Jenn Pocock

Five George �鶹��Ƶ cybersecurity students hack their way to Boston

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 14:38:39 +0000

Five George �鶹��Ƶ cybersecurity students hack their way to Boston Jennifer Pocock Thu, 07/31/2025 - 10:38

The Country to Country (C2C) Capture the Flag (CTF) contest is an international competition that issues challenges to code, decrypt, search, hack, and reverse engineer their way through as many challenges as possible.

(C2C) CTF contestants gathered from across the globe to solve pernicious problems. Photo provided.

�鶹��Ƶ 500 students from nearly 100 countries, ranging from inexperienced freshmen to PhD candidates in cybersecurity, competed individually in the qualifying rounds. Only the top 100—including five from �鶹��Ƶ—were accepted into the finals. Four went to Boston for the competition, held this year at Northeastern University.

Gael Abboud, Sanjay Kumar Samala, Nhat Le, and Jonah Wilbur represented the green and gold, but were all placed on different teams. (Amaan Abbas also made the cut but could not attend.)

“The organizers were amazing,” said Abboud. She explained that they try to make it a truly international and cooperative competition. Ideally, each team would contain people from different countries.

“Somehow, I ended up on a team with two other people from Virginia,” Abboud laughed. “They came from Virginia Commonwealth University and William and Mary.”

Her Virginia-strong team did the state proud. Over a day of competition, they sometimes worked together and sometimes apart to solve as many problems as possible from across various skillsets.

It’s not just coding. Abboud described one of the challenges. “It was open-source intelligence, which is really just fancy Googling. They set a scene where we had to find a very certain scooter repair shop in Boston. They told us that it was near a metro stop and in sight of an Indian restaurant. Seems like it should be easy, but it wasn’t!” They also had to track down things like the price of the building and the vice president of the company that sold it more than 60 years ago. “No one solved that one.”

In the end, Abboud’s team landed in fourth place: an admirable showing when the contestants represent some of the best from around the globe. But, “I was so disappointed,” she sighed. “There was less than one point separating us from the third-place team.”

Abboud said that she loved every minute and would tell anyone curious about hack-a-thons to try qualifying for this Capture the Flag event. “Just try,” she said. “You don’t know what it will be like if you don’t try. It may seem intimidating, but there are challenges for any skill level. Don’t stress if you don’t know something. People are happy to walk you through how they solved it.”

Topics

A watershed year for �鶹��Ƶ sustainability data

Jennifer Pocock — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:14:43 +0000

A watershed year for �鶹��Ƶ sustainability data Jennifer Pocock Mon, 06/30/2025 - 12:14

In This Story

Viviana Maggioni

Lucas Henneman

An intercollegiate study, in partnership with �鶹��Ƶ's Facilities, analyzes the effects of campus events and weather on local air and water quality.

Maryam Zavareh tests a water sample from the Fairfax Campus. Photo provided.

Major events at �鶹��Ƶ, like graduation ceremonies, basketball games, and �鶹��Ƶ Day are high-water events in student life. But how do they affect the campus ecosystem?

For the past year, with support from the Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE), groups of undergraduate and graduate engineering students have worked with university Facilities to sample air and water quality measurements at eight spots across campus. They are studying how human-centered activities like special events and campus construction projects, along with natural events like heavy rainstorms, affect the urban campus environment.

“Fairfax is a very active campus in terms of construction,” said Maryam Zavareh, an expert in environmental engineering who earned her PhD from George �鶹��Ƶ in 2021. “They’re always building something or something is always going on for students.”

Weather is also a factor, she pointed out, and so are projects like rain gardens (also called best management practices or BMPs). “Rain can affect a stream’s turbidity and its dissolved oxygen in a negative way, while BMPs can help quality.”

As part of her PhD program, Zavareh started taking measurements around �鶹��Ƶ Pond and campus streams. She wanted to use machine learning to predict water quality patterns in conjunction with the Maggioni Research Group, a lab run on campus by water resources engineering expert Viviana Maggioni, an associate professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, and air quality expert Lucas Henneman, an assistant professor in the department. With this ISE grant, Maggioni called Zavareh back to run the project as a consultant.

Starting in May 2024, a new group of students each semester have learned to gather data in the field, work with the instruments, and calibrate them for accurate readings.

“One of the advantages of this project is that students get to go into the field and take measurements,” said Dinesh Neupane, a PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering and student leader for the project. “That was lacking in my previous programs—students stayed in the labs.”

Neupane is excited for the opportunity to measure air quality—something that hasn’t been done yet on campus—in addition to water. “We want to calibrate the ground data we measure with satellite imagery to see if we can get the imaging to accurately take the readings for us,” he said.

So far, Neupane said that campus events do not have a major effect on water quality. “We think big gatherings will have an effect on air quality, but we don’t have that data yet. We’re still in the process of setting those instruments up.”

This year’s work by Zavareh, Neupane, and their student teams lays the groundwork for future students to analyze their data and carry the research forward. They are proving that ISE’s �鶹��Ƶ as a Living Lab program offers great insights.

Topics

�鶹��Ƶ as a Living Lab

Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE)

Department of Civil Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE)

environmental engineering

civil engineering; stormwater infrastructure; climate variability

water resource engineering; civil and infrastructure engineering

Engineering students in Ecuador give locals a leg up

Jennifer Pocock — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 18:37:38 +0000

Engineering students in Ecuador give locals a leg up Jennifer Pocock Wed, 06/11/2025 - 14:37

In This Story

Ketul Popat

Shani Ross

Sixteen students from George �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Computing took an early summer ROMP in Quito.

Computer engineering major Darion El shapes a prosthetic as ROMP prostheticist Mireya Moreno supervises.
Photo by Shani Ross

It could have been just another frivolous start to the summer, full of parties and pools before kicking off internships and jobs. Instead, these students opted to change lives: those of amputees—and their own.

From May 16 to 26, 16 students in the BENG 417 Bioengineering World Health class with trip leaders Claudia Borke and Shani Ross worked in Quito, Ecuador, with the Range of Motion Project (ROMP) to fit locals with high-quality prosthetic devices. Ketul Popat, chair of the Department of Bioengineering, brought the ROMP program to George �鶹��Ƶ after a successful run at Colorado State University.

“This was the first year that we did this,” he said. “The goal was to give more hands-on experience to students so they could see how a background in engineering could make a difference in people’s lives instantly.”

Different styles of prosthetics are displayed with shoes at the ROMP workshop. Photo by Darion El

The students absolutely felt the difference. Nicolas Garcia Callejas is a rising senior who began his academic career as a pre-med nursing student, earned an associate’s degree in health science, and is now hurtling through undergrad and straight into a master’s in bioengineering with George �鶹��Ƶ’s Bachelor’s Accelerated Master’s (BAM) program.

“We got to know the patients and help them through the process. Then we got to do everything from scratch in making the prosthetics,” he said. “We went from taking measurements, doing the sculpting and molding, refinements around the socket, and building the prosthetic. It was a full 9-5 job, but the time flew by because I was having fun.”

This trip, Garcia Callejas said, lit a fire in him to continue working with ROMP. Not only did he get to help others, as he wanted to do as a nursing student, but he could also make things hands-on and use his language skills to help translate. “ROMP was a really cool experience. I fell in love with the people there.”

Andres Miguel Cruz Guzman was another student who transferred to George �鶹��Ƶ from a community college with an associate’s degree in engineering. This mechanical engineering major wants to eventually work on solar and water technology projects, but the personal and hands-on aspect of the Ecuador program attracted him.

“I liked that we were going to work directly with the patients,” he said. “The prosthetics are going on their bodies and will be something they wear for the next three years. I was intrigued by that challenge.”

One thing he didn’t anticipate, however, was the emotional aspect of the work. “I saw one 12-year-old boy walk for the first time. It didn’t hit me at the moment, but at bedtime the impact that we had on his life overwhelmed me,” he said.

Popat said that one thing that struck him was how quickly the students adapted to the work. “I went on the third day, and it didn’t seem like the students were new there,” he said. “They were already very comfortable with what they were doing.”

And that’s the kicker (pun intended). These programs are so valuable because they enable students to see, in a very short time, how their years of study prepared them to make a difference in the world.

Topics

Sit! Stay! Buzz?

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 29 May 2025 14:56:51 +0000

Sit! Stay! Buzz? Jennifer Pocock Thu, 05/29/2025 - 10:56

These �鶹��Ƶ students are short-circuiting voice commands, dog whistles, and clickers.

Covert Dog Comms Team Leader Paul J. Wyche displays their finished prototype at the Office of Student Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR) Celebration. Photo by John Boal

If you’ve had a puppy, you probably know the patience it takes to train them in basic commands, and it can be a noisy affair involving begging, pleading, and some yelling. Working dogs like those in police and military K9 units need to learn so much more.

Sometimes, they need to obey without hearing a word.

Rescue situations can be chaotic, with so much going on that a command gets lost in the noise. Sometimes, a team of dogs need to hear many different commands, and competing voices are confusing. Other times, operation teams need to go radio silent and any noise at all will give their positions away.

Enter Team Covert Dog Comms. This pack of cybersecurity seniors at George �鶹��Ƶ, all of whom graduated in May, sniffed out a way to direct dogs without barking commands.

Together, they became the dream team that was the envy of anyone who has ever worked on a bad group project—and proof that great leadership combined with a passionate team yields amazing results.

“Working with this team has been a very positive experience. One key factor that made it successful was the balance of specialized skill sets,” said team leader Paul J. Wyche, who also recently spoke at his College of Engineering and Computing graduation. “While some of our backgrounds overlapped, each team member had a distinct area of expertise, allowing us to overcome any obstacle and collaborate effectively.”

Those members were Maxime Bonnaud, who specialized in the vest’s wireless and cryptographic security; Jonathan Perry, who designed the hardware; and AJ Hoepfner, who set up testing standards and regulations, along with assisting Wyche with project management.

“Mostly, what made this team great was good execution on the fundamentals,” said Bonnaud. “Everyone showed up, communicated well, and looked for areas they could work on instead of having to be assigned work.”

The end result was a securely encrypted working prototype of a vest that can be programmed with three different vibrating pattern commands that a dog can be trained to obey. While they were unable to find a working dog to test on, the team tested the vest on themselves and found it to work as intended.

When asked whether the team planned to patent or commercialize the vest, Wyche said that they wouldn’t rule it out. “We haven’t formally discussed commercializing the project. However, if the opportunity arises and we receive the necessary support, we may explore those possibilities.”

Until then, they achieved their goal of making “a fully operational haptic vest that could be refined for real-world use in special operations.”

And that is something to howl about.

Topics

Senior Capstone Project

Cybersecurity

Military

Police and Public Safety

George �鶹��Ƶ’s ROARS lab retains its ranking as a leader in AI safety at the 2024 International Neural Network Verification Competition

Jennifer Pocock — Mon, 19 May 2025 20:47:30 +0000

George �鶹��Ƶ’s ROARS lab retains its ranking as a leader in AI safety at the 2024 International Neural Network Verification Competition Jennifer Pocock Mon, 05/19/2025 - 16:47

In This Story

ThanhVu Nguyen

The team’s NeuralSAT advanced the frontiers of trustworthy artificial intelligence, earning second place in a highly competitive field of international teams advancing the formal verification of AI systems.

Associate Professor ThanhVu Nguyen

NeuralSAT is an open-source verification tool developed by experts in Formal Methods/AI Hai Duong and ThanhVu Nguyen, both of �鶹��Ƶ. It analyzes whether deep neural networks behave as intended, even under adversarial or uncertain conditions. The International Neural Network Verification Competition (VNN-COMP) gathers international research teams working on formal methods for AI safety—methods that are increasingly important as neural networks are deployed in autonomous systems, healthcare, finance, and other mission-critical systems.

"Our goal with NeuralSAT is to bring precision and robustness to AI systems,” said Nguyen, an associate professor in computer science, “especially as they are increasingly used in safety-critical settings."

Hai Duong is a third-year PhD candidate

Each year, the participating VNN-COMP tools are evaluated across a wide set of benchmarks that test scalability, correctness, and performance. The 2024 competition’s results were recently released.

"This year’s benchmarks pushed the boundaries of what verification tools could handle—both in terms of scale and complexity," said Duong, a third-year computer science PhD candidate. "We’re proud that NeuralSAT remained among the top performers, showing strong results across both safety and robustness categories."

NeuralSAT was developed in close collaboration with researchers across multiple institutions, including the University of Virginia’s Matt Dwyer. It builds on recent advances in symbolic reasoning, SAT solving, and abstraction. In its inaugural appearance at VNN-COMP in 2023, NeuralSAT placed fourth overall and received the New Participant Award. In addition to competitions, the tool has been featured at top-tier conferences such as the Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering and Computer Aided Verification.

Nguyen, who serves as an organizer and program chair of VNN-COMP 2025, emphasized the significance of the competition in shaping the research landscape.

"The field of neural network verification is rapidly maturing, and VNN-COMP has become the standard for evaluating progress," he said. "Many research papers now compare their tools against VNN-COMP results or use its benchmarks for evaluation. It's exciting to be involved in shaping the competition while also contributing a tool that pushes the research frontier."

David Rosenblum, chair of the Department of Computer Science, was thrilled with ROARS Lab’s achievement. "ThanhVu Nguyen is an established research leader on problems at the intersection of formal methods and deep learning. This team’s outstanding achievement has demonstrated the great potential impact of verification technologies for AI safety," he said.

The long-term goal of NeuralSAT, supported in part by Nguyen’s NSF CAREER Award and Amazon Research Award, is to remain at the forefront of AI verification research while evolving into a practical, scalable, and potentially commercial-grade solution for industry use.

George �鶹��Ƶ is advancing a bold vision for the future of safe and robust AI and is further expanding its leadership with the launch of Virginia's first master’s program in artificial intelligence in fall 2025. This program reflects the university’s deep commitment to cutting-edge education and the development of trustworthy, high-impact AI technologies.

Topics

Artificial Intelligence

National Science Foundation

Computer science; computing; Amazon

computer science

Research

Drones and rovers save the day at Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2025

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:18:35 +0000

Drones and rovers save the day at Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2025 Jennifer Pocock Thu, 05/01/2025 - 14:18

As the saying goes, if you love something, set it free. If it maps an area, finds a target, delivers a package, and comes back, the trophy is yours forever. Or something like that.

The Raytheon Autonomous Vehicle Competition Team poses with their ground and air robots. Photo by Jenn Pocock

The black quadcopter drone surveyed the field in two quick swoops against a cloud-heavy sky. In just a matter of seconds, it picked up a signal and flew to the sidelines where it landed itself. A small ground rover took off, bumping over the grass to drop a first aid kit a few feet from the goal. Team members on the side of the field exploded with cheers and high fives.

The entire search and rescue took less than two minutes.

Senior electrical engineering student Qeon Edwards jumped with joy at just how well and how quickly their vehicles performed. “What, you doubted us?” he laughed, obviously relieved.

It was late in April when five teams gathered at the Xelevate drone ecosystem field in Leesburg, Virginia, to test their autonomous programming mettle via ground and air vehicles. This was �鶹��Ƶ’s second year in the competition, which they won last year. The team consisted of 16 students ranging from sophomores to PhDs in computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. As the reigning champs, they had a lot to prove.

A quadcopter takes off from the starting line to search for its target, as the rover and judges stand by. Photo by Jenn Pocock

The challenge rules change every year, so the team can’t just copy their predecessors’ codes. “Last year was basically a game of tag,” said Xuesu Xiao, assistant professor of computer science and the team’s faculty lead. They had to fly a drone around to squirt water on their opponents’ ground vehicles while avoiding their own.

This year, instead of trying to shoot others down, they had to perform a rescue mission: Find a randomly assigned “survivor” in a field of battle and send first aid. The faster the find and the closer the kit, the higher the score.

“Our strategy was for a drone to scout the area first, find the target, and then drive another ground vehicle robot to deliver the first-aid kit,” said Xiao.

The team programmed six flying drones and a ground robot that communicated with one another—and nothing else. That means that the programmers had no immediate control over the vehicles; they set their autonomous creations free and hoped that they did a good job coding them.

Judges measure the distance from the target to the rover-delivered first aid kit. Photo by Jenn Pocock

Overall, their robots performed exceptionally, managing to cut their delivery time and distance to less than a minute and 57 inches, respectively. They were just nudged out, however, by first-place University of Southern Florida and second-place Virginia Tech.

“It was definitely very tight between the top three!” said Cameron Nowzari, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering. “There was only a two-point difference between first and second, and one point between second and third.”

Still, the team wasn’t disappointed with how they performed. Their robots were a labor of love, and they met the challenge in a big way.

In This Story

Xuesu Xiao

Cameron Nowzari

Topics

Autonomous Cars

robotics and autonomous systems

competitions

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Students

Sea life defended the republic

Jennifer Pocock — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 15:34:12 +0000

Sea life defended the republic Jennifer Pocock Tue, 04/29/2025 - 11:34

The bioinspired blimps performed swimmingly.

Blimp Squad members Elijah Pointer and Kareem Zaharan (seniors in mechanical engineering) reach for a balloon captured in Narly's net as Faculty Adviser Daigo Shishika looks on. Photo by Jenn Pocock

Narly glided toward the ceiling of �鶹��Ƶ's Life Science and Engineering Building aviary like a shiny beluga whale with undulating manta-ray wings and a rudder tail. Thomas Girois, a senior in mechanical engineering and Narly’s team lead, flipped on the blimp’s autonomous goal-seeking program to show off its ability to target airborne objects. He hopes it will head toward the balloon that he wants to capture. But it made an unexpected turn and instead nosed the high bay windows, where it wouldn’t move despite its programmed back-up function.

After a moment of confusion, Girois laughed. “It’s outsmarted us again!”

Narly’s microcontroller and camera was coded to recognize and hunt down green and purple airborne objects—which is exactly what it did when it registered the glowing green Exit sign on the ceiling outside the window. Still, the test boded well for the upcoming competition.

Narly was one of three sea life–inspired Lighter Than Air (LTA) vehicles to compete on George �鶹��Ƶ’s Blimp Squad in the Defend the Republic (DTR) contest from April 21 – 25, 2025.

The Blimp Squad lines up with their devices, ready to go on the offense. Photo by Jenn Pocock

Flappy, another manta ray blimp, has a larger rudder tail that allows it to make pinpoint midair turns, and Knifey, inspired by the knifefish, has a long, undulating frill along its belly—and a fierce expression. These designs differ from their competitors’, which rely on propellers for propulsion and steering.

“Using propellers is easier,” said Daigo Shishika, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and one of the Blimp Squad’s faculty advisers. “But the big surface areas of our flapping wings are more efficient. Propeller-driven blimps need to carry more batteries, which are heavy and drain fast.”

Shishika noted that contestants lose points if they hurt another team’s blimp, which is always a risk with propellers.

Alexia De Costa (sophomore, computer science) follows under the fearsome Knifey, whose underbelly frill was inspired by the knifefish. Photo by Jenn Pocock

“We’re hoping to get more agility and a safer blimp,” he said.

Ningshi Yao, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the squad’s other faculty adviser, also pointed out the blimps’ winning personalities. “Our flappies are pretty attractive robots,” she said. “Human-robot interaction is important. You want humans to like being around it!”

One DTR spectator, upon seeing Flappy fly for the first time, confirmed this theory. “It’s so cute!” she gasped. “I would die for Flappy.”

After hundreds of hours of testing, Narly, Flappy, and Knifey joined their two defense blimps—a zippy acrobatic wonder called Space Fish, and a high-scoring high-flier called Backbone Junior—to play a midair game of capturing balloons and releasing them through hoops to score goals.

Knifey's fierce expression intimidates the competition. Photo by:Jenn Pocock.

The team took third place out of six and scored the second-most points of all the teams.

“One highlight for me personally was that the flapping wing blimp achieved fully autonomous scoring for the first time since its first debut in the spring of 2023,” said Shishika. “It started as an exploratory agent that was primarily for research, but after two years and four competitions, Flappy finally contributed to the team by scoring 70 points.”

Narly also scored its first autonomous points.

While the team may not have taken first place, their sea-inspired research won the week.

Check out these shorts on our Youtube channel to see the vehicles and their designers in action.

In This Story

Daigo Shishika

Ningshi Yao

Electrical and Computer Engineering at George �鶹��Ƶ

Topics

lighter-than-air robotics

robotics and autonomous systems

competitions

mechanical engineering

Applied computer science

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Students

New Life Sciences and Engineering Building offers the tools needed to excel

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 18:11:29 +0000

New Life Sciences and Engineering Building offers the tools needed to excel Jennifer Pocock Thu, 04/03/2025 - 14:11

With state-of-the-art teaching labs and fabrication facilities, �鶹��Ƶ's Life Sciences and Engineering Building (LSEB) lets students and faculty get their hands dirty in this brand-new multiuse active learning space. The ribbon cutting didn’t officially happen until March 27, but LSEB already experienced a housewarming.

Students working in the aviary at the Life Sciences and Engineering Building. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

The students started arriving just after the winter break, when the building opened on January 21, 2025. One of the first groups to take up residence was Patriot Motorsports, a club for any students (not just mechanical engineers!) who want to explore the inner workings of automotive vehicles. Over the past two months, mechanical engineering seniors have revved it up a notch with their capstone project designing a control system for the club’s Formula SAE race car.

Race cars aren’t the only vehicles in the building...there’s also room for robotics and autonomous vehicles. This new space boasts a high-bay, multistory aviary laboratory 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 Assistant Professor Daigo Shishika’s students.

“Our capstone teams are also using the prototyping space in room 2100 to meet and jointly work on their projects,” said Charles White, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “So far this has been through team meetings and collaboration. Once the first-floor machine shop is complete, this space will also be used for staging and constructing physical prototypes.”

One of the building’s unique features is the seamless blending of laboratory and teaching spaces. All of 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 and practice in real time.

And these areas barely scrape 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, a dedicated space for their ASCE concrete canoe competitions. Bioengineers have cutting-edge studios as well, including a tissue engineering lab.

The LSEB is still warming up and getting ready for new student cohorts, but one thing is sure: This building will produce brilliant engineers and scientists for generations to come.

In This Story

Daigo Shishika

Charles White

Topics

mechanical engineering

Civil Engineering

Bioengineering

Students

Helen Chin receives NIH grant to study associations between air pollution and the onset of puberty

Jennifer Pocock — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 17:24:57 +0000

Helen Chin receives NIH grant to study associations between air pollution and the onset of puberty Jennifer Pocock Tue, 02/04/2025 - 12:24

Funding will advance research on children’s health using data from the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program

Helen Chin, Assistant Professor, Global and Community Health

Helen Chin, an assistant professor in Department of Global and Community Health at �鶹��Ƶ, received a new grant from the National Institutes of Health’s ECHO Opportunities and Innovation Fund to study the impacts of air pollution exposure on child development. 

Chin’s work will focus on how exposure to air pollutants before birth and as infants—key developmental periods—might relate to the timing of puberty in children. It will also examine the role childhood body mass index (BMI) may contribute.

“There are growing concerns about how puberty is starting earlier in children and the impacts this might have on childhood and long-term health,” says Chin. She received the grant in November 2024.

The ECHO Opportunities and Innovation Fund is an NIH-funded grant mechanism to support early career investigators who propose projects that introduce new research, tools, and technologies in the ECHO Program. Chin will collaborate with Global and Community Health professor Michael Bloom and researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina ECHO site.

Chin is a recognized expert in reproductive epidemiology and environmental factors that can negatively impact reproductive health. Her work on exposure to environmental endocrine disruptors and reproductive outcomes has earned several awards for research excellence.

ECHO is a national collaborative consortium funded by the NIH that supports long-term research on pediatric health with its mission “to enhance the health of children for generations to come.” It brings diverse participant populations from across the country together to standardize and pool data on a large scale that can then support research at a broader and more nuanced level than individual smaller studies ever could.

Chin’s award adds to the $1.78 million in annual ECHO funding awarded to the college since January 2020, adding to George �鶹��Ƶ’s ongoing leadership, innovation, and successful relationships with its participants. George �鶹��Ƶ’s School of Nursing has been a collection site for ECHO since 2020.

ECHO data have already informed research that examines toxic metal buildup in mothers, how school lunches impact obesity in children, and the disparities in sleep patterns in children of different races and ethnicities.

In This Story

Helen Chin, MPH, PhD

Connect with the College of Public Health

Topics

National Institutes of Health

NIH grant funding

Air Pollution

Child and Adolescent Health

Research

Strategic Direction

First-of-its-kind research identifies beneficial prenatal vitamins to reduce risk of infant death

Jennifer Pocock — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 15:19:14 +0000

First-of-its-kind research identifies beneficial prenatal vitamins to reduce risk of infant death Jennifer Pocock Thu, 01/30/2025 - 10:19

Assistant Professor of Global and Community Health Dongqing Wang publishes landmark analysis on the impacts of prenatal vitamins on mothers and newborns in the Lancet Global Health.

Dongqing Wang, PhD, MPH

Dongqing Wang, an assistant professor of Global and Community Health at George �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Public Health, is pioneering research in prenatal nutritional interventions. His latest report identifies prenatal supplements that reduce health risks to small and vulnerable babies. This research was published in the prestigious Lancet Global Health journal and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Wang found that compared to folic acid and iron alone, a multiple micronutrient supplement led to a 27% lower risk of giving birth to “small vulnerable newborn types,” or babies who suffered from preterm birth, low birthweight, and small-for-gestational-age birth—the three groups most likely to result in infant death.

In the past, these birth outcomes were all treated as separate conditions. Wang, however, delves into emerging science to look at different combinations across the three outcomes. Low birthweight, for example, can occur because of a short pregnancy, and growth restrictions can lead to babies born too small for their developmental age.

“Small vulnerable newborn types may have distinct mechanisms, health impacts, and intervention strategies,” says Wang. “This work is the first to examine the effects of prenatal multiple micronutrient supplements and small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements on the emerging outcomes of small vulnerable newborns.”

Folic acid and iron have been used to support prenatal health since the 1970s. Wang explored the effects of two additional types of prenatal supplements on women in low- and middle-income countries: prenatal multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS), similar to a common multivitamin, and small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS), which provide caloric nutrition and fatty acids in addition to vitamins.

He found that nearly all of these vitamins conferred some type of benefit—and some of them were hugely beneficial.

“This study underscores the important promise of nutritional supplements in prenatal care in low- and middle-income countries,” says Wang. “In particular, the protective effects of prenatal multiple micronutrients on most small vulnerable newborn types, particularly those with the greatest mortality risk, strongly supports switching from iron and folic acid supplements to MMS as the standard care.”

Combining 16 different studies, Wang analyzed how prenatal nutrition correlates to the occurrence of small vulnerable newborns. He believes that the right prenatal supplements can help mitigate them. Since more than 90% of pregnancies resulting in low birthweight occur in low- and middle-income countries, including those in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, Wang focused this work on those regions.

The Lancet Global Health published "The effects of prenatal multiple micronutrient supplements and small-quantity lipid- based nutrient supplements on small vulnerable newborn types in low- and middle- income countries: a meta-analysis of individual participant data” in January 2025. Additional authors include Enju Liu, Nandita Perumal, Uttara Partap, Ilana R. Cliffer, Janaína Calu Costa, Molin Wang, Wafaie W. Fawzi, and more than 40 data contributors from all over the world who provided the individual participant data used in this landmark analysis.