Research

Nutrition and Weight Management

From TikTok bans and age verification requirements to media literacy lessons in schools, U.S. states are exploring a wide range of strategies to protect young people online.

The flurry of legislation reflects growing concern about social media's role in youth mental health, as rates of depression and anxiety have increased in recent years. But policy approaches have varied considerably, and the scientific evidence backing their effectiveness is mixed.

Melissa Villodas, assistant professor of Social Work. Photo provided.

To better understand how states are responding, a research team led by social work researcher Melissa Villodas of 911��’s College of Public Health analyzed 16 enacted laws across 10 states. The study, published in The Journal of Policy Practice and Research, offers one of the first frameworks for organizing and assessing the growing patchwork of state social media laws.

Researchers found the policies generally fell into three broad categories:

1) Limiting access through measures like parental consent requirements, age verification, internet restrictions in school, and, in one case in Montana, an attempted ban on TikTok. This was by far the most common approach, despite relatively limited evidence that many of these measures improve mental health for young people.

2) Reducing harmful exposure by restricting targeted advertising to minors, limiting potentially addictive platform features, and expanding parental controls. Existing research offers somewhat stronger, though still mixed, support for these approaches.

3) Building media literacy by teaching students about topics such as misinformation, cyberbullying, online safety, and social media's effects on mental health. This was the least common approach, even though existing evidence suggests it may be a promising strategy, particularly when it addresses both the risks and benefits of social media use.

Why does this matter?

"Most research on this topic has focused directly on how social media affects young people's mental health," said Villodas, associate professor in the Department of Social Work and the study's lead author. "We wanted to understand what state governments are actually doing in response, whether those approaches are supported by existing evidence, and where additional research is needed.” She also emphasized the study’s “person-in-environment” perspective, a fundamental approach in social work that considers how broader forces, including public policy, can influence a young person’s experiences and mental health.

The study uncovered one glaring disconnect: the policy approach used most often, limiting young people's access, had the least supporting evidence of its effectiveness. Meanwhile, media literacy training, included in just one enacted law in Florida, appeared to have some of the strongest evidence behind it.

"Many states have focused on measures like parental consent and age verification, but the evidence for those strategies is still limited," Villodas said. "Media literacy has received much less attention, even though it may be one of the more promising approaches when it teaches young people about both the risks and the benefits of social media."

The study captures the policy landscape through November 2024, but Villodas said its findings are designed to help policymakers evaluate future proposals as the evidence continues to evolve.

In addition to Villodas, the study was coauthored by Michael Wheeler and Natalia Acevedo, both recent graduates of 911��’s Master of Social Work program; Fadi Hamati of Columbia Cornell Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York-Presbyterian; and Ishita Kapur of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Food as medicine: Six insights from a 911�� nutrition expert

Heather Carroll — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:08:52 +0000

Food as medicine: Six insights from a 911�� nutrition expert Heather Carroll Mon, 08/17/2026 - 11:08

In This Story

Raedeh Basiri, PhD, RDN

Key Takeaways

911�� nutrition expert and registered dietitian Raedah Basiri shared six key lessons with Honors College students, emphasizing that personalized, gradual nutrition changes are often more effective than one-size-fits-all approaches to preventing and managing chronic disease.
Basiri highlighted the importance of nutrition in health care, noting that diet-based interventions, supported by technology and real-time feedback, can improve long-term health outcomes and encourage healthier behaviors.
She also stressed that nutrition support remains essential even when patients use weight-loss medications, and that building trust between patients and health care providers is critical.

911�� community health students share their insights from nutrition professor and registered dietitian Raedah Basiri for their Honors College project exploring nutrition interventions for chronic disease.

Community Health student Janay Hopgood

The concept of food as medicine is gaining traction as a way to prevent and manage chronic disease. During an Honors College consulting course (Honors 260), community health student Janay Hopgood and a teammate interviewed Raedeh Basiri, assistant professor of nutrition and a registered dietitian, to inform their approach.

Their project challenged them to develop an innovative solution to improve long-term health outcomes and prevent chronic disease among a health care organization partner.

"We aimed to integrate nutrition into health care by leveraging technology, community partnerships, and data-driven strategies to promote healthier lifestyles and advance health equity," Hopgood said. "Dr. Basiri helped us better understand which avenues of research and implementation were realistic, challenged common misconceptions, and provided thoughtful feedback. Most importantly, she created a space where we could openly discuss our developing concept and draw upon her knowledge and experience."

Here are six insights that Hopgood and her partner developed from their interview with Basiri:

Personalization matters.
Effective nutrition interventions start with collecting comprehensive data to understand the whole person, including their food access, finances, lifestyle, physical activity, and living environment. One-size-fits-all recommendations rarely work, Basiri said.
Start small.
Bombarding people with too much nutrition information at once isn't sustainable. Introducing small, personalized changes gradually is more likely to improve health outcomes.
Nutrition is too often overlooked in favor of medication.
Basiri highlighted a gap between nutrition research and clinical practice. When lifestyle changes don't produce immediate results, patients often get moved to medication despite strong evidence supporting the long-term benefits of dietary interventions.
Real-time feedback encourages behavior change.
Basiri said technology can help patients better understand how food affects their health, especially for those with limited access to a physician. Continuous glucose monitors provide real-time feedback that can increase compliance, while artificial intelligence tools can help deliver similar personalized guidance.
Weight-loss medications still need nutritional support.
Although GLP-1 medications are effective for weight loss, Basiri noted that they can also contribute to issues such as malnutrition, hair loss, and bone density loss. Nutrition support, she said, can help ensure patients don't "solve the problem and create another one."
Trust is the foundation of lasting impact.
Basiri emphasized that successful nutrition programs are built on trust, both between nutrition practitioners and patients, and between nutrition practitioners and other health care professionals. Positive outcomes are most likely to create that trust, leading to more referrals and greater demand for nutrition-based services.

Topics

CPH Student Research

Weight Control

Intimate Partner Violence

Students

Honors College

Shame, stigma, and culture prevent male intimate partner violence survivors from seeking help, study finds

Heather Carroll — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:05:28 +0000

Shame, stigma, and culture prevent male intimate partner violence survivors from seeking help, study finds Heather Carroll Wed, 08/12/2026 - 13:05

Key Takeaways

Across racial and ethnic groups, the main barriers to men seeking help for intimate partner violence are viewing it as a private matter, fear of retaliation, shame, and concerns about not being believed.
This study is among the first large-scale (nearly 2,000 men) U.S. studies to compare help-seeking barriers among non-Latino Black, Latino, and non-Latino White men victims of intimate partner violence.
By identifying the challenges that may prevent men from accessing intimate partner violence support, the findings can help inform more effective and inclusive services for male victims.

In This Story

Denise Hines, PhD

911�� researchers found that barriers to help-seeking vary across racial and ethnic groups, highlighting gaps in support for male survivors.

Men are less likely than women to seek help after experiencing intimate partner violence, and new research from 911�� found that the main barriers include viewing it as a private matter, fear of retaliation, shame, and concerns about not being believed.

Lyric Russo, postdoctoral researcher. Photo provided

In this study, postdoctoral researcher Lyric Russo explored these barriers across racial and ethnic groups in order to address gaps in research in these underrepresented demographics.

“By centering men’s perspectives across racial and ethnic backgrounds, the findings support a more inclusive understanding of intimate partner violence and underscore the importance of trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and gender-inclusive interventions that broaden access to and engagement with existing services,” said Russo, first author on a paper recently published in Psychology of Men & Masculinities.

This study is among the first large-scale (nearly 1,200 men) U.S. studies to compare help-seeking barriers among non-Latino Black, Latino, and non-Latino White male victims of intimate partner violence. The study was led and paper co-authored by acclaimed male IPV researcher Denise Hines.

Why does this matter?

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 44% of men report being victims of IPV, but many of these men are not receiving support, highlighting the significance of understanding barriers to seeking help.

Denise Hines, Elisabeth Shirley Enochs Endowed Professor. Photo provided

“By identifying the challenges to seeking support, the findings can help inform more effective and inclusive services for diverse groups of male victims,” said Hines, Elisabeth Shirley Enochs Endowed Professor of Social Work.

“Without focused research, interventions, and support services may fail to reflect the experiences and needs of male victims,” said Russo.

What are the detailed study findings?

Across all racial and ethnic categories, viewing abuse as a private matter was the most common barrier to seeking help.
Latino men were significantly more likely to express concerns about shame or embarrassment being a barrier.
Black men were less likely to report concerns about not being believed.
White men were more likely to report difficulty in labeling their experiences as abuse.

Additional details

The paper, Barriers to Help-Seeking Among Male Victims of Female-Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence: Insights from Black, Latino, and White Men, was published in Psychology of Men & Masculinities. The paper was selected as the July 2026 editor’s choice article and invited for a research feature on the APA Division 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities) blog. It is available free of charge. Paper co-authors include Jennifer L. Mezzapelle of 911��, Chiara Sabina of Rutgers University, Kerry A. Lee of Bryn Mawr College, and Emily M. Douglas of Montclair State University.

thumbnail provided by Nadeem from AdobeStock

Topics

Katherine Scafide, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAAFS

911��’s Injury Analytics Lab receives patent for AI bruise detection system

Heather Carroll — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:11:25 +0000

911��’s Injury Analytics Lab receives patent for AI bruise detection system Heather Carroll Mon, 08/10/2026 - 10:11

Newly patented AI technology helps get bruise detection tools into the hands of clinicians, law enforcement, and researchers

Can new technology make it easier to understand bruises? That's the question researchers at 911��'s Injury Analytics Lab (IAL) are answering with a patented technology that combines artificial intelligence, advanced imaging, and clinical data to give clinicians, forensic professionals, and researchers better information about skin injuries.

This technology reflects years of collaboration among experts in nursing, health informatics, and engineering, who worked together to transform research into a practical tool for injury assessment.

How the technology works

Image by College of Public Health.

The newly patented technology addresses current challenges in injury assessment by analyzing images of the skin alongside relevant clinical and demographic information from electronic health records. Similar to popular plant identification apps that combine image data with location information, the system uses AI to detect and assess bruise lesions.

"Documenting injuries accurately is essential for both medical treatment and seeking justice for victims of violence," said Associate Professor of Nursing and IAL Co-Director Katherine Scafide. "This patent recognizes our innovative approach that combines artificial intelligence, advanced imaging, and clinical data to help professionals make more informed decisions."

The patented artificial intelligence technology is built on a dedicated injury platform, which includes a large repository of injury images used by computer vision systems, and data from electronic health records that work together to support accurate injury assessment and real-world use. Development of the platform that hosts the data and systems, and related software is led by Professor of Health Informatics and IAL Co-Director Janusz Wojtusiak, while Professor of Engineering and IAL Co-Director David Lattanzi leads development of the computer vision systems and user-centered design.

One of the most innovative aspects of the patented technology is its ability to tailor imaging conditions such as light wavelength and camera filter to each individual.

Rather than relying on a standard lighting setup, the system can determine a person's skin color and select the most effective light wavelengths, filters, and imaging conditions for capturing injury evidence. By optimizing imaging for each person, the technology can improve injury detection and assessment across a wide range of skin tones, especially for people with darker skin tones, whose injuries can be harder to identify with traditional imaging.

But the technology goes beyond simply determining whether a bruise is present.

The system can estimate characteristics such as a bruise's age, size, color, and shape while also providing information about the confidence of its predictions. By combining visual data with information such as medical history, medications, demographics, and skin color, the technology can account for factors that influence how injuries appear, resulting in more accurate and reliable assessments than images alone.

Why the technology matters

Janusz Wojtusiak and Katherine Scafide in the Injury Analytics Lab. Photo provided

Bruises and other skin injuries have traditionally been difficult to identify and assess. Factors such as skin tone, lighting conditions, and the age of an injury can affect how visible an injury appears, creating challenges for clinicians, forensic professionals, and researchers.

This patented technology helps address those challenges by providing more objective, consistent injury assessments. More accurate documentation can help clinicians make informed treatment decisions, strengthen forensic evidence, support investigations, and give researchers better data to improve future care. By improving injury detection across diverse skin tones, the technology also has the potential to reduce disparities in how injuries are documented and evaluated.

It was also shaped by the needs of the professionals who will use it in real-world settings. “This technology is the result of a user-centric research process that included countless hours of interviews and workshops with health care providers and forensic professionals,” explains Lattanzi. “These groups told us that they need easy-to-use tools that make documentation faster and more reliable. So that’s exactly what we’re building.”

Built on years of research

The patented technology is supported by a library of more than 100,000 images of bruises and other skin characteristics collected through years of interdisciplinary research and collaboration.

The technology identifies and analyzes a wide range of skin features, including bruises, burns, scars, birthmarks, rashes, eczema, psoriasis, and other conditions. This extensive dataset helps train the system's deep-learning models and enables it to recognize patterns that may be difficult for the human eye to detect consistently.

Moving research into practice

The patent marks an important milestone in IAL's broader effort to develop evidence-based technologies that can improve injury assessment and documentation.

Beyond protecting the intellectual property behind the innovation, the patent creates opportunities for new partnerships, commercialization, and broader adoption of the technology. Researchers envision future applications that support health care providers, forensic specialists, law enforcement professionals, researchers, and patients through interfaces tailored to their specific needs.

As the technology continues to advance, the goal remains clear: transforming cutting-edge research into practical tools that improve accuracy, support equity, and help professionals make better-informed decisions when injury documentation matters most.

About the Injury Analytics Lab

Launched in 2026, 911��’s IAL brings together researchers from clinical science, engineering, and health informatics to advance ongoing research focused on injury detection, assessment, and documentation. The lab serves as a hub for interdisciplinary projects that build on years of research to improve patient care, investigations, and legal proceedings.

IAL is directed by an interdisciplinary team including Katherine Scafide (School of Nursing, College of Public Health [CPH]), who leads the lab’s clinical research; Janusz Wojtusiak (Department of Health Administration, Policy, and Informatics, CPH), who leads development of the injury platform and software systems; and David Lattanzi (Volgenau School of Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing), who leads development of the computer vision systems and user-centered design.

Key Takeaways

911�� researchers received a U.S. patent for technology that helps identify, document, and assess bruises and other skin injuries.
The technology tailors imaging to each individual, helping improve injury detection across a wide range of skin tones, particularly for people with darker skin tones.
The patented technology is the result of interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers in nursing, engineering, and health informatics, demonstrating how expertise across multiple fields can advance injury assessment and documentation.
The patent creates opportunities to bring the technology into healthcare, forensic, and research settings, supporting better clinical care, investigations, and future innovation.

In This Story

Janusz Wojtusiak, PhD

David Lattanzi

Topics

injury analytics lab

Bruise Visibility

Artificial Intelligence

patent

GCI-Health

GCI-Digital

Rebuilding after trauma: 911�� psychologist hopes to improve early care for survivors of violently acquired spinal cord injuries

sholla4 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:52:46 +0000

Rebuilding after trauma: 911�� psychologist hopes to improve early care for survivors of violently acquired spinal cord injuries sholla4 Mon, 08/10/2026 - 09:52

A fall from a ladder, a car crash, a gunshot: In the blink of an eye, a spinal cord injury can change someone’s life forever. Adapting to these new circumstances can take some patients years. Leah M. Adams, associate professor of clinical psychology in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, is hoping to discover what might make that process easier.

Leah Adams. Photo provided.

Alongside colleagues Renee Madathil from University of Rochester and Chris Hilderbrant of the Rochester Spinal Association, Adams, a clinical rehabilitation psychologist, is researching early psychosocial adaptation in survivors of violently acquired spinal cord injuries to determine what and when interventions are most beneficial. This spring, they received $285,000 from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation to support their research.

Violently acquired spinal cord injuries refer to a subset of spinal cord injuries that are caused by interpersonal violence, such as gunshot wounds, stabbing, or other person-to-person contact. These injuries commonly affect a different demographic than nonviolently acquired spinal cord injuries.

“Violence is the second leading cause for Latinx folks and one of the top two causes for Black folks. Long-term trends suggest that young Black men make up nearly half of all people with violently acquired spinal cord injuries,” said Adams. “They’re also younger, on average, and may be less traditionally established than their counterparts without violently acquired injuries.” Adams also noted that people with violently acquired injuries are more likely to have greater social vulnerabilities due to systemic factors like poverty and the criminal/legal system.

Adams describes that, with violently acquired injuries, "there's a different buzzing in the atmosphere of the care team." There can be increased safety risks to the patient and the healthcare team even while in the hospital, as well as additional risks to the patient once discharged, that can impact how a patient receives care.

"Our hope is to narrow down what's helpful and what's not for these patients, so providers can offer optimal care at the right time," said Adams.

Using the National Spinal Cord Injury Database, Adams, her doctoral students, and collaborators will look at patients from 2016 to present with violently acquired spinal cord injuries and their progression over the first five years living with the injury.

"We're looking at difference trajectories of adaptation and seeing if we can identify which kinds of factors put people in positions to have better outcomes or potentially worse outcomes," she said. "With that baseline, we can start identifying risk factors and create pathways for earlier and more effective interventions."

This quantitative data will be combined with qualitative data from patient and spinal cord injury specialist mental health provider interviews, the latter of which is a unique addition to the project. Their direct experience in caring for patients over multiple sessions and years means they understand what works well, what kinds of gaps exist, and how health care delivery could be improved.

"We wanted to make sure we got multiple perspectives on the project, which is why we have multiple collaborators," said Adams, “including folks with lived experience with spinal cord injuries as part of the study team.”

This multi-method approach is one that Adams sees as essential. For individuals who have undergone a traumatic and life-altering injury, these varied perspectives help paint a fuller, more vibrant picture of the varied pathways patients might take in their healing journey, she said.

"This population is so important. They face unique stressors and barriers, and they’re deserving of focused attention and support," said Adams. “I'm really hopeful that our work can spotlight some of the strengths and resources and ideas that they have, as well as help medical teams make decisions about where to put their valuable resources.”

This intersectionality is part of Adams' overall research philosophy, reflected in her role as core faculty for the Women and Gender Studies Program. And as a two-time 911�� alum—MA Psychology ’10, PhD Psychology ’14—it's a methodology she's refined through her time at 911�� as both student and faculty in the Department of Psychology.

"Both the tangible and intangible resources have made 911�� a really phenomenal place to study and work," said Adams. "This community respects and invests in research all across the continuum, from basic science to translational."

Learn more about the College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Topics

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Psychology

GCI-Health

Sustainability commitments have serious consequences

Katelynn C Hipolito — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:29:09 +0000

Sustainability commitments have serious consequences Katelynn C Hipolito Fri, 08/07/2026 - 13:29

Amid increasingly stiff competition for capital, one way for a business to stand out is to make strong social impact pledges.

Yi Cao, assistant professor of accounting at Costello College of Business at 911��. Photo provided by Yi Cao.

For example, companies can voluntarily commit to environmental impact goals in hopes of attracting sustainability-minded investors and lowering cost of capital. However, it isn’t easy to tell whether these commitments, in and of themselves, make a difference to the marketplace—or, for that matter, to the planet.

“In regular settings, it’s really hard to evaluate the real economic effect of providing environmental commitments, and also establish that in making the commitment, the company is catering to real stakeholder preferences as opposed to their own idiosyncratic preferences,” says Yi Cao, assistant professor of accounting at Costello College of Business at 911��.

Cao’s paper in Review of Accounting Studies capitalizes on a unique setting that helps isolate the impact of environmental commitments. It was co-authored by John (Jianqiu) Bai of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Xiumin Martin of Washington University in St. Louis, and Chi Wan of San Diego State University. In 2018, leading crowdfunding platform Kickstarter added an optional “Environmental Commitments” section to project pages where creators could post about their sustainable practices (e.g., responsible sourcing, recyclable packaging, and/or low-emission manufacturing). The new feature was rolled out gradually across product categories, enabling the researchers to compare not only project-to-project differences, but also overall changes within entire Kickstarter verticals.

The researchers scraped information from Kickstarter pages to form a data-set comprising 173,874 observations of unique projects during the years 2016 to 2021. They also gathered data on a host of outcome variables, such as whether the project was successfully funded, how much money each project ultimately raised, how long it took for fully funded creators to deliver products to backers, etc.

The researchers found that, on average, about one-third of creators chose to declare an environmental commitment once doing so became possible in their category. Several of the largest categories (e.g., Design, Technology and Games) saw significantly higher take-up rates.

On the whole, projects that included environmental commitments were 13.2 percent more likely to be funded and increased the pledged amount relative to the funding goal by 8.7 percent.

Using Google BERT, a natural language processing model, the research team separated projects into two categories: those with largely local appeal, and those with a national market base. “We pre-trained the AI with all projects from 2010 to 2016 that had at least 50 backers, and measured the geographic dispersion of these projects’ backers traced by their IP address,” Cao explains.

The purpose was to spare the human researchers the tedious and painstaking work of hand-classifying every project in the data-set. The BERT results showed that national projects with eco-commitments received 62.2 percent more backers from more environmentally aware states—that is, states whose residents reported above-average levels of concern about climate change on the Yale Climate Opinion Maps—than local projects that had made eco-pledges.

For Cao, these findings add crucial nuance to the general idea that pledges of social responsibility help attract capital. In the Kickstarter example, projects of national scale benefited much more from eco-commitment because they were pitched to a larger and more diverse backer base, including environmentally aware consumers from other states.

Additionally, projects offering physical products, as opposed to intangible services, confronted tougher economic trade-offs resulting from e-commitment. “First and foremost, the Kickstarter creators want to know whether [e-commitment] will benefit them,” Cao says. “Because this is pretty costly, based on our analysis. It delays delivery and increases costs, because recycled and other eco-friendly materials, for example, are a little bit more expensive.”

The fact that entrepreneurs were clearly grappling with these economic challenges suggests that e-commitment amounts to more than mere “greenwashing.” “We find consistent evidence that when these small businesses are trying to access environmentally aware consumers through e-commitment, they do incur cost. It isn’t cheap talk. And that means that consumers are attracted by a genuine commitment, rather than lip service or a nice-sounding pitch,” Cao says.

In sum, Kickstarter’s e-commitment feature was a net improvement for the ecosystem, giving creators (especially those with national aspirations) access to an untapped source of consumer demand—namely, environmental awareness. At the same time, creators had to weigh the financial benefit against the increased costs of making good on environmental commitments.

Cao suspects that the same basic rules might apply to other types of pledges related to issues that animate large groups of consumers. “For example, AI is especially polarizing nowadays. You could appeal to consumers or investors who are polarized against the technology with a declaration that no AI was used in the creation of a product, etc. It could be anything where there are differing preferences, and a broader impact on the social perception of those preferences,” he says.

In This Story

Yi Cao

Topics

Accounting - Costello

Costello Research Non-Financial Disclosure

ESG - Costello

Entrepreneurship - Costello

Costello Research Sustainable Operations

Costello College of Business Faculty Research

Costello College of Business News

Costello College of Business

Sustainability

University project shows logistics, not apathy, suppress student voting

Katarina Benson — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:09:21 +0000

University project shows logistics, not apathy, suppress student voting Katarina Benson Thu, 08/06/2026 - 12:09

Every election cycle brings headlines about the lack of voter participation among 18- to 24- year-olds. The conventional wisdom is that young people are too apathetic or tuned out to vote. But, according to 911�� research from the 2025 election cycle, that story is wrong.

For the past four years, Jennifer Victor, an associate professor of political science, has led groups of undergraduates at the Schar School of Policy and Government in experiential research activities to discover what actually keeps college students from voting. 

More than 60 students volunteered to help with the research. Photo provided

“We surmised it’s not that students don’t care,” said Victor. “Maybe it’s that voting is actually hard for them.”

During the 2022, 2023, and 2024 elections in Virginia, Victor worked with Schar School students to conduct experiments and surveys to understand the barriers to voting and test ways of overcoming them. One previous finding was that—not unlike their older counterparts—students are more likely to vote when someone they know personally asks them to. 

Victor and her team found that students often juggle multiple addresses, live in temporary housing, and move between states with different rules. Many assume they have to travel home to vote. And when the process feels confusing or inconvenient, participation drops. What happens if those barriers are removed? Victor and her student researchers wanted to find out.

“For the 2025 election, the student volunteers put into practice all the principles I’d learned in the prior studies,” Victor said. “But could we really increase turnout during an off-year election with no federal candidates on the ballot? The low salience 2025 election was a good test to see if our methods would work.”

Victor said that key to the effort was creating a cross-campus coalition with a leadership team that included staff members from the Offices of University Life and Community Engagement and Civic Learning. Working with a local chapter of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters, they recruited and trained more than 60 volunteers who wanted to help their peers vote.

Professor Jennifer Victor (far right) with some of the Mason Votes volunteers. Photo provided

The program, organized as Mason Voting Ambassadors, included formal training in regulations around voter registration, on-campus tabling events, classroom presentations, and an Instagram campaign, as well as broadcast and editorial content produced with Student Media and a website and email hotline for accurate voting information and resources.

After the election, the students analyzed turnout at the university’s precinct in Merten Hall, the polling place for on-campus residents. Voter turnout increased.

“The results stunned us,” said Victor. “911�� was the only precinct in all of Fairfax County to see an increase in voter turnout compared to the 2024 presidential election.”

Not only that—she said turnout at the polling place was 48 percent higher in 2025. “In a year when turnout typically falls across the state, 911�� moved dramatically in the opposite direction. It seems we did something right.”

Their research confirmed that students vote when the barriers to voting are lowered. Making voting understandable, accessible, and relevant can help drive young people to the polls. 

“This is the type of evidence-based social science that students at the Schar School are learning—turning their passions into action and developing the social science tools to shape smarter, more responsive public policy for the world they’re inheriting,” Victor said.

Topics

GCI-Democracy

Schar School of Policy and Government

Mason Spirit

911�� computer scientist receives DOE Genesis Award for breakthrough AI–HPC research

ckearney — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:26:41 +0000

911�� computer scientist receives DOE Genesis Award for breakthrough AI–HPC research ckearney Tue, 08/04/2026 - 13:26

911�� computer science professor Keren Zhou has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a prestigious Genesis Award, part of the Trump Administration’s national Genesis Mission—an initiative designed to accelerate scientific discovery through advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and high‑performance computing.

Keren Zhou. Photo provided

The Genesis Mission aims to build an integrated scientific discovery platform that unites national laboratories, universities, industry partners, and philanthropic organizations to drive breakthroughs in energy, discovery science, and national security. Nearly 300 projects were selected nationwide following what DOE described as the largest response to a funding opportunity in its history.

Zhou’s project, “An End‑to‑End AI Framework for Performance Prediction and Optimization in High‑Performance Computing (HPC) Applications,” received $750,000 in Phase I funding, supporting a nine‑month research period. His work tackles a challenge that affects nearly every field that relies on supercomputers—from climate science to drug development. Today, even small changes to scientific software can require days or months of trial‑and‑error testing to make sure programs run efficiently on different machines. That slows down research and delays discoveries.

Zhou’s goal is to remove that bottleneck. “Today’s HPC applications may need days or even months of tuning every time a parameter changes or a new hardware configuration is introduced,” he explained. “We want to eliminate that costly cycle by building a proxy model that can rapidly estimate performance—reducing simulation time from months to seconds.”

In practical terms, his system acts like a “speed‑check” for scientific computing: Instead of running full, time‑consuming tests, researchers could quickly predict how their programs will perform and automatically identify faster, more efficient ways to run them. With AI systems now capable of rewriting code and suggesting improvements, Zhou’s framework could help scientists optimize their work in minutes rather than weeks.

Zhou is the sole 911�� investigator on the project but will hire postdoctoral researchers as the work advances. Through the Genesis Mission’s shared platform, 911�� students will gain access to industrial partners such as AWS, OpenAI, and Google, along with AI tokens and cloud computing resources that support hands‑on research. He is also collaborating with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

As Phase I progresses, Zhou aims to show that his approach works across different scientific applications and hardware systems, delivers significantly faster performance, and does so without requiring long simulation runs. Strong results would position his team for Phase II funding, which the DOE expects to award next year.

For Zhou, the Genesis Award marks an important milestone. “It’s a recognition of my past contributions to strengthening U.S. scientific discovery,” he said. “It also motivates me to continue collaborating with national labs and advancing this domain.” The project aligns closely with his long‑term goal of making advanced computing systems easier to program while maintaining high efficiency.

“The Genesis Mission rests on a clear premise: AI is becoming an instrument of science, not only an object of it. Professor Zhou’s framework is a clear case, a model that predicts and optimizes the systems on which discovery now depends, compressing months of tuning into seconds,” said Amarda Shehu, 911��’s vice president and chief AI officer. “911��’s AI strategy is aimed precisely at this layer, the capability that makes every other field move faster.”

Andre Marshall, 911��’s vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact, said this award underscores the university’s growing role in advancing the nation’s scientific and technological capabilities. “Professor Zhou’s project elevates our visibility in the federal research ecosystem and demonstrates how 911�� is contributing to the next generation of AI‑driven discovery.”

Zhou hopes the project will serve as a catalyst for future partnerships and position 911�� as a leading contributor to the next generation of AI infrastructure—advancing both national scientific priorities and the university’s growing research impact.

Explore Artificial Intelligence at 911��

Topics

Learn more about 911��'s Grand Challenge Initiative

Department of Energy

Artificial Intelligence

Genesis Award

911�� licenses cancer imaging technology to biotech company

ckearney — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:54:52 +0000

911�� licenses cancer imaging technology to biotech company ckearney Fri, 07/31/2026 - 10:54

SonoVanta™, a patent-pending contrast agent that improves the precision of cancer margin imaging, is the second technology from 911�� to be licensed through the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation’s (VIPC) Lab-to-Launch (L2L) Program, which accelerates the commercialization of promising research breakthroughs emerging from Virginia’s universities.

From left, John Hart, president and CEO of NanOptical; Amy Adams, executive director of Nexus234 Innovation District; Remi Veneziano, associate professor, bioengineering, 911��; and Helena Kondow-McConaghy, business development manager, PWCDEDT. Photo provided

SonoVanta™ originated from research conducted at 911�� bioengineering researchers Parag Chitnis and Remi Veneziano. NanOptical Biomedical Inc., a biotechnology company working on next-generation contrast agents for photoacoustic imaging, has licensed the technology. Photoacoustic imaging combines laser light and ultrasound to produce high-resolution views of tissue. The effectiveness of the technology depends in part on contrast agents that enhance the visibility of diseased tissue.

Successful commercialization of contrast agents depends on biocompatibility and scalable manufacturing. NanOptical Biomedical's platform addresses these challenges.

“SonoVanta™ was created to address one of the biggest barriers to the broader adoption of photoacoustic imaging,” said Chitnis. “By using an FDA-approved near-infrared dye, we devised a platform that enables disease-specific targeting and makes manufacturing and implementation easier.”

The company anticipates commercial availability this fall as an advanced tool for cell, tissue, and organ imaging, with applications across numerous areas of biomedical research and development. They hope to expand the technology's use in surgical oncology, with the goal of optimizing visualization of breast tumor margins during cancer procedures.

The L2L initiative, developed through a collaboration between VIPC and the state’s six R1 research university partners, aims to significantly increase the number of start-ups emerging from Virginia’s universities and help move technological breakthroughs to the marketplace, through a “fast track license.” Instead of taking months, a licensing agreement can now take weeks.

911�� bioengineering researchers Parag Chitnis and Remi Veneziano. Photo provided

NanOptical Biomedical's arrival represents an important milestone in bringing university-developed technology into research and clinical imaging.

“NanOptical Biomedical was formed to translate a strong university innovation into a commercially viable platform with meaningful market potential,” said John Hart, president and CEO of NanOptical Biomedical. “Our initial focus is to serve research customers in academia, biotech, and the pharmaceutical sector, while also pursuing the regulatory pathway for future clinical applications in surgical oncology. We believe SonoVanta™ offers a valuable solution to deliver more precise imaging and address a critical need in cancer care.”

"Eight years ago, Dr. Chitnis and I were standing in front of a whiteboard tossing ideas back and forth," said Veneziano. "We’re excited to watch this technology grow from an idea into a new biotechnology company."

NanOptical Biomedical began operations at the Endeavor life science incubator in the Nexus234 Innovation District in Prince William County, Virginia. Hart said the company chose Prince William County as its first operating location to stay close to 911�� and the region's thriving life sciences industry. The company is joining Nexus234, Northern Virginia's first innovation district, which Real FDI named one of the Top 10 Life Sciences Projects globally in March 2026.

“NanOptical Biomedical is exactly the kind of company Nexus234 was created to attract and empower,” said Christina Winn, executive director of the Prince William County Department of Economic Development and Tourism. "This achievement reflects the strength of the region's entrepreneurial ecosystem and the environment Prince William County has built for start-ups, research commercialization, and the life sciences industry."

NanOptical Biomedical's establishment in Nexus234 reinforces the region's commitment to cultivating an ecosystem that helps translate research and entrepreneurship into company success and job creation.

Earlier this year, 911�� was Virginia’s first R1 research institution to commercialize a product under the L2L initiative. In January, the 911�� Research Foundation entered into a license agreement with serial entrepreneur Anthony Fung and his company Valorlox LLC for the patented technology Dynamic Low Visibility Pneumatic Cofferdam, a coastal resilience system designed to protect against flooding.

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The little water treatment plant that could

tdonnel — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:51:24 +0000

The little water treatment plant that could tdonnel Thu, 07/30/2026 - 12:51

On a small organic farm in rural Puerto Rico sits a revolutionary water treatment facility ready for action: the AguaClara PF250, a compact, nonelectric drinking water treatment plant designed specifically for small communities. 911�� researchers Daniel Smith and Catherine Akplah are combining engineering innovation, field research, and community partnership to participate in piloting the facility and assess its viability throughout the island nation.

While most Puerto Ricans receive water from the territorial utility system, 100,000 in rural areas rely on small, community-managed water systems that often struggle with aging infrastructure, limited resources, and vulnerability to hurricanes and power outages.

Unlike conventional treatment facilities, the PF250 operates using hydraulic principles and gravity, entirely without electricity. The system uses the same fundamental processes found in large municipal plants, including coagulation, sedimentation, filtration, and chlorination, but in a smaller, prefabricated design that can be installed in remote locations. The PF250 was designed and fabricated by the nonprofits AguaClara Reach and Agua Para el Pueblo.

AguaClara PF250 water treatment facility at Plenitud PR. Photo provided.

Smith, an assistant professor in 911��’s Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, has spent much of his career working on drinking water treatment systems around the world. His connection to PF250s stretches back nearly two decades through the AguaClara program in Honduras.

“It will be very fulfilling to see something that was a concept 15 or more years ago become a practical solution for communities that need it,” he said. “It's a drinking-water treatment plant that has all of the processes you typically find for big town but, with clever engineering, made as small as possible and able to work without any electricity.”

The 911�� team is partnering with VersaWater, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator initiative that includes Cornell University, Syracuse University, Inter American University of Puerto Rico, and AguaClara Reach. VersaWater focuses on technology development and deployment, and 911��’s role is to help understand how the PF250 performs with respect to organic matter removal and determine where in Puerto Rico it is most likely to succeed.

Smith and Akplah are working directly with community water boards across Puerto Rico, equipping communities with turbidity meters that measure how cloudy local water supplies become throughout the year. This data will help identify systems where advanced treatment is most needed.

Akplah (left) and Smith (R) in Puerto Rico. Photo provided.

“It's the very first thing you need to know to decide which treatment option is going to be a potentially good fit,” said Smith.

Akplah, a PhD student in Smith's lab whose research focuses on sustainable water treatment, sees the project as an opportunity to create tangible benefits for communities.

“A win for me would be to see one community where we're able to transition this system into something that people can rely on to get drinking water” she said.

The team will operate a pilot PF250 installation at Plenitud PR, an organic permaculture farm in Las Marías, Puerto Rico, to study how well it removes organic matter and controls disinfection byproducts, an important step toward meeting U.S. drinking water regulations. Ultimately, they hope their work will provide communities with data they can use to secure infrastructure funding and improve public health.

If successful, the PF250 could provide a model not only for rural Puerto Rico but also for small, underserved communities across the United States that face similar drinking water challenges.

In This Story

Daniel W. Smith

This research supports the Grand Challenge Initiative's goal of building a more climate-resilient society.

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Drinking water; environmental engineering; byproducts

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water resource engineering; civil and infrastructure engineering

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