine ways in which high-stress conditions may influence law enforcement officer decision-making and utilization of equitable policing strategies.

photo by Matt Gush/Getty Images

Mason College of Education and Human Development professor Stephanie Dailey is serving as the principal investigator on the project and working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, in collaboration with the Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute, a federally funded research and development center at the MITRE Corporation.

Stephanie Dailey. Photo by Office of �鶹�� Branding

For this project, Dailey aims to better understand how law enforcement officer support, including training and wellness strategies, can affect officer decision-making and lead to equitable policing outcomes.

This multidisciplinary, multi-year effort includes Sue-Ming Yang in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society and Justin Ramsdell in the Department of Psychology in Mason’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The study, which uses MITRE’s SIMEX system, involves law enforcement officers who have been participating in a series of experiments where immersive virtual reality is used to simulate a high-stress encounter with a subject—as portrayed by an avatar—exhibiting various social and behavioral characteristics. The SIMEX simulation labs, located McLean, Virginia, offer a special mix of technical and operational capabilities for government agencies that want to try out new ideas by using dedicated, state-of-the-art laboratories.

In the experiments, the subject avatars vary throughout the experiment in dress, skin tone, compliant or noncompliant behaviors, and whether they are armed or unarmed. In response to a rapid sequence of simulated scenarios in which the suspect displays different combinations of these controlled variables, officers volunteering for this study are required to make quick decisions on how to respond to the subject. The simulated scenes mirror real-life situations in which officers could find themselves.

Sue-Ming Yang. Photo by Office of �鶹�� Branding

In discussing her research, Dailey said that examining an officer’s use of force decision-making allows for a better understanding of the circumstances in which officers use different levels of force. Specifically, circumstances in which officers are more likely to react in a way that is not commensurate with the situation or threat level at hand.

“We all have biases,” said Dailey, who is an assistant professor in the Counseling Program in the School of Education. “Anytime we are navigating the world, we are operating off a series of cognitive shortcuts or mechanisms that support rapid decision-making, such as ‘don’t touch a hot stove!’”

But Dailey added that sometimes the cognitive shortcuts people use are based upon faulty assumptions. “Having officers repeatedly go through different simulated scenarios helps us isolate what factors may influence officer decision-making.”

Dailey provided several examples of how the behavioral cues displayed by the subjects in the simulated experiments are manipulated in isolation or in combination with other characteristics thus giving researchers the opportunity to observe the officer’s reactions under different scenarios. The combination of these variables is randomized and determined by algorithms designed to identify factors that may merit further investigation in subsequent runs of the simulated experiments.

“We look at different combinations of factors and see where there are statistically significant variations in the decisions made by an officer on how to interact with the subject, including use of force decisions,” said Dailey, who watches the simulations in real time.

She added that the officer’s use of force is based upon a continuum and not limited to discharging a service weapon but could include verbal commands, soft hand controls, using a taser, attempts at physical restraint, or other nonlethal actions.

The next phase of the project will center on the impact of training supporting equitable policing. Researchers will survey law enforcement officers who have had this training to investigate if it has positively impacted officer behaviors and well-being in the field.

Dailey emphasized the importance of being proactive in ensuring that law enforcement officers are well-equipped to make good decisions not only when faced with a threat, but to be prepared even before a threat presents itself. This can enhance the protection and safety of both the officer and the community.

“The idea is to provide recommendations for these trainings and to help law enforcement agencies understand what part of equitable policing training is most helpful for officers,” she said. “The primary focus of this training is self-awareness, de-escalation skills, and procedural justice.”

The research team will examine whether there are specific aspects of this training that are especially beneficial in enhancing an officer’s ability to respond to a high-stress situation in a way that protects the safety and well-being of the community.

“If my main goal is to help communities that are impacted by police violence, then the best place to start is with the decision-making of officers,” said Dailey. “As a researcher, I am trying to support safer and more just communities by helping officers make informed decisions.”

This is Dailey’s second time working with MITRE on research using their SIMEX. Previous research sought to determine best practices for school safety during active shooter incidents.

Read more about the project >

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Mason engineers develop “rusty” coffee grounds to remove pollutants from water

Teresa Donnellan — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:03:14 +0000

Mason engineers develop “rusty” coffee grounds to remove pollutants from water Teresa Donnellan Thu, 01/25/2024 - 14:03

The most elegant solutions are sometimes the simplest, like using one waste product to eliminate another. By combining spent coffee grounds with iron oxide (aka rust), Mason engineers have created CoffeeBots, which can bind to several different pollutants in seawater before being removed via magnets.

From left to right: Jeff Moran, Amit Kumar Singh, and Tarini Basireddy pose with CoffeeBot samples.
Photo by Teresa Donnellan.

High school lab assistant Tarini Basireddy, post-doc Amit Kumar Singh, and assistant professor Jeff Moran recently published their findings in Nanoscale demonstrating how their invention, which they call “CoffeeBots,” can effectively remove three types of pollutants from seawater: oil, microplastics, and methylene blue.

Singh proposed creating CoffeeBots as a way for Basireddy to gain hands-on experience without having to interact with the many dangerous chemicals in Moran’s laboratory, which focuses mainly on developing artificial, self-propelled microparticles for different medical and environmental applications.

“Tarini and Amit developed a simple strategy to coat spent coffee grounds, which I brought from home after brewing my morning coffee, with iron oxide nanoparticles,” said Moran.

Coffee grounds have a porous, irregular surface, so they have ample surface area to which pollutants can bind, even with much smaller iron oxide nanoparticles attached, he explained. Moreover, because iron oxide is magnetic, a simple handheld magnet can both drive CoffeeBots through polluted water and remove them once they have absorbed the pollutants. Basireddy used Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to confirm that the iron oxide nanoparticles had bonded to the coffee grounds.

“Tarini’s extensive research experience and skillset were crucial to the success of this project," Moran noted. She’s way ahead of where I was at her age.”

While using coffee grounds to clean up oil spills is not entirely new, this team is the first to show that moving CoffeeBots outperform stationary ones at removing pollutants, since moving CoffeeBots encounter pollutant molecules more often than stationary coffee grounds do. Making the coffee grounds magnetic has another benefit: Once the CoffeeBots are recovered, they can be reused several times with little loss in water-cleaning efficacy.

Methylene blue

The team demonstrates that
CoffeeBots are drawn to magnets.
Photo by Teresa Donnellan.

The team assessed how CoffeeBots fare in seawater polluted with methylene blue, a dye commonly used in textile production. In addition to being a carcinogen, Basireddy explained, methylene blue can cause serious health problems: “It can cause skin irritation, if there's too much in the water; it can cause a lot of digestive problems; it can cause nausea, fever, lots of symptoms.” She added that it can negatively impact marine life as well.

The team found CoffeeBots can be an effective solution for cleaning methylene blue from seawater, especially when they are first also loaded with ascorbic acid, which helps break down the dye and render it nontoxic. Basireddy noted the potential simplicity of a CoffeeBots-based solution to methylene blue pollution, saying, “It's cool because the countries that are big textile producers also happen to be the countries that are big in coffee production.” The team cited Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam as countries that produce both dyed textiles and coffee and struggle with water pollution.

Oil and microplastics

The final pollutant tested is perhaps the most exciting, as it’s been a burgeoning topic of concern in recent years: microplastics. In water, microplastics cling to coffee grounds for the same reason that oil does: each substance is hydrophobic.

“One reason why microplastics and nanoplastics are such a tricky environmental problem is that they're so small, and that makes it difficult to locate them just to remove them,” said Moran. “By driving the CoffeeBots through the water, the hydrophobic interactions cause the microplastic particles to build up and accumulate on the surface of the coffee grounds.”

Singh noted that, while other (perhaps more expensive) techniques exist for remediating oil spills and removing chemical pollutants from water, developing a technique to make microplastic removal more efficient is an exciting new development.

Further plans

The team has applied for a patent to protect the technology and are excited to determine the full capabilities of CoffeeBots. They are optimistic because CoffeeBots are potentially a simple, inexpensive solution to water pollution.

While Basireddy has moved on to her freshman year at Johns Hopkins �鶹��, Singh and Moran look forward to finding further applications for CoffeeBots and possibly improving their technology. For example, Singh hopes to find a way to make CoffeeBots move when activated by sunlight, which would enable them to propel themselves through the water without the need for an external magnet. In addition, the team plans to explore the full range of pollutants that can be removed by CoffeeBots and characterize the efficacy of different coffee types.

Get a more detailed look at the team's experiments by reading their paper in Nanoscale, “Eliminating waste with waste: transforming spent coffee grounds into microrobots for water treatment,” which includes several videos of CoffeeBots in action, such as the one below. In addition, Singh created a video to promote CoffeeBots on YouTube.

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Jeffrey Moran

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New video camera system captures the colored world that animals see

Colleen Rich — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 19:36:54 +0000

New video camera system captures the colored world that animals see Colleen Rich Wed, 01/24/2024 - 14:36

A George Mason �鶹�� scientist and team of researchers developed a new camera system that allows ecologists and filmmakers to produce videos that accurately replicate the colors that different animals see in natural settings, according to a report in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

Mason professor Daniel Hanley and undergraduate Anna Siegle researched floral color diversity of wildflowers and how bees are perceiving them throught the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of �鶹�� Branding

Authors of the study include Daniel Hanley, an assistant professor in Mason’s Department of Biology, Vera Vasas at the �鶹�� of Sussex, UK, and colleagues from the Hanley Color Lab at Mason.

“We’ve long been fascinated by how animals see the world,” said Hanley, who is also a National Geographic Explorer. “Modern techniques in sensory ecology allow us to infer how static scenes might appear to an animal; however, animals often make crucial decisions on moving targets like detecting food items and evaluating a potential mate’s display. Here, we introduce hardware and software tools for ecologists and filmmakers that can capture and display animal-perceived colors in motion.”

Different animals perceive the world differently because of the capabilities of the photoreceptors in their eyes. For example, animals like bees and some birds can see ultraviolet (UV) light, which are outside the range of human perception. Reconstructing the colors that animals actually see can help scientists better understand how they communicate and navigate the world around them.

False color images give us a glimpse into this dynamic world, but traditional methods, such as spectrophotometry, are often time consuming, require specific lighting conditions, and cannot capture moving images.

This image of three male orange sulphurs Colias eurytheme is an example of one such depiction. Photo by Daniel Hanley

To address these limitations, researchers developed a novel camera and software system that captures animal-view videos of moving objects under natural lighting conditions. The camera simultaneously records video in four color channels: blue, green, red, and UV.

This data can be processed into “perceptual units” to produce an accurate video of how those colors are perceived by animals, based on existing knowledge of the photoreceptors in their eyes. The team tested the system against a traditional method that uses spectrophotometry and found that the new system predicted perceived colors with an accuracy of more than 92%.

“We were very surprised by how accurate the method was for quantifying colors on moving targets,” said Hanley. “It is great to involve our students in this meaningful research.”

This novel camera system will open new avenues of research for scientists and allow filmmakers to produce dynamic, accurate depictions of how animals see the world around them, the authors say. The system is built from commercially available cameras, housed in a modular, 3D-printed casing, and the software is available open-source, allowing other researchers to use and build on the technology in the future.

Read their full report

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This content appears in the Summer 2024 print edition of the Mason Spirit Magazine with the title "What Animals See."

A $6 million NSF grant will translate research into practice to help local communities become climate-resilient

Colleen Rich — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 18:50:38 +0000

A $6 million NSF grant will translate research into practice to help local communities become climate-resilient Colleen Rich Tue, 01/23/2024 - 13:50

George Mason �鶹�� scientists and partners will leverage their climate expertise and the university’s resources into broader societal implications, thanks to a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is going to translate research into practice to support the creation of climate-resilient communities across Virginia.

Mason researcher Celso Ferreira (far right) and President Gregory Washington take Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger on a tour of Mason's Flood Hazards Research Lab. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of �鶹�� Branding

The funding from the NSF’s Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program will allow Mason to expand its capabilities and capacity for translating research into real-world practical applications, with the creation of programming that will allow Mason faculty to serve communities across the commonwealth—especially within the state’s underserved regions—by co-producing science-based solutions that help them increase their resilience to climate change.

The four-year cooperative agreement, “ART: Translating Research to Practice to Create Climate-Ready Communities Across Virginia,” begins Feb. 1, and will allow Mason faculty and their nonprofit partner, the Center for Climate Strategies, to work with local municipal governments and community partners to produce science-based solutions that will create sustainable, community resilience to the impacts of climate change.

The project proposes two initial seed translational research projects, focusing on the co-production of solutions to mitigate flood hazards and reduce the impacts of urban heat on frontline communities. The latter comes on the heels of the world’s warmest year on record in 2023. Faculty will have the opportunity to propose additional translational research projects that address other climate impacts and response capabilities needed by Virginia communities to become climate-ready.

Mason’s Jeremy Campbell leads a discussion on local resiliency planning with staff from the Northern Virginia Regional Commission at a workshop held by the Virginia Climate Center in March 2023. Photo by VCC

“This really gives universities a chance to have an impact,” said Leah Nichols, the project’s principal investigator and the executive director of Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth. “I think it’s going to help us start to institutionalize things that until now had been one-offs.”

Mason was one of 18 schools to have been awarded an ART cooperative agreement. The NSF overall investment of more than $100 million will enable academic institutions to accelerate the pace and scale of translational research that will grow the nation's economy.

“NSF endeavors to empower academic institutions to build the pathways and structures needed to speed and scale their research into products and services that benefit the nation,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “The [ART program] identifies and champions institutions positioned to expand their research translation capacity by investing in activities essential to move results to practice.”

Mason’s ART program leverages the model already created by the Virginia Climate Center (VCC)—which was initially established by a $2 million Community Project grant sponsored by Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA) – since its inception in 2022 for the necessary engagement infrastructure. That includes targeted outreach to individual community leaders and other key influencers in the hopes of creating the kind of collaborative relationships necessary to figure out what each community’s specific needs are.

Other co-PIs on the Mason project include Jim Kinter, a professor in the Climate Dynamics PhD Program and the director of both Mason’s Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies within the College of Science and the Virginia Climate Center; Celso Ferreira, an associate professor within Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing and the director of the Flood Hazards Research Lab; Luis Ortiz, an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences within the College of Science; and Tom Peterson, the CEO of the Center for Climate Strategies. Other entities involved include MN Associates Inc., which will monitor’s the program’s implementation and progress, and the �鶹�� of Kentucky, which is serving as the project’s mentoring institution. Pairing awardees with mentor institutions that have an established translational research ecosystem is one of the unique features of the ART program.

Current research that can be brought to bear on local community concerns includes, but is not limited to risk and vulnerability assessment, the development and deployment of new adaptive capacities through modeling, simulating, predicting and projecting climate variability and change, including downscaled global observational and modeling data sets, and the development of solutions to close vulnerability gaps by assessing needs for action and designing and evaluating new measures for local implementation.

Other aims include supporting faculty who wish to be involved and the creation of specific academic programming, such as specialized courses on key climate issues, a new climate action minor, and a graduate certificate program, for future workforce development.

“One very troubling aspect of the effects of climate change is that it has the biggest impact on underserved people and communities that are least able to address the issue,” Kinter said. “Mason, being the largest public university in Virginia, owes it to the residents of the commonwealth to understand the risks it faces and create innovative solutions to increase community resilience.”

Virginia bore the brunt of nine climate disasters in 2018 and 2019 alone, resulting in $1.6 billion of negative economic impact, according to the Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources.

Increasing community resilience to the effects of climate change is expected to help mitigate the impact and substantially reduce costs associated with damage from progressive climate change, extreme weather events, and other climate-driven effects, the researchers said.

“We’re really trying to understand what it is that [local communities] need from a scientific, technical, or research point of view through the lens of what is it that a university can provide,” Nichols said. “And once the climate-focused ART programs become well-established, we hope to extend this model to support the translation of research into practice in other sustainability domains as well.”

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Celso Ferreira

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Methylene blue

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Further plans

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A $6 million NSF grant will translate research into practice to help local communities become climate-resilient

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