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Dr. Huzefa Rangwala (PI)
Professor
Computer Science |
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Dr. Rangwala’s research focuses on data mining and their applications in learning sciences, bioinformatics and bioengineering. Dr. Rangwala is the recipient of the 2013 NSF Early Career Faculty Award and the NSF BIGDATA award related to educational data mining. For his commitment to teaching and undergraduate research, the PI was awarded the University wide teaching award in 2014. Since Fall 2009, the PI has mentored nine undergraduate students. This included a female, majoring in bioengineering (Eastlake) and a male African-American minority student (Tolbert). Tolbert was funded under a NSF REU supplement with another project. Eastlake has co-authored a study related to ultrasound image mining. The PI has also advised 4 high school students. In Fall 2011, Tao (high school mentee) won a place in the Siemens Science Regional Finals. The PI, along with two other faculty members received a $20,000 award from GMU to integrate inquiry-based learning and undergraduate research into the curriculum. From Spring 2015 to Spring 2016 the PI mentored Mr. LaPierre (B.S. in CS student) who developed a scalable clustering algorithm for analyzing large volumes of DNA sequence data. Mr. LaPierre received an honorable mention for his application to the NSF Graduate Fellowship Research Program and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles. In Summer 2016, the PI mentored four undergraduate students in their second year of study at GMU. Two of these recruited students were women. These students contributed to the design and development of new interfaces for presenting the output of the grade prediction and early warning systems. The PI will devote time and energy towards the administrative and logistical issues around running a collaborative and inter-disciplinary REU Site Program.
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Dr. Antonios Anastasopoulos |
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| Dr. Carlotta Domeniconi Associate Professor Computer Science |
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Dr. Domeniconi’s research interests include machine learning with applications in text mining, educational data mining, and bioinformatics. She is currently a co-PI (PI: Dr. Aditya Johri) on an NSF funded project (Collaborative Research: Deep Insights Anytime, Anywhere (DIA2)). DIA2 is currently designed as a powerful, web-based, knowledge-mining platform for non-experts in data mining to interactively explore the National Science Foundation awards portfolio. Dr. Domeniconi has supervised and successfully published papers with three undergraduate students: Gelman, Beckley, and Sweeney. They have analyzed a large online community of creators (Scratch Online), and modeled trajectory patterns that enabled them to quantitatively analyze informal learning.
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Dr. Michael Eagle |
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Dr. Eagle's bio is forthcoming.
| Dr. Aditya Johri Professor Information Sciences and Technology |
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Dr. Johri has overseen research by eight undergraduate students on NSF funded projects over the past six years. Student work has resulted in publications and placement in industry jobs as well as prestigious programs such as NASA Summer Scholars. In a prior REU supplement, the PI supported three students: Campbell, a senior in Kalamazoo College, MI, majoring in CS; Cherniawski, a junior at University of Mary Washington, VA, majoring in CS, and Mitchell, senior at Virginia Tech, VA, majoring in Industrial Design. Subsequently, Campbell is working with Microsoft; Cherniawski is working as a software engineer with Phoenix Integration in Virginia; and Mitchell is pursuing a dual masters degree at Virginia Tech. The research Campbell did over the summer formed the basis for her undergraduate honors thesis. Over the past year, Johri has supported three REU students, one of who has graduated and joined Lockheed Martin and two are continuing on for graduate studies. Johri will serve as a faculty mentor for immersion projects.
| Dr. Jana Kosecka Professor Computer Science |
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Jana Kosecka is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science, George Mason University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Pennsylvania. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the EECS Department at University of California, Berkeley. She is the recipient of David Marr's prize in Computer Vision and received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Jana is a former chair of IEEE Robotic Society’s Technical Committee on Computer Vision , Associate Editor of Transactions of IEE Robotics and Editor of Robotics and Automation Letters. Currently she is a Member of the Editorial Board of International Journal of Computer Vision. She has over 200 publications in refereed journals and conferences and is a co-author of a monograph titled Invitation to 3D vision: From Images to Geometric Models. She served as Program Chair of CVPR 2017, General Chair if ICCV 2023 and was on Associate Editor in Chief of IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation. She is a senior member of IEEE. Her general research interests are in Computer Vision and Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. In particular she is interested 'seeing' systems engaged in autonomous tasks, acquisition of static and dynamic and semantic models of environments by means of visual sensing, object recognition and human-computer interaction.
| Dr. Thomas LaToza Associate Professor Computer Science |
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Dr. LaToza’s research is in developer experience design, combining software engineering and human-computer interaction to investigate how developers interact with code and designs new ways to build software. He has worked with several undergraduate students, which has sometimes resulted in publications with undergraduate co-authors. For example, Eric Chiquillo developed an initial debugging feature for a programming environment and Evelina Shabani worked on a study of architectural decision practices. He has served as a mentor in George Mason University’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP), serving as a mentor to 17 high school and undergraduate students. ASSIP offers an intensive 7.5-week program encompassing career development activities as well as hands-on experience working on a research project. As a mentor in the program, he runs an intensive two day "bootcamp" introduction to Developer Experience Design and mentors students as they participate on research projects.
| Dr. Jaime Lester Professor Higher Education |
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Dr. Lester's research is focused on organizational change, and teaching and learning in higher education. She is currently a Co-PI on an NSF BIGDATA project (PI Rangwala). She is the recipient of multiple teaching and research awards including the GMU Teaching award. Lester has taught in the Honors College with several of her students receiving a competitive best paper award. Her engagement with undergraduate students extends to engagement in research activities. She was a recipient of a GMU Students as Scholars grant to examine diversity in higher education by engaging over 25 undergraduate students in participatory action research. Lester brings experience in the scholarship of teaching and learning, research on college student success, organizational change in higher education, and diversity. She will lead a case study workshop and participate as a faculty mentor.
| Dr. Jessica Lin Associate Professor Computer Science |
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Dr. Lin's research interests encompass visualization and machine learning. She is the PI on an NSF IIS project focused on the mining of temporal and spatio-temporal data. She has mentored one undergraduate student and two high school students since summer 2013. Since 2011, she has been working with the Center of Leadership and Community Engagement at George Mason University to explore opportunities that allow undergraduate students to amplify their education by applying what they learned in ways that benefit the local community. Students in Dr. Lin's undergraduate database class helped design and install a music database for the Music Department at GMU. She will serve as a faculty mentor for the research immersion project and help in developing tutorials.
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Dr. Kevin Moran |
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Dr. Moran’s research lies at the intersection of software engineering, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. His main research interest is in designing and building automated developer tools to help engineers build software faster and more effectively. Recently, he has been interested in applying machine learning and deep learning techniques to data mined from software repositories such as GitHub to help inform the tool design process. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and Cisco Systems. Dr. Moran has worked with several REU students in the past, and currently serves as a mentor in GMU’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP) for local high school students in the Fairfax area. Nine undergraduate students working under Dr. Moran have co-authored papers at top academic conferences and journals in the fields of software engineering and computer security. Additionally, undergraduate students supervised by Dr. Moran have gone on to secure positions both in highly ranked computer science graduate programs (Georgia Tech, Rice University), and at highly sought-after employers (Amazon, Facebook, etc.).
| Dr. Vivian Motti Assistant Professor Information Sciences and Technology |
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| Dr. Jill Nelson Associate Professor Electrical Engineering |
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Dr. Nelson's research focuses on statistical processing with applications in communications and tracking. She received an NSF CAREER Award in 2010 and maintains an active research program in engineering education. She is the PI of a multidisciplinary NSF WIDER project focused on broadening the use of evidence-based pedagogical strategies in STEM courses and developing faculty learning community structures to sustain these pedagogical changes. Dr. Nelson is a 2014 recipient of the GMU Teaching Excellence Award. She has mentored several undergraduates through GMUs OSCAR program. In addition, she leads an OSCAR-supported Scholarship Development Grant to redesign the signals and systems curriculum within electrical and computer engineering to emphasize critical thinking and synthesis. Dr. Nelson will lead a research immersion project.
Parth Pathak is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at George Mason University. Before joining George Mason University, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis, and before that, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2012. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. His research interests include mobile and ubiquitous computing, energy-efficient sensing, Internet-of-Things systems, wireless networking, high-speed millimeter-wave wireless networks, and network analytics. He is a recipient of the Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Research at the University of California, Davis in 2015. He has also received the Best Paper Award at IFIP Networking 2014 conference.
Dr. Amarda Shehu is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University, where she is also a Co-Director of the Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships (CAHMP), a Transdisciplinary Center for Advanced Study at George Mason University. Shehu obtained her Ph.D. from Rice University in 2008. Since joining Mason, Shehu's research has been at the interface of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with information sciences, life science, and engineering. She has published over 130 technical papers with postdoctoral, graduate, undergraduate, and high-school students and has received various federal, state, and private awards over the years supporting and recognizing her research. Shehu is also the recipient of the 2018 Mason University Teaching Excellence Award, the 2014 Mason Emerging Researcher/Scholar/Creator Award, and the 2013 Mason OSCAR Undergraduate Mentor Excellence Award. She is particularly proud of awards recognizing research and scholarship by the undergraduate and high-school students she has mentored over the years. Shehu currently serves as Program Director of the Information Integration and Informatics Program at the National Science Foundation.
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Dr. Parth Pathak |
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Parth Pathak is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at George Mason University. Before joining George Mason University, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis, and before that, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2012. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. His research interests include mobile and ubiquitous computing, energy-efficient sensing, Internet-of-Things systems, wireless networking, high-speed millimeter-wave wireless networks, and network analytics. He is a recipient of the Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Research at the University of California, Davis in 2015. He has also received the Best Paper Award at IFIP Networking 2014 conference.
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Dr. Amarda Shehu |
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Dr. Amarda Shehu is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University, where she is also a Co-Director of the Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships (CAHMP), a Transdisciplinary Center for Advanced Study at George Mason University. Shehu obtained her Ph.D. from Rice University in 2008. Since joining Mason, Shehu's research has been at the interface of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with information sciences, life science, and engineering. She has published over 130 technical papers with postdoctoral, graduate, undergraduate, and high-school students and has received various federal, state, and private awards over the years supporting and recognizing her research. Shehu is also the recipient of the 2018 Mason University Teaching Excellence Award, the 2014 Mason Emerging Researcher/Scholar/Creator Award, and the 2013 Mason OSCAR Undergraduate Mentor Excellence Award. She is particularly proud of awards recognizing research and scholarship by the undergraduate and high-school students she has mentored over the years. Shehu currently serves as Program Director of the Information Integration and Informatics Program at the National Science Foundation.
| Dr. Kim Sheridan Associate Professor Education Psychology |
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As a Co-PI on the NSF funded Game Design through Mentoring and Collaboration project 2007-2011, Dr. Sheridan studied learning with technologies. Dr. Sheridan worked with over 500 middle and high school youth, primarily from under served communities, learning 3-D computer modeling, animation and interactive game design. She supported 60 high school students into more leadership roles, including mentors, assistant instructors, and instructors. Dr. Sheridan also worked with two undergraduate computer science students to design instruction and supervise the high school mentors. In her current NSF project, she co-advises one undergraduate research assistant, who is involved in data collection on children's learning through making projects at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. Dr. Sheridan will serve as a faculty mentor for immersion projects.
Dr. Snyder’s research background is in type theory and languages. He now teaches programming courses including introductory programming (in Python3), object-oriented programming (in Java), Computer Systems and Programming (in C and x86-64), and Comparative Programming Languages (sampling many languages, including Ruby, Lisp, and Haskell). These classes have upwards of 240 students in them. The department recognized him in his second year as the department’s outstanding teacher, and the university recognized him with the university-wide Teaching Excellence Award in 2016. He regularly attends the largest conference on computer science education (ACE SIGCSE) and is actively involved in developing the GMU undergraduate CS curriculum. Dr. Snyder also assists in hiring undergraduate students as teaching assistants, inspecting applications and mapping TAs to courses in need. In a regular semester, he manages a team of upwards of twelve graduate teaching assistants weekly as part of the larger introductory courses, where more than 700 students may be enrolled. Dr. Snyder has advised some undergraduate research projects, including (1) visualizing numeric sequences and (2) creating a rubric system to streamline and normalize the grading process. Dr. Snyder is also currently working on an online in-class student response system ("Pytania") geared towards computer science classrooms. Dr. Snyder will serve as the point of contact for the REU program and will manage the day-to-day operations of the summer program.
Lap-Fai (Craig) Yu is an Associate professor at the Computer Science Department at George Mason University, where he leads the Design Computing and Extended Reality (DCXR) group. He works on computer graphics, vision, human-computer interaction, and virtual reality, particularly in AI and data-driven techniques for computational design. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from UCLA with an Outstanding Recognition in Research Award. His research has been featured by New Scientist, the UCLA Headlines, and the IEEE Xplore Innovation Spotlight; and has won Best Paper Honorable Mention Awards at 3DV and CHI conferences. He received an NSF CRII award and an NSF CAREER award for his research in computational design and virtual reality. His lab is supported by the NSF, Microsoft, Adobe, Google, Nvidia, and Oracle.
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Dr. Mark Snyder (Co-PI)
Associate Chair
Term Associate Professor Computer Science |
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Dr. Snyder’s research background is in type theory and languages. He now teaches programming courses including introductory programming (in Python3), object-oriented programming (in Java), Computer Systems and Programming (in C and x86-64), and Comparative Programming Languages (sampling many languages, including Ruby, Lisp, and Haskell). These classes have upwards of 240 students in them. The department recognized him in his second year as the department’s outstanding teacher, and the university recognized him with the university-wide Teaching Excellence Award in 2016. He regularly attends the largest conference on computer science education (ACE SIGCSE) and is actively involved in developing the GMU undergraduate CS curriculum. Dr. Snyder also assists in hiring undergraduate students as teaching assistants, inspecting applications and mapping TAs to courses in need. In a regular semester, he manages a team of upwards of twelve graduate teaching assistants weekly as part of the larger introductory courses, where more than 700 students may be enrolled. Dr. Snyder has advised some undergraduate research projects, including (1) visualizing numeric sequences and (2) creating a rubric system to streamline and normalize the grading process. Dr. Snyder is also currently working on an online in-class student response system ("Pytania") geared towards computer science classrooms. Dr. Snyder will serve as the point of contact for the REU program and will manage the day-to-day operations of the summer program.
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Dr. Lap-Fai (Craig) Yu |
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Lap-Fai (Craig) Yu is an Associate professor at the Computer Science Department at George Mason University, where he leads the Design Computing and Extended Reality (DCXR) group. He works on computer graphics, vision, human-computer interaction, and virtual reality, particularly in AI and data-driven techniques for computational design. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from UCLA with an Outstanding Recognition in Research Award. His research has been featured by New Scientist, the UCLA Headlines, and the IEEE Xplore Innovation Spotlight; and has won Best Paper Honorable Mention Awards at 3DV and CHI conferences. He received an NSF CRII award and an NSF CAREER award for his research in computational design and virtual reality. His lab is supported by the NSF, Microsoft, Adobe, Google, Nvidia, and Oracle.