About Dr. Victor
Dr. Jennifer Nicoll Victor is an Associate Professor in the Schar School Policy and Government. Dr. Victor has established the Undergraduate Research Assistants Program (URAP) with in the Schar school and employs OSCAR Research Assistants to assist in her research. Since 2016, Dr. Victor has mentored over 100 undergraduate students and aims to foster a culture of mentorship, modeling professionalization attributes to students, and provides opportunities for growth.
About Dr. Dilek
Dr. Ozlem Dilek is an Assistant Professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department. Dr. Dilek currently supports four undergraduate students in her research and employs OSCAR Research Assistants to assist in her work. She aims to actively engage with students to help meet their academic and career aspirations. She is described as being deeply committed to her students’ personal success and growth and creates a supportive culture of student scholarship.
About Dr. Beheshti
Dr. Ali Beheshti is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department, and is also the director of Tribology and Surface Mechanics Lab. During his time at George Mason, Dr. Behesti has mentored 15 undergraduate research students and is described as being a sought-after mentor in his department. He strives to be an advocate in their success by providing high quality mentoring with direct engagement in challenging yet rewarding engineering problems.
About Mary
Mary Catlin is a doctoral student in Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University working as a research assistant for Dr. Allison Redlich in the MoDiLS Lab. While at George Mason, Mary has mentored 41 undergraduate students and takes pride in being a resource to student success and describing the mentoring process as a passion of hers. In Fall 2025, Mary will start as an Assistant Professor in a research-intensive criminal justice program and looks forward to continuing her mentoring efforts in her new role.
About Anna
Anna is an undergraduate in Computational and Data Sciences. Since 2022, she has served as a research assistant in the Schar school, and researches educational policies with a specific focus on North Carolina student and school data analysis. Additionally, she is a contributing author to the book, School Resources, the Achievement Gap, and the Law: Reconsidering School Finance in US Education Policy. In Spring 2025, she is presenting her research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Pittsburgh, PA.
About Daniel
Daniel is an undergraduate student studying Civil and Infrastructure Engineering. His research assesses the effectiveness of natural and nature-based features in attenuating waves, a critical hazard to coastal communities, and he has been a Flood Hazard Research Assistant since 2024. In Spring 2025, he is leading a research project in coordination with Fairfax County in which he is investigating potential benefits and trade-offs of flood mitigation strategies considering marsh migration and re-allocation.
About Amira
Amira is an undergraduate student studying Neuroscience. Her research focuses on florescent probe and tool development for early detection of oxidate stress-induced carbonylation in cells. Her work also led her to synthesize a fluorescent probe and characterize it using different spectroscopic methods. Since 2023, Amira has been an OSCAR Research Assistant under the guidance of Dr. Dilek and in Spring 2025, she is presenting her research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Pittsburgh, PA.
Ashley’s Nomination
Nomination
Talley’s Nomination
She is very hardworking and understanding.
Dr. Ahmad’s Nomination
Dr. Afra Ahmad has been an excellent mentor to me for two years and counting! She supervised my undergraduate honors thesis, allowing me to design my own study and really take ownership of the project. She balances my ownership of the project well with her guidance and expertise, always helping me grow my knowledge and experience, but never taking over. From using her URSP funds to support my attendance to our field’s yearly conference to encouraging me to apply to six grants (five of which I was awarded) to sending me internship and conference opportunities, Afra is always putting my needs first and providing me with opportunities.
I transitioned into a doctoral program this fall, and I have Dr. Ahmad to thank for that. When we began working on my undergraduate thesis together, I was unsure of what I wanted to do after graduation. Dr. Ahmad waited patiently for me to discover my passion for research by always telling me I was capable of flourishing in a doctoral program, but never pushing me to choose one way or another. Although she knew that I was uncertain about my future path, she continued to present me with opportunity after opportunity that became the basis of my CV. I am so grateful to Dr. Ahmad for seeing the potential in me and providing me with her expertise and the opportunities that come from her vast network. My graduation from undergrad provided an excellent opportunity to reflect over what my mentorship with Dr. Ahmad produced: due to our research, I was awarded the OSCAR student excellence award, the Jeanne C. Mellinger award, and the CHSS outstanding student award. Even though I have always been a good student, I never would have achieved these awards without the direction and expertise with which Dr. Ahmad guided my scholarship.
Now that I am a graduate student, Dr. Ahmad and I continue to collaborate on multiple projects even though her administrative position does not allow her to accept doctoral students. In one of our collaborations, Dr. Ahmad is mentoring me on how to mentor younger students. She is mentoring a new undergraduate honors student, and she has included me in a role similar to that of a committee member. In learning how to mentor from Dr. Ahmad, I am excited to give back to my community and continue her legacy of undergraduate mentorship as her mentorship has been so impactful for my life.
Dr. Wang’s Nomination
He has the been the most supportive, and educational mentor of my life. He has impacted the way I thought about science research in a very positive manner, and has always vouched for my success through all the hardships and obstacles I faced as an undergraduate researcher under his mentorship.
Kayleigh’s Nomination
I am writing a letter of recommendation on behalf of Ms. Kayleigh for the OSCAR Undergraduate Student Excellence Award. I’ve known Ms. Newman for over two years now with our first interaction during interviews for a Summer Impact project this past summer. Kayleigh has worked with me on a 2022 Summer Impact grant and then continued as a work study student for academic year 2022-23 and 2023-24. I’ve been able to observe Ms. Newman in a variety of capacities and feel confident in my ability to evaluate her scholarly contributions as an undergraduate OSCAR student. With that being said, I would strongly recommend her for the OSCAR Undergraduate Student Excellence Award.
The research projects Kayleigh has been involved with are part of my Fit2Serve Project. The Fit2Serve project provides support to emergency responders in the region by providing fitness assessments and exercise programs. The organizations the Fit2Serve project is currently working with are Fairfax County Fire and Rescue, Prince William County Fire and Rescue, the Virginia Army National Guard and George Mason ROTC. Goals of the project are to better understand the health of emergency responders throughout the career span by providing a service to these individuals. Specifically, Kayleigh has helped with conducting fitness testing of firefighters and ROTC cadets, delivering exercise programs virtually to firefighters, data entry, developing recruitment materials and disseminating findings.
Intellectually she is an outstanding student, regularly demonstrates critical thinking and actively engaged as an undergraduate student. She has been able to apply knowledge from her undergraduate work in Kinesiology. With the research projects she’s been involved with she has made positive impacts, taken advantage of opportunities to grow and showing increased independence. During the Summer Impact project and the past year working with me she has been extremely reliable, a quick learner and made substantial contributions to our research projects. Although she is currently a junior undergraduate she is more capable than many of the master’s level graduate students we currently have in our program.
Kayleigh has taken advantage of several opportunities to present the work she has been involved with. She has presented a poster at the American College of Sports Medicine Southeast conference the past 2 years, will be presenting at American College of Sports Medicine National Conference in Boston, MA this Spring, and the National Strength and Conditioning Association National Conference in Baltimore, MD this Summer. To my knowledge she is the first undergraduate student from the B.S. in Kinesiology to present at a professional conference in many years. She will also be presenting for the 2nd year at the upcoming National Council of Undergraduate Research.
Outside of her involvement with research Kayleigh is extremely involved with many other activities, and in my perspective, her ability to be so engaged, while maintaining a 3.9 GPA, is very impressive. For example, Kayleigh is a volunteer with the Fauquier Fire Department, OSCAR Peer Leader, gymnastics coach, Kinesiology Club officer, Kinesiology Student Ambassador and works multiple jobs. I firmly believe she is a ’superstar’ and is going to be one of the most successful undergraduate students from our academic program down the road. Perhaps, most importantly she has intangible qualities of a team player and excellent character.
To conclude I strongly recommend Ms. Newman her for the OSCAR Undergraduate Student Excellence Award. From my experiences she displays all the qualities of an undergraduate student deserving of the OSCAR Student Excellence Award. Please feel free to contact me with any further questions.
