Colleen Kearney Rich

Retro �鶹��Ƶ: RoboCup in Mexico City, 2012

Colleen Rich — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 19:00:01 +0000

Retro �鶹��Ƶ: RoboCup in Mexico City, 2012 Colleen Rich Mon, 08/11/2025 - 15:00

Photo by Alexis Glenn/Office of University Branding

In the summer of 2012, the RoboPatriots, led by then-PhD student Keith Sullivan, MS Computer Science ’05, PhD ’15, traveled to Mexico City, Mexico, as one of two U.S. teams (the other was from Virginia Tech) to compete in the weeklong 2012 RoboCup. The RoboPatriots competed in the kid-size humanoid league with robots measuring 12 to 24 inches tall.

The robots played—or tried to play—soccer. For the competition, the robots had to be autonomous to compete. They would get a signal from the referee to “kick off,” and the game began. “It’s like watching five-year-olds play soccer,” said Sullivan of his robotic team. “All the adults are yelling, ‘Run! Kick!’ and the robots do whatever they want, just like five-year-olds.”

All the robots on the team were named for characters in the 1980s movie Short Circuit. “When we put the first one together, we realized he looked like Johnny 5 [the movie robot] with feet,” Sullivan said. In the photo above, the robot Newton is demonstrating his soccer skills at Engineers Day 2012.

Powering Progress

Katarina Benson — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 16:57:12 +0000

Powering Progress Katarina Benson Mon, 08/11/2025 - 12:57

When �鶹��Ƶ opened the doors to its highly anticipated Life Sciences and Engineering Building in Manassas, Virginia, it was more than the unveiling of a new academic space—it was the beginning of a new transformative era for the university and the region.

Situated at the heart of the university’s Science and Technology Campus, this state-of-the-art facility will empower students across a wide range of disciplines to explore, innovate, and push the boundaries of science and engineering.

Designed to meet the growing demand for highly specialized instructional labs, smart classrooms, and support spaces, the building is already enabling greater hands-on learning in disciplines like athletic training and kinesiology, microbiology, chemistry, engineering, forensic science, robotics and autonomous vehicles, and more.

“The Life Sciences and Engineering Building marks a major state investment in our outstanding George �鶹��Ƶ faculty to educate and inspire our students—Virginia’s next generation of inspirational leaders, researchers, innovators, and problem solvers,” says George �鶹��Ƶ President Gregory Washington.

This addition also provides increased university access for students in Prince William and Fauquier Counties, the western part of Fairfax County, the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park, and beyond, which is why the General Assembly and the Prince William County delegation, led by Delegate Luke Torian, were eager to help make this building a reality. Torian, who is chair of the Virginia House Appropriations Committee, and the delegation were instrumental in helping to secure strategic support and state funding for the building.

Inspiring the Next Generation

Mechanical engineering major Andrea Dortch is working with Narly, a lighter-than-air vehicle, in the multistory aviary. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Encompassing 132,000 square feet of space, the building is designed to promote collaboration and engagement among students and faculty. The ground-level engineering labs and student design competition bays open directly onto the campus’s exterior pathways, allowing visibility for the work happening inside.

One of the first groups to take up residence was Patriot Motorsports, a club for students who want to explore the inner workings of automotive vehicles. Over the course of the spring semester, seniors in mechanical engineering revved it up a notch with their capstone project—designing a control system for the club’s Formula SAE race car.

And race cars aren’t the only vehicles in the building. This new space boasts a multistory aviary lab where students can test blimps, drones, and anything else that needs extra airspace to move around. One capstone project taking advantage of the lab is an autonomous flapping wing lighter-than-air vehicle, developed by mechanical engineering Professor Daigo Shishika’s students.

This spring, engineering capstone teams were also using the prototyping space on the second floor to collaborate on projects. “Once the first-floor machine shop is complete, this space will also be used for staging and constructing physical prototypes,” says George �鶹��Ƶ mechanical engineering professor Charles White.

Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

One of the building’s special features is the blending of laboratory and teaching spaces. All the mechanical engineering labs, including the first-floor advanced manufacturing and wind tunnel labs, contain student desks and IT lecture setups so that seminars can turn into hands-on demonstrations where students can practice in real time.

And these areas barely scratch the surface of what the building has to offer. For mechanical engineers, in addition to the wind tunnel and advanced manufacturing labs, machine shop, robotics lab, and prototype studio, there is a 3D print studio, a materials characterization lab, a sustainable energy and photonics area, and a thermofluids lab.

For civil engineers, there is a dedicated space for the American Society of Civil Engineers concrete canoe competitions. Bioengineers have access to cutting-edge studios as well, including a tissue engineering lab.

Anchoring Prince William’s Innovation District

As an epicenter of innovation, creativity, and opportunity, the Science and Technology Campus plays a critical role in helping George �鶹��Ƶ generate solutions for the world’s most pressing issues. Strategically located in the technology and innovation corridor that runs from Washington, D.C., to Richmond and encompasses the George �鶹��Ƶ ecosystem of campuses, Small Business Development Centers, and community college partnerships, the SciTech Campus is also an anchor for Prince William’s growing Innovation District, which includes the development of two residential and commercial town centers directly connected to campus.

“This facility, and the advancements it will produce, further establishes the Science and Technology Campus, and this Innovation District, as an anchor of the economic corridor that runs from �鶹��Ƶ Square in Arlington to the Fairfax Campus to here in Manassas, further entrenching George �鶹��Ƶ as a major driver of the prosperity of our region and state,” says President Washington.

The SciTech Campus opened in 1997 thanks to a university partnership with the City of Manassas and Prince William County, and it has far exceeded its initial goal of fostering groundbreaking research across disciplines. The campus is also home to the Virginia Serious Game Institute; the Biomedical Research Laboratory, one of 13 regional biocontainment laboratories established through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and the Forensic Science Research and Training Laboratory, one of only eight human donor forensic science labs in the United States.

In June, Governor Glenn Youngkin announced that the commonwealth will invest $2.6 million in the Innovation District.

“The planned town centers will create a stronger link between the campus and the surrounding community,” says Colby Grant, BS Health, Fitness, and Recreation Resources ’05, director of administration and operations for the SciTech Campus. “Combined with the new Life Sciences and Engineering Building, these developments further establish the campus as a dynamic hub for science, technology, the arts, entertainment, and recreation.”

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Innovation Awards recognize George �鶹��Ƶ researchers

Colleen Rich — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 15:00:11 +0000

Innovation Awards recognize George �鶹��Ƶ researchers Colleen Rich Thu, 06/26/2025 - 11:00

In May, �鶹��Ƶ celebrated its research enterprise with Innovation Awards. Hosted by the Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact, the event recognized researchers, a start-up, and those who received and/or licensed a patent in the past two years.

From left, George �鶹��Ƶ researchers Lance Sherry, Mikell Paige, and Craig Yu received Innovator Awards. Photo by Ayman Rashid/Office of University Branding

“We're deeply committed to fostering a research environment that encourages innovation and supports discovery,” said Provost James Antony in his opening remarks. “We want to ensure that the faculty have the tools, the partnerships, and the resources that they need to take their ideas further.”

Antony also commended the researchers for mentoring George �鶹��Ƶ students. “You set a powerful example for emerging scholars. You show them what it's like to be both a researcher and a changemaker.”

At the event, the university awarded its second �鶹��Ƶ Lifetime Disclosure Award, which recognizes a researcher with the most innovation disclosures. The first recipient was Lance Liotta, codirector and cofounder of the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM). It was Liotta who presented this year’s award to his CAPMM cofounder and codirector Emanuel Petricoin.

Petricoin, who joined George �鶹��Ƶ in 2005, is a cofounder of four life science companies: Theranostics Health Inc., Ceres Nanosciences Inc., C-4 Diagnostics Inc., and Perthera Inc. He also is a coinventor on 40+ patents and has published more than 350 peer-reviewed publications.

CAPMM's Kelsey Mitchell with Paula Sorrell, associate vice president of innovation and economic development. Photo by Ayman Rashid/Office of University Branding

This year’s �鶹��Ƶ Start-Up of the Year went to Mingkui Wei, an associate professor in the Department of Cyber Security Engineering, and his company CyberMirage. CyberMirage, which started as a collaborative research project involving researchers in network security with experts from both academia and industry, offers solutions to protect websites against web content theft and copyright infringement.

Three groups of researchers received George �鶹��Ƶ Licensed Technology Awards, which celebrates when a protected intellectual property, such as a patent, is licensed by a company.

Kathryn Laskey of the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) and Paul Houser of the Geography and Geoinformation Science Department in the College of Science had their prototype system licensed by Global MapAid, a nonprofit working in Africa. The technology maps groundwater to help small farmers locate better wells and create soil conservation programs.
Leading biotechnology tools provider Targeted Bioscience licensed a tissue collection method patented by the CAPMM team of Liotta, Alessandra Luchini, Marissa Howard, and biosciences PhD candidate Purva Gade.
Toronto-based Affinity Diagnostics licensed a method for sequestering and/or isolating analytes of interest from an oral fluid, also developed by a CAPMM team. Researchers Ahana Byne, Fatah Kashanchi, and Kelsey Mitchell joined Luchini, Liotta, and Howard on this award.

The Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact also gave out Innovator Awards in the categories of sustainability, biohealth innovation, and digital innovation.

CEC’s Lance Sherry was recognized with the Innovators Award in Sustainability for his work with contrail mitigation. His pioneering research and technologies have not only enhanced flight safety and operational efficiencies but have also addressed aviation's growing efforts to track and mitigate the environmental impacts and to quantify their CO2 equivalency.

The College of Science’s Mikell Paige was recognized with the Innovators Award in Biohealth Innovation for his groundbreaking work in biochemistry at the interface of synthetic organic chemistry, drug discovery, and molecular design. His work focuses on designing small molecules that target computational modeling and biochemical assays to produce drug development in meaningful and practical ways.

Craig Yu of the College of Engineering and Computing received the Innovators Award in Digital Innovation for developing groundbreaking systems that redefine how people interact with virtual and augmented spaces. Through his research, Yu has developed a more human-centered approach to navigation, designing digital pathways that take into account physical effort and make virtual experiences more natural and inclusive.

“At George �鶹��Ƶ, we’re not just advancing research—we’re building a culture of innovation that has real-world impact,” said Andre Marshall, vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact. “These awards are about honoring the bold ideas and the committed people who move the university’s research forward—and outward—into the world. They represent the spirit of innovation that defines our university: impactful, collaborative, and driven by a desire to make a difference far beyond our campus.”

The awards the researchers took home for patents and licensed technologies have a special design. They are Plexiglas hexagons with magnets so researchers can add to their award over the years as they receive patents/licensing.

The researchers and teams behind 19 George �鶹��Ƶ patents were also recognized.

Compositions and methods for laser capture microdissection—Virginia Espina, Lance Liotta, and Alessandra Luchini
Collapsible fluid collection system for point-of-care diagnostics—Marissa Howard, Liotta, Luchini, and Kelsey Mitchell
Honey proteomics for honeybee disease and environmental biomonitoring—Liotta and Luchini
Antimicrobial peptides and related methods—Shravani Bobde
Molecularly imprinted particles—Barney Bishop, Mrinalini Ramanan, and Yaling Zhu
Systems and methods for coordinating travel through traffic lights—Melvin Friedman and Brian Mark
Impactor platform allowing freefall upon impact—David Cerri
Recombinant host cell with heterologous nucleic acids encoding SHREK proteins—Deemah Dabbagh and Yuntao Wu
Methods for breast cancer treatment—Emanuel Petricoin and Julia Wulfkuhle
Anti-fibrotic agent—Mikell Paige and Gregory Petruncio
Using Wi-Fi infrastructure to predict locations and contacts—Janusz Wojtusiak
Methods and systems for system call reduction—Kun Sun
Systems and methods for improved aircraft safety—Lance Sherry
Exertion-aware path generation—Lap-Fai (Craig) Yu
Complex user authentication factor integrating a sequence of fingerprints and a personal identification number—Massimiliano Albanese
Small molecule inhibitors of SLC25A1—Mikell Paige
Mining all atom simulations for diagnosing and treating disease—Mohsin Jafri
Antimicrobial peptides and related methods—Monique van Hoek
Look-up table containing processor-in-memory cluster for data-intensive applications—Sai Manoj and Sathwika Bavikadi

Research at George �鶹��Ƶ

Topics

Research

Tech Transfer

patent

Billups finishes his George �鶹��Ƶ career with a record-setting season

Colleen Rich — Wed, 07 May 2025 12:38:17 +0000

Billups finishes his George �鶹��Ƶ career with a record-setting season Colleen Rich Wed, 05/07/2025 - 08:38

Senior and men’s basketball guard Jared Billups might have joined �鶹��Ƶ as a transfer student, but in his two years here, he has managed to leave a historic mark.

Billups, who is graduating this month with a bachelor’s degree in economics, is George �鶹��Ƶ’s first conference Defensive Player of the Year since 2001 and was a finalist for the Lefty Driesell Award, given to the nation’s top defensive player.

As captain, Billups helped lead the men’s basketball team to its best season in the program's Atlantic 10 history. With 15 A-10 league victories, the Patriots set a new university record and started league play 12-1 for the first time in the program's 59-year history.

With Billups leading the charge, the team’s Patriot Pressure defense also ranked in the Top 25 nationally this season, and the Patriots ranked third in the nation in field goal defense.

This year the A-10 Tournament was played at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., and �鶹��Ƶ Nation packed the building to support the Patriots. The team locked up a double bye in the tournament for the first time and reached the conference title game for the first time since 2009. Behind �鶹��Ƶ Nation's huge turnout, the A-10 Final became one of the top-3 highest attended games in the tournament's history.

Billups said the team could feel the love. “It’s one of the best feelings in the world,” he said about playing before a roaring arena. “The crowd is cheering for you and you’re playing well, and you just feel so good. I don’t think there is anything else like it in world.”

Billups started his college career playing basketball for Siena College in New York. He was interested in George �鶹��Ƶ to be closer to family in Waldorf, Maryland, and because he wanted to play at a higher level. When he had the opportunity to visit campus, he said he knew he had found something special. “I just felt the love and support of the community here,” he said.

Billups admits that George �鶹��Ƶ pushed him academically. He said that the George �鶹��Ƶ Athletics makes sure everyone stays on course to graduate. “You care about your basketball. You care about your academics. You’ve got to be a whole person,” he said, adding that not all schools are like that.

While graduating is in some ways bittersweet for Billups—“We had an amazing season, and it was an amazing group of guys.”—he is looking toward the future and plans to play basketball professionally. He has already signed with an agent.

Topics

Graduation

Students

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

�鶹��Ƶ Athletics

Dance alum returns to campus for guest residency

Colleen Rich — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 14:46:34 +0000

Dance alum returns to campus for guest residency Colleen Rich Fri, 03/21/2025 - 10:46

�鶹��Ƶ alumnus Robert Rubama, BFA Dance ’18, was on the Fairfax Campus for a guest residency this spring semester. During their time on campus, Rubama worked with School of Dance students to help stage and rehearse choreographer Yue Yin's "Through the Fracture of Light," which the students will perform at the Dance Gala Concert on March 28 and 29 at 8 p.m. at the Center for the Arts.

Rubama performed a Yin piece as a George �鶹��Ƶ student and later worked for and toured with the Yue Yin Dance Company (YYDC), performing “Through the Fracture of Light.” Yin’s work showcases a technique she created, the FoCo Technique, which is a contemporary form of dance movement rooted in Chinese classical and folk dance “melded with the diverse influences of the immigrant experience.”

Rubama shared their professional experience with students during the residency. “While assisting [YYDC’s rehearsal director] Grace Whitworth in restaging the piece, I focused on providing the dancers with tips to navigate a work as physically rigorous as Yin's,” they said. “I emphasized the importance of connecting to their breath and managing their energy while performing. Additionally, I wanted to share safe ways to execute the movements that respected the choreographer's intent while honoring the individual needs of the dancers, as everyone is different.”

Robert Rubama. Photo provided

Rubama has worked with the Metropolitan Opera, Haus of Bambi, Groundworks Dance Theater, Orange Grove Dance, Flockworks Dance, and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and was an artist in residence at the National Building Museum, the Floor on Atlantic, and the Homeport Art House.

As an independent choreographer, Rubama’s work has been performed by Company E Dance, Spark Movement Collective, Bucknell University, Cleveland Dance Project, Jane Franklin Dance, Luna Dance Company, and Terre Dance Collective.

During their time at George �鶹��Ƶ, Rubama said they valued many of the opportunities at the School of Dance provided, including the chance to choreograph for peers and performing in the annual gala. “These opportunities taught me how to lead rehearsals effectively and ethically, how to articulate my creative vision through both words and movement, and the necessary skills for working in a rehearsal environment,” they said. “I also learned the importance of being a cover or understudy for a piece.”

Rubama also was candid with the students about working as a professional. “As a professional artist, my work encompasses performing, choreographing, arts administration, and teaching, all while balancing a non-dance job,” they said. “I maintain balance by being clear about scheduling with those I work with, establishing boundaries about my workload, and making financially sound choices.”

When providing advice to current dance students, Rubama encouraged them to be curious. “During your time at George �鶹��Ƶ, you will encounter various perspectives on movement,” they said. “If certain approaches resonate with you, engage with that professor or guest artist to explore those ideas further. If you have interests outside of dance, pursue those as well (in areas like marketing, arts administration, photography, or videography). These additional skills can intersect with your work in dance.”

The opportunity to work with guest artists and contemporary choreographers is a critical part of career preparation for dance majors. Nearly 80% of the class of 2024 received contracts with major dance companies within months of graduation. And as Susan Shields, director of the School of Dance, asserts—the graduates are also excellent “dance citizens” when out there in the professional world.

“The School of Dance has the most generous alums. They are trained to be excellent dance citizens, and we appreciate that they have represented our values so beautifully in the professional world,” said Shields, herself a George �鶹��Ƶ alum. “Whenever they return, they offer more than dance steps. They share insights, connections, and even offer a couch to sleep on if needed. To watch your former student teach a current student, well....any professor knows that is probably one of the most gratifying experiences one can hope for in the profession."

Learn more about the Dance Gala Concert

Topics

Alumni

College of Visual and Performing Arts School of Dance

Students

Poetry Alive! expands services to Prince William County

Colleen Rich — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 18:02:19 +0000

Poetry Alive! expands services to Prince William County Colleen Rich Tue, 03/11/2025 - 14:02

Poetry Alive! is an arts outreach program designed to inspire and empower students at the Fairfax County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) through interactive workshops centered on contemporary poetry. Now in its third year, Poetry Alive! has extended its reach to a new site, the Patrick D. Molinari Juvenile Shelter in Prince William County.

Photo by Getty Images

Poetry Alive! sends teaching fellows, recruited from the �鶹��Ƶ’s Creative Writing Program, into centers to teach poetry workshops. At the JDC, the teaching fellows work with students in the center’s Beta program—a year-long therapeutic initiative for male residents aged 14-17. The Molinari Shelter in Manassas, Virginia, is a nonsecure facility that acts as an alternative to detention and provides emergency placements for youths aged 11-17.

George �鶹��Ƶ alumnus Ronald Pannell, MEd ’02, PhD ’12, supervisor of specialized instruction for Prince William County Schools, heard about the JDC poetry workshops through an article in the �鶹��Ƶ Spirit magazine. While a doctoral student at George �鶹��Ƶ, Pannell had done research on strategies using written expression to help elementary school students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. He immediately saw the value of implementing a Poetry Alive! program at the Molinari Shelter.

Pannell secured funding through a Virginia Department of Education grant and collaborated with Poetry Daily, which runs Poetry Alive!, to bring the program to Molinari in fall 2024.

Katey Funderburgh. Photo provided

The program at Molinari employs five teaching fellows: four MFA graduate students—Katey Funderburgh, McKinley Johnson, Martheaus Perkins, and Nicholas Ritter—and one undergraduate student, Faith Baylor, who is participating as part of their practicum coursework for a Poetry Daily course.

Funderburgh and Ritter are the lead teaching fellows in charge of expanding the program to the Molinari Shelter. Ritter and Funderburgh both served as Poetry Alive! teaching fellows last spring and are extremely passionate about the program.

“We spend each Poetry Alive! session introducing the students to new poets, discussing what different poems mean and how they’re crafted, and then we watch and listen as the students take these tools into their own hands,” said Funderburgh. “Whenever I am lucky enough to hear a student read their own poetry aloud, I remember that this is why I’m here, this is what poetry is for.”

“Our sessions are chances for these students to express [themselves] in new and creative ways,” said Ritter, who has been working with the program for three years. “Working with Poetry Alive! has shown me a pathway for poetry to work in the world in ways I hadn’t imagined before. Our work makes a direct and tangible difference, and I think that carries tremendous value.”

Nicholas Ritter. Photo provided

Pannell said the youth at the shelter really enjoyed the workshops. “It gave them another outlet to express themselves.”

He said that the teachers working at Molinari also benefited from the workshop and that Funderburgh and Ritter has passed on skills to the faculty there, enabling them to support the students as they explored writing and journaling outside of the workshop.

Founded in 1997, Poetry Daily is a nonprofit daily anthology of contemporary poetry that moved to George �鶹��Ƶ in 2019 to continue its work connecting 570,000 readers across the world to the finest contemporary poetry. It also serves as a learning lab for George �鶹��Ƶ students in teaching the art and practice of poetry publishing and is part of Watershed Lit: Center for Literary Engagement and Publishing Practice.

Poetry Alive! is modeled after the successful pilot initiated in spring 2022 by the inaugural Fairfax Poet Laureate and George �鶹��Ƶ alumna Nicole Tong and has continued with the support of funding from ArtsFairfax. The program at the Fairfax County JDC is funded by ArtsFairfax.

George �鶹��Ƶ PhD is living the dream in NYC with Met fellowship

Katarina Benson — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 17:57:26 +0000

George �鶹��Ƶ PhD is living the dream in NYC with Met fellowship Katarina Benson Wed, 02/19/2025 - 12:57

�鶹��Ƶ history PhD candidate Jayme Kurland is living her dream this academic year as the Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

George �鶹��Ƶ PhD candidate Jayme Kurland at the Met. Photo provided

Kurland started her college career as a viola performance major at the University of Oregon before earning her BA in music history. She then got a master’s in music history at Arizona State. As a Met fellow, Kurland is working in the musical instruments department and conducting research for her dissertation. “I’m back in my happy place,” she says, “just working with objects and thinking about the stories they can tell us.”

It’s Good to Be Back: Kurland fell in love with museum work as an undergrad when she landed a job at the Musical Instrument Museum in her hometown of Phoenix. “I never planned to move back home, but working as a curatorial assistant blended my music background with my love of museums.” She also worked as a curatorial research fellow in musical instruments at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 2013 to 2017.

Finding Your People: Working at the Met has allowed Kurland the opportunity to connect with scholars in the musical instruments department, as well as throughout the institution. And, of course, the resources the Met offers are unparalleled. “Returning to the museum world at an institution like the Met has been tremendously rewarding. I have been able to complete hands-on work with the museum's guitar collection and really dig into my own research.”

Guitar Heroes: Kurland’s research focuses on a group of Mexican American women who wired amplifiers, wound pickups, and assembled first guitars and amps for guitar manufacturer Fender between 1946 and 1965. In addition to examining instruments in the Met’s collection and conducting oral histories, Kurland is also working with experts at Brooklyn Lutherie, a women-owned guitar and violin repair shop, where they are building a piece of equipment called a pickup winder. “[Winding pickups] is one of the skills of the women I'm studying that was completed by hand. I think that understanding the physical skills [required of the women] is a way to better understand their experience.”

Putting Yourself Out There: In addition to working on her dissertation, Kurland gets to present her research to the public in various ways, including presenting to docents, in public programs, and in a symposium called Research Out Loud, where Met fellows discuss their work. Kurland also started a writing group for fellows that meets twice a week and “holds each other accountable for what we're working on.”

Out on the Town: When not working, Kurland explores the Big Apple. “I am living in NYC full time and really trying to take advantage of the city's music scene. I try to see as much live music as possible!”

Connect with the Arts at George �鶹��Ƶ

Psychology researcher focuses on why theatre education matters

Colleen Rich — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 15:27:35 +0000

Psychology researcher focuses on why theatre education matters Colleen Rich Wed, 02/19/2025 - 10:27

�鶹��Ƶ psychology professor Thalia R. Goldstein’s work focuses on children's developing social and emotional skills, and how such skills intersect with imaginative activities. In her latest book, Why Theatre Education Matters: Understanding its Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Benefits (Teachers College Press, 2024), she pulls together the research she’s conducted on social and emotional learning and cognitive development.

George �鶹��Ƶ psychology professor Thalia Goldstein. Photo by Office of University Branding

What inspired you to write this book?

I have been doing work on the benefits of theater education and the arts for about 15 years, and I realized that what was missing from the scientific literature was a foundational study of the actual activities that were happening in theater classrooms. The book came from this desire to go back to acting classrooms and look at what was happening and then tie that into all the different things I had learned in my research on social and emotional learning, and cognitive development.

How do you anticipate people using this book?

My hope is that the book will be used by acting teachers, theater teachers, and other educators interested in integrating theater techniques, such as role-playing, into their classrooms. There's research that shows that using these kinds of dramatic and playful techniques can help students be more motivated in different subjects and can help them learn more deeply and retain the information for longer. My hope too is that the book is useful for policy makers and people who are writing curriculum, as well as school administrators who are looking for ways to foster creativity and social emotional skills.

The book has been assigned as a textbook in a class called Acting for Non-Actors so that the students can see they are not learning how to perform Romeo on stage. That's not a thing they may ever do, but they are learning how to release their inhibitions, collaborate with others, and reflect on their behavior. All those things are skills that are useful no matter what your job is.

Was there anything that surprised you while working on the book?

One thing that surprised me was how much emphasis there was in these theatre classes on embodiment and physicality. Obviously, actors use their bodies as the instrument. In theater, there's this dualism where you have to use your body as yourself and as your character. But what surprised me was how much classroom time was spent doing things like pushups and sit-ups, jogging around, and meditation, in order to help students have a sense of their own physical limits and their kinesthetic understanding of where they are in space.

Science is showing more and more evidence that embodiment and understanding your body is the key to a lot of well-being and mental health. Emotion regulation—the ability to understand what you're feeling and then figuring out how to alter it—is a physical process. Emotions are in the body. Knowing what an emotion is is about reading the signals your body is sending you and figuring out what they mean. It makes sense to me that some of the best scientific evidence we have about the benefits of theater are about its benefits for emotional control and emotional understanding because it's an embodied practice, it's a physical practice.

What are you working on now?

Photo by Getty Images

We are collecting data from an elementary school where we're working with students taking their very first theater classes and talking to them about their feelings. We are also looking at how they understand these embodied class processes and then connecting what the students tell us to parent and teacher reports and academic grades. We are looking at the classroom activities and how they're connected to academic, interpersonal, and social outcomes.

Another thing we're doing is we're studying grownup play—like when adults go to cosplay conventions or Renaissance fairs or dress up for Halloween. All the ways in which we do pretend play as an adult. We always talk about how we don't do pretend play anymore when we're done being a kid, but the truth is huge numbers of people engage in these other kinds of pretend play activities. And we're trying to figure out why.

How did you get interested in studying theater?

I was a drama kid growing up. I did theater all through school and double majored in psychology and theater in college. I find that it’s a pretty common double major because both majors are asking the same question, which is ‘why do people do what they do?’ It's all about what are humans and why do they do what they do.

When I graduated from college, I moved to New York City and worked as a professional actor and dancer for a few years. I did some national tours and some small movies. I did some big movies as an extra in the background. Nothing super successful or I'd still be doing it. In the end, I decided that wasn't quite for me.

Because I had majored in psychology, I had done research in college. I find you can do psychological research on basically any question you have. If it has to do with humans, there's psychology behind it. I wanted to figure out the psychology of imagination, creativity, and play. When I applied to graduate schools, that’s the pathway I took.

More from the Psychology department at George �鶹��Ƶ

Putting Discoveries to Work

Colleen Rich — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:43:57 +0000

Putting Discoveries to Work Colleen Rich Tue, 12/17/2024 - 12:43

One of the easiest ways to envision the �鶹��Ƶ technology transfer process—that is, the route an idea takes to become a product—is to talk about Gatorade. It’s one of the most famous examples of university tech transfer.

In 1965, a University of Florida football coach met with scientists from the university’s College of Medicine to determine why many of the university athletes were negatively affected by heat. James Robert Cade, MD, and his team of researchers created the now-ubiquitous sports drink to help athletes replace bodily fluids lost during practices and games. The product was named for the team—the Gators.

That early version of the drink wasn't a hit with football players, and it took a multitude of steps to move the drink from prototype to supermarket shelves. But the drink’s formula improved and its popularity grew. By 2015, royalties for those inventors hit $1 billion—and gave other universities something to aspire to.

Not every invention takes off in such a lucrative way, but the goal of all these university-born innovations is the same—to improve people’s lives.

“George �鶹��Ƶ is in the business of discovery,” says Andre Marshall, vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact at George �鶹��Ƶ. “We want to get our good ideas out of the laboratory and put to good use.”

Right now, George �鶹��Ƶ researchers are working on better diagnostics for Lyme disease, developing a bruise detection system that can be used by clinicians across all skin tones, and creating a decision tool to help U.S. farmers achieve better crop yields, just to name a few.

The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Congress, and philanthropists are among those who support this important work.

Paula Sorrell, George �鶹��Ƶ’s associate vice president of innovation and economic impact, says the university’s competitive advantage lies in the fact that it houses tech transfer under the same umbrella as entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development. These units are all part of �鶹��Ƶ Enterprise.

“This allows us to leverage our capacity to provide counseling and education from 23 other programs and strategically plan how technologies will positively impact society and Virginia’s economy,” says Sorrell, who leads �鶹��Ƶ Enterprise. “Because our tech transfer office is staffed with an exceptional group of experienced business and technology professionals, we are able to balance the needs of internal and external stakeholders to move products to the market.”

The Business of Discovery

At George �鶹��Ƶ, the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), led by David Grossman, senior director of technology transfer and industry collaboration, helps researchers bring these ideas and discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace.

“The Office of Technology Transfer takes great pride in the quality of patented innovations brought forth by our dedicated researchers,” says Grossman. “This collaboration between academia and industry underscores our unwavering commitment to harness the full potential of research for the betterment of society.”

Long before industry becomes involved, Grossman and his team at OTT are there to help researchers protect their intellectual property (IP). All inventions begin with an innovation disclosure, which is a brief summary of the work.

“I say innovation versus invention, because sometimes it's not actually a patentable thing,” says Grossman, who is also a lawyer and has taught patent law. “Sometimes it is a copyright or something else.”

Following the disclosure, the OTT team will meet with the researchers. They try to discern if there is protectable IP, what the necessary steps are to secure that IP, and if there is a pathway to the public.

“Our goal is always to make sure that the results of the research benefit the public somehow,” he says.

Patents Pending and Industry Partners

Being an inventor requires a lot of patience. It can take years to secure a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. To date, George �鶹��Ƶ researchers have acquired 296 patents.

Grossman says the number of innovation disclosures by university faculty members continues to grow but not all these innovations will go through the patent process. As he and the OTT staff work with faculty members to safeguard their IPs, they handle all the patent, trademark, and copyright filings.

Grossman says that new innovations are not usually in a position where they can go directly into the marketplace. So the next step in the tech transfer process often involves partnering with a company in that field and licensing the technology. The OTT team helps forge these partnerships and negotiate licensing agreements. Sometimes start-up companies are created to advance the innovation.

One of the most successful university partnerships of this kind is with Ceres Nanosciences, a Northern Virginia bioscience company spun out of George �鶹��Ƶ that specializes in diagnostic products and workflows. Ceres and George �鶹��Ƶ have worked together since the company’s inception, and Ceres’s first lab was on George �鶹��Ƶ’s Science and Technology Campus.

Ceres now has space nearby in Prince William County’s Innovation Park where it has increased its capacity to manufacture Nanotrap Magnetic Virus Particles. The base technology underlying the Nanotrap particle was created by George �鶹��Ƶ’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), which is led by codirectors Lance Liotta and Emanuel Petricoin.

These particles improve diagnostic testing for viruses like COVID-19, influenza, and Lyme disease, and this university–industry collaboration was critical to George �鶹��Ƶ’s response during the pandemic.

Using a Nanotrap test, CAPMM scientists oversaw George �鶹��Ƶ’s surveillance testing, administering more than 155,000 COVID tests to students, faculty, and staff and processing those tests in university labs with results within 24 to 48 hours. The easy access to testing and fast turnaround time meant that those testing positive were quickly identified and isolated, which helped mitigate outbreaks within the campus community.

“It was very fortunate that we had put a lot of energy into developing the technology for viral infections and released a product for it before the pandemic,” says Ceres CEO Ross Dunlap, who serves on the George �鶹��Ƶ Research Foundation board. “We were able to rapidly respond and quickly validate our technology for COVID diagnostics, which was done in partnership with George �鶹��Ƶ.”

Shared Resources

Some innovations like the NeuroMorpho database are a shared resource available to researchers around the world.

George �鶹��Ƶ neuroscientist Giorgio Ascoli created NeuroMorpho.org in 2006 to store the large amounts of data needed to make computational models of neurons. The open-access database of 3D neural reconstructions has grown from 932 reconstructions to more than 180,000, and it is continuously updated with contributions from more than 1,000 labs worldwide.

The reconstructions have been used to investigate Alzheimer’s disease pathways, epilepsy, memory capacity, and the effects of cosmic radiation on astronauts’ central nervous systems.

Ascoli, founding director of the Center for Neural Informatics, Structures, and Plasticity at George �鶹��Ƶ, believes this database could pave the way for future breakthroughs, such as new treatments for neurological diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. “I'm a firm believer that in time NeuroMorpho.org will help advance humanity toward a fuller characterization of the mind-matter relationship, and that's something to live for,” he says.

Sometimes the innovation is meant to make the research itself a little easier. Two technologies that came out of George �鶹��Ƶ’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media were designed by historians to make humanities research easier to document and share.

Many college students recognize the name Zotero, which is a free, easy-to-use tool designed to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.

Since its release in 2008, Omeka has established itself as a leading open source web publishing platform for digital collections. The software has been downloaded more than 500,000 times and is the content management system for thousands of websites developed by libraries, archives, museums, and scholars.

As the head of George �鶹��Ƶ’s research enterprise, Marshall believes it’s the university’s responsibility as a Carnegie Research 1 university to pursue this work and these collaborations.

“This work is ambitious,” says Marshall, “especially when you're trying to bridge the culture between industry, university, and government. And when you add in doing this inclusively and while prioritizing access, it truly is what makes �鶹��Ƶ All Together Different.”

Martha Bushong, Mary Cunningham, John Hollis, Katie Maney, Tracy �鶹��Ƶ, and Laura Powers contributed to this article.

Uncover more about these discoveries and resulting technologies emerging from the Office of Technology Transfer:

In her new 'memoir in animals,' Creative Writing professor examines her writing life

Colleen Rich — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 17:46:28 +0000

In her new 'memoir in animals,' Creative Writing professor examines her writing life Colleen Rich Tue, 12/03/2024 - 12:46

George �鶹��Ƶ English professor Kyoko Mori writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her latest book, Cat and Bird (Belt Publishing, March 2024), has been called a “memoir in animals” and focuses on the six house cats who defined the major eras of her life as a writer.

Kyoko Mori with her cats. Photo provided

What inspired you to write this book?

I’ve lived my entire adult life with cats and yet my previous books—both fiction and nonfiction—only featured cats in the periphery of the story, as colorful minor characters at best. In truth, getting my first cat at 22 was a life-altering event: that cat saw me through graduate school, my first full-time teaching job, marriage and divorce, and the publication of my first two books. I wouldn’t be the same person I am now if I hadn’t been with him for 18 years. So my first impetus was to finally do justice to him and to his successors.

I wanted to push against the misconception that cats and dogs are opposites—the cliché that cats are selfish and independent while dogs are loving and loyal. For those of us who are devoted to our animal companions, cats and dogs, equally, can be our alter ego or avatar—the core of who we are.

The real contrast is between cats and dogs on one hand and songbirds and other wildlife on the other. Even with birds who come to our window feeder or end up in our care (I worked as a songbird rehabilitator), we can only admire them from a distance or nurse them back to health in order to return them to the wild. We love companion animals by holding on; we love wildlife by letting go. I wanted to explore this contrast.

What surprised you about the process of writing this book?

I knew from the beginning that the book was going to be about the way the two kinds of devotion—to cats and to birds—have sustained my work as a writer and helped me to make a home as a single childless woman who is happy in her solitude and yet fulfilled by her involvement in the community. Having a husband and children is not the only way to engage meaningfully with the world and make a positive impact.

The balance between solitude and community and the joy of making a home alone (with cats) did remain important ideas in the book. But I also realized that a book about living with animal companions and witnessing the dangers that threaten birds, other wildlife, and the whole planet will have to dig deep into grief. The desire to hold on and let go at the same time—as when a beloved animal companion dies or when we watch from the ground as migratory birds navigate the sky full of danger—became the essential aspect of the book’s narrative and investigation.

What are you working on now?

My last nonfiction book before Cat and Bird was a knitting memoir titled Yarn: Remembering the Way Home. Since finishing Cat and Bird, I’ve picked up where Yarn finished and published four personal essays about women and clothes: shopping with my close friends, how we express ourselves with our clothes, etc. At the same time, I continue to be interested in backyard wildlife—birds that were not included in Cat and Bird and squirrels—especially after a squirrel made a nest in the flowerpot on my window ledge, had two babies, and stayed for two weeks before moving her nest to a maple tree in the backyard.

Sei Shōnagon, the 11th-century Japanese writer who appears in Cat and Bird as the embodiment of the book’s spirit, was equally interested in the beauty of nature and of human-made objects. I don’t think clothes and backyard wildlife can fit into the same book for me as they did for her, but for now I’m following the inspiration of her astute observations about both and seeing where my work goes.

Discover more from the English Department at George �鶹��Ƶ

Colleen Kearney Rich

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