Category: Excellence Award Winners

Leah’s Nomination

As Leah’s fellow student and friend, I have seen her tireless dedication to and passion for this project over the last several months; she truly puts her heart and soul into her work, and is wholly deserving of this award.
Leah always puts her best effort into everything she does.
The good, the bad, and the Eggly project.
Leah gives 110% in everything she does, and then realizes she could have done more and does 150% without anyone asking her to. She has never backed down from anything in the entire time I have known her.
I nominate Leah Pistone for her project on avian blood parasitism. She’s a great leader and mentor not only in her field of study but in the fencing club as well. She garnishes positive thinking habits acts as someone you can ask questions to who will help to foster critical thinking and decision making.
Leah put so much effort into her research on birds last summer. I even visited her several times during the summer and got to see how dedicated she was. Her project was fascinating too, coming from someone who struggles with biology. She definetly deserves recognition for her time and energy.
Student Excellence Award

Dr. Bagheri’s Nomination

I am honored to nominate Dr. Shaghayegh Bagheri for the OSCAR Mentoring Excellence Award, acknowledging her exceptional mentorship and profound impact on my research journey within her lab. Dr. Bagheri has consistently demonstrated an unwavering commitment to fostering a culture of student scholarship in alignment with Mason’s Students as Scholars initiative. Her personalized approach to mentoring, recognizing and nurturing my unique strengths and interests in research and creative activities, has been instrumental in shaping the trajectory of my undergraduate research and enabling meaningful contributions to the academic community.

A hallmark of Dr. Bagheri’s mentorship is her hands-on involvement in my research project. Beyond providing insightful theoretical frameworks, she actively collaborates with me in the lab, offering practical guidance on experimental design, data analysis, and result interpretation. This collaborative approach creates a dynamic and enriching research environment where I feel empowered to take ownership of my project, benefitting from Dr. Bagheri’s wealth of expertise. This mentorship style extends beyond scheduled meetings, fostering open communication and a shared sense of responsibility for the success of our research endeavors.

I must also commend the collaborative atmosphere cultivated by Dr. Bagheri within the lab, with a special mention of graduate student Kunal Gide. Kunal has been an invaluable ally throughout my research journey, providing support, insights, and a collaborative spirit that has enhanced the overall research experience. Dr. Bagheri’s leadership in nurturing this collaborative dynamic adds depth and breadth to the mentoring environment.

Furthermore, Dr. Bagheri has actively championed my professional development, ensuring the acquisition of research skills and the refinement of essential abilities such as effective communication, critical thinking, and project management. She has facilitated opportunities for me to present our research findings at conferences, connect with fellow scholars in the field, and publish our work in reputable journals. Dr. Bagheri’s commitment to my holistic growth as a student researcher has had a lasting impact, significantly preparing me for future academic and professional pursuits. In every aspect, her mentorship, combined with the collaborative spirit within the lab, epitomizes the objectives of the OSCAR Mentoring Excellence Award, making Dr. Bagheri and Kunal Gide deserving candidates for this esteemed recognition.

Trent’s Nomination

I would like to nominate Trent Grasso for the OSCAR Student Excellence Award as he has demonstrated an extreme dedication and passion for research within conservation. He dedicates much of his free time to understanding all things elephants whether that be working on his elephant database, with his research projects, or being a volunteer zoo aide with Asian elephants.

In 2015, he started collecting primary and secondary research articles about Proboscidean species (extinct and current) to create a database of articles relating to anything to do with Proboscidean. His dedication paid off as in June of 2020, he made the database public and now has a collection of over 250 articles, from before 1700s to today, that relate to elephants and related species. While gathering all these sources was a long endeavor, and he learned a lot none of the sources was his research.

Once he got to George Mason University (GMU), he started to look for ways to create and participate in elephant research. He has worked on three research projects in his undergraduate career with the first being done in his Sophomore year when he worked in Dr. Kathleen Hunt’s lab. This experience was done during GMU’s College of Science Research semester and he spent it extracting hormones from elephant tail hair from Maryland Zoo and the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (SNZCBI). Through this experience, he was able to determine the growth rate of tail hair in both Asian and African elephants and successfully run immunoassays for cortisol and progesterone.

A few months later, he spent a semester at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation (SMSC) in the Endangered Species Conservation program. In this program, he completed a research project on determining a more accurate Asian elephant population count through literature reviews and interviews. This project was important because there is not an agreed upon population count for the species but his work would help conservationists have a better idea. At the end of his project, he was able to present his findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Officials.

Currently, he is completing a URSP project that continues looking at the elephant tail hair study by running more immunoassays and looking at the stable isotopes to better understand cortisol and progesterone levels in the elephants under human care. He hopes to be able to eventually publish this work so other researchers can use his findings to help with elephant conservation.

While he has dedicated much of his time to elephant research, he is not limited to only elephants. In the summer of 2023, he helped graduate students in Dr. Hunt’s lab run hormone extractions on whale baleen and package samples for stable isotope analysis. His help in the lab will help give a better understanding of the baleen growth rates of bowhead whales and in creating full hormone profiles of many different whale individuals.

Recently, he started a position at the SNZCBI as a volunteer zoo aide where he is getting hands-on experience in working with elephants. Not only has he created databases and pursued research in elephant conservation, but now he gets to help take care of elephants and get a new understanding and appreciation of the species he has dedicated his life to.

His dedication and constant participation in research projects within his field make me believe that Trent Grasso is the perfect candidate for the OSCAR Student Excellence award as for almost 10 years he has been passionate about learning everything there is to know about elephant conservation. All the projects he has completed as an undergraduate show he is extremely passionate about his interests and has many outstanding accomplishments with hopefully many more ahead.

Victoria’s Nomination

Victoria Gonzales has worked with on research projects since October 2021 as an undergraduate researcher. She has worked on (1) local gathering data analysis, (2) YouTube data analysis, and (3) interviewing government agencies who provide disability service information. Throughout these projects that focus on local communities and government agencies, Victoria showed exceptional dedication and performance, with a community-oriented value. Also, she developed technical and qualitative research skills through working on the projects. As a results, several papers that she co-authored are under submission to international conferences. I highly recommend Victoria for the OSCAR award, based on her development of research skills and achievements she made so far.

Dr. Changwoo Ahn’s Nomination

Nadya’s Nomination

I met Nadya through the exhibition she installed at the GMU Art School where she displayed her paintings created during her residency in Iceland. I thought that the artwork was not only beautiful and inspiring to look at, but that it was also very meaningful and educational. It brought light to an important environmental topic and taught viewers about everyday life in another country. Nadya’s OSCAR project was unique and required lots of perseverance and a strong artistic vision to achieve.

Cicely’s Nomination

I would like to nominate Cicely Motamedi for an OSCAR Student Excellence Award. Under the auspices of an URSP award, she began research with me in the Summer 2022. She used a pair of atomic magnetometers, to measure both the absolute orientation and polarization (linear, circular, elliptical) of radio-frequency magnetic fields. The project involved lasers and fiber coupling, electronics and field coils, the use of a phase-sensitive radio-frequency spectrometer, and beta-version atomic magnetometers from Twinleaf. Cicely quickly mastered all elements, overcoming several equipment failures, and had taken the bulk of her data by the end of the summer. She clearly has the makings of a great experimentalist, and is in the top 5% of undergraduates who have worked with me.

During the fall 2022, Cicely, wrote up a journal publication on her summer work, which has recently been submitted to Physical Review Applied. She is a skilled writer with a clear voice and an organized way of thinking. Not only did she work on writing this semester, but she mastered the more theoretical aspects of her research, modifying the Bloch equations for her particular experimental parameters and mapping that on to the complex analysis required for her data. Cicely also wrote her own data analysis code, encompassing both time-domain and frequency-domain data, for the research.

In conclusion, Cicely Motamedi, through her hard work, creativity, and superb reasoning, exemplifies a student participating in research.

Piper’s Nomination

I would like to nominate Piper Thacher for the OSCAR student excellence award for her excellence and dedication to her research. Piper has always been excited to participate in research, especially in the field of conservation. She has worked on two major research projects which include fecal transplants to improve the microbiomes of two-toed sloths and analyzing the progesterone levels in four fin whales. In these two projects, she has learned how to conduct DNA extraction and sequencing along with immunoassays. Her fecal transplant research was originally a 5-week placement, but Piper was passionate and was able to continue the project and even publish her findings in Zoo Biology. She wanted to broaden her horizons so she decided to participate in an OSCAR project where she would have to take on a new field, endocrinology. She now spends every Friday in the lab running immunoassays. She hopes to get all her samples done for progesterone so she can look into a different hormone. She is an outstanding researcher due to her determination and passion for researching new topics.

Autumn’s Nomination

On top of Autumn’s recent publication on the mitogenome of the Saharan striped polecat, she is now continuing her work and looking at the historical and modern samples of the polecat and zorilla. With this, she hopes to see how evolution and population genetics shaped these two species.

Nathalia Peixoto’s Nomination

Lindsay’s Nomination

Dr. Kabbani’s Nomination