Nathan Kahl

NSF CAREER award will support teen autonomy in age of AI

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:45:38 +0000

NSF CAREER award will support teen autonomy in age of AI Nathan Kahl Tue, 06/09/2026 - 11:45

Adolescence has always been a time of figuring out who you are. Increasingly, that process unfolds alongside social media feeds, recommendation algorithms, and AI chatbots. 91��’s Nora McDonald received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for $748,000 to better understand how adolescents experience and are shaped by these artificial intelligence (AI) and other personalized digital environments, and how they can develop the skills and capacities necessary to maintain their sense of self, autonomy, and agency within them.

McDonald, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology, has spent several years studying a growing reality of adolescent life, and one increasingly shaped by personalized AI technologies. Her research has found that social media recommendation systems and AI chatbots can serve as spaces where young people reflect on themselves, experiment with identity, and seek feedback about who they are.

McDonald's work will give teens tools to properly engage with digital technologies. iStock photo.

“Much of the public conversation has been about how algorithms influence what kids see and how we go down rabbit holes,” McDonald said. “I’m interested in a different question: How do algorithms shape self-understanding and how do teens make sense of themselves in environments that are increasingly personalized and shaped by algorithms and AI?”

McDonald’s previous research suggests that even while teenagers often view AI chatbots and recommendation systems as practical tools, those systems can become important spaces for self-exploration and self-presentation.

“Over time, teens might come to expect these systems to reflect aspects of who they are,” McDonald said. “They use them not just for help with homework or entertainment, but also to explore and understand themselves.”

Those findings raise broader questions about identity development during adolescence. If recommendation systems continually influence what young people see, what feedback they receive, and what content captures their attention, how will that affect how they see themselves?

McDonalds's CAREER project will investigate that question through what she calls a resilience framework that examines how adolescents recognize, interpret, and respond to algorithmic influence and how it relates to the coherence of their sense of self.

The research combines interviews, diary studies, surveys, and participatory design activities to better understand how adolescents interpret and respond to algorithmic systems. McDonald will recruit teenagers from across the country, beginning with qualitative studies and eventually expanding to a national survey designed to generate broader statistical insights.

One major outcome of the project will be the development of practical resources and activities designed with teenagers to help them navigate personalized digital environments.

The effort differs from traditional digital literacy initiatives that focus primarily on explaining how algorithms work. “It helps them reflect on algorithmic influence and develop strategies that are really rooted in managing attention and maintaining perspective on who they are outside of digital experiences,” McDonald said.

The CAREER award also supports substantial educational activities. McDonald plans to develop a new undergraduate course focused on algorithmic self-defense from a human-computer interaction perspective. The project will also support a youth summer institute for high school students helping young people to critically engage with AI personalized digital technologies that increasingly shape their everyday experiences.

Learn about Artificial Intelligence at George Mason

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Nora McDonald

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Teens

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National Science Foundation

George Mason PhD student recognized for blockchain privacy research

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:51:19 +0000

George Mason PhD student recognized for blockchain privacy research Nathan Kahl Tue, 06/02/2026 - 06:51

91�� computer science doctoral student Aayush Yadav co-authored a paper that received a Distinguished Paper Award from the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, one of the industry’s premier conferences in the security field. The conference typically accepts around 13 percent of submissions.

Aayush Yadav. Photo provided

The paper addresses a growing challenge in blockchain technology—how to protect sensitive transaction information before it becomes public, focusing on improving privacy protections within blockchain systems while maintaining the transparency and decentralized structure that define the technology.

His research grew out of an internship last summer with Category Labs, a company developing blockchain tools and infrastructure. The work addresses a vulnerability tied to how blockchain transactions are processed before they are officially added to the chain. Traditionally, blockchain transactions are publicly visible before they are finalized. That visibility allows entities responsible for processing transactions to potentially manipulate their order for financial gain.

“These entities can act maliciously in some way,” Yadav said. “Because this information is public, these actors know the direction of the order of the transactions before the rest of the public. And they can take advantage of that.” Consider that if an actor sees that someone is about to make a major purchase or sale, they can quickly place their own trade first, causing the market price to change. The original user then receives a worse price than expected, while the actor profits from the price movement, effectively creating a hidden cost for the user.

The team’s research focuses on encrypting transactions while they are waiting to be processed, helping prevent that kind of exploitation. The goal is to encrypt or hide transactions as they are sent, revealing them later.

The paper introduces new approaches to what researchers call “mempool privacy,” referring to the protection of transaction data before it becomes part of the public blockchain ledger. The work also explores “threshold encryption,” which requires multiple parties to work together to decrypt transaction data, helping eliminate single points of trust or failure.

Yadav, who is completing his PhD in computer science this year, said his interest in theoretical computer science and algorithms started early in his academic career. “I enjoyed the process of solving problems that were algorithmic in nature,” he said. “Thinking about these abstract things, but then also being able to solve them concretely using an algorithm, is very satisfying.”

He chose George Mason in part because of the university’s large computer science faculty and breadth of expertise. After arriving at George Mason in 2021, Yadav took his first cryptography course with Foteini Baldimtsi, an experience that shaped the direction of his research. “It had the right mix of theory and practice. The problems are very theoretical in some sense, and the way you solve them is theoretical, but at the same time they are grounded in real applications.”

“I am very proud of Aayush,” said Baldimtsi. “Throughout his PhD, he has worked on some of the most important challenges in modern cryptography, including signature protocols and privacy-preserving authentication for digital identities, while also focusing on post-quantum security. The award is a well-deserved recognition of his talent, dedication, and impact on the field.”

Later this year he will start a tenured-track faculty position at his alma mater, Rutgers University–Camden.

In This Story

Foteini Baldimtsi

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Chaos theory finds its voice

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:42:55 +0000

Chaos theory finds its voice Nathan Kahl Tue, 05/19/2026 - 11:42

Talk may be cheap, but it is still rich with data, and George Mason's Anomadarshi Barua is using artificial intelligence (AI) and a new approach to chaos theory to rebuild missing pieces of speech with incredible accuracy.

"When we talk, our voices have a frequency component from zero kilohertz (kHz) to around 8 kHz," said Barua, an assistant professor in the Department of Cyber Security Engineering. "Capturing all those frequencies normally requires devices to collect and process large amounts of data, which consumes power, storage, and computing resources."

He will present a paper he coauthored on this topic at the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) annual meeting later this summer. ACL is one of the world's leading conferences in natural language processing and speech technologies, and the paper was accepted in the top 15 percent of accepted submissions at a conference with a 19 percent acceptance rate overall.

Smaller devices and sensors operating with limited battery life or bandwidth have difficulty capturing an entire signal, and so record a smaller slice, attempting to reconstruct the missing frequencies later. Barua says this is known as bandwidth extension or bandwidth reconstruction.

Imagine listening to a song through a wall and trying to mentally fill in the muffled higher notes. Barua's research teaches AI systems to do something similar, but with far greater mathematical precision. The team's major breakthrough came from incorporating a concept not often associated with speech: chaos theory.

"Our speech is actually a chaotic signal," Barua said. "'Chaos' does not mean completely random."

Instead, he describes speech as "deterministically random," meaning sounds and phonemes are strongly connected to one another in predictable ways. "You can actually determine what could be the next phoneme if you have the sufficient information from the previous phoneme," he said.

To capture those hidden relationships, the researchers developed what Barua calls a "chaotic discriminator" inside a machine-learning framework known as a generative adversarial network, or GAN. In simple terms, one part of the AI system generates reconstructed speech while another checks whether the recreated speech preserves the natural chaotic patterns found in human voices.

The approach significantly improved reconstruction quality compared to previous methods. "We are getting more improved results compared to the previous baseline," Barua said, "because of the incorporation of the chaotic properties."

By integrating chaos-informed modeling, the team dramatically reduced the size of the AI system needed for reconstruction. "We actually reduce the size of the discriminator by 14 times," Barua said. Smaller models require less memory and computing power, making them more practical for real-world devices.

For Barua, whose earlier work focused primarily on cybersecurity before expanding into speech and natural language processing, the ACL conference's acceptance marks an important milestone. "This is my first paper in natural language processing," he said.

While the current paper focuses on speech, Barua sees much broader possibilities ahead. The same reconstruction techniques could eventually be applied to electrical signals, sonar, lidar, and other sensing technologies. "This concept is not only limited to speech," he said. "We are trying to open up a larger branch in different signal modality."

And that message comes through loud and clear.

In This Story

Anomadarshi Barua

Explore Cybersecurity at George Mason

Powering Artificial Intelligence

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Disrupting disaster response: Systems engineering students get top spot in Patriot Pitch

Nathan Kahl — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:44:16 +0000

Disrupting disaster response: Systems engineering students get top spot in Patriot Pitch Nathan Kahl Thu, 05/07/2026 - 12:44

What began as a routine college course quickly turned into an innovation with real‑world impact for a team of systems engineering students, winning first place in the George Mason Patriot Pitch Social Impact Track along with a People’s Choice Award. The team also captured first place in the U.S. Military Academy System Engineering Design Competition.

“One minute we were playing video games in our dorm room. The next we were in the system engineering capstone class designing ways to deliver humanitarian aid to citizens in distress,” said Tim Shipman, a senior system engineering major. “Systems engineering is mind‑blowing.”

The student team set out to address a growing global challenge. According to team lead Hocine Filali, the demand for humanitarian aid is increasing. “Over the last 10 years, an average of 380 natural disasters per year required humanitarian aid delivery,” he said.

One major bottleneck in disaster response is transporting aid from cargo ships—often anchored up to five miles offshore—to temporary distribution warehouses on land. Traditionally, aid is transferred using helicopters, ferry boats, or trucks traveling across floating causeways.

To evaluate these options, the team developed a stochastic simulation model comparing three delivery methods for transporting 10,000 aid pallets over a 90‑day period. “Ferry boats are the least expensive option, but they’re also very slow,” said team member Alan Garcia. “Floating causeways are costly and take too long to install. Helicopters can deliver aid quickly, but they cost about twice as much as ferries.”

Beyond technical modeling, the students conducted interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, including representatives from nongovernmental organizations, aid workers, and military personnel involved in humanitarian missions.

“The ecosystem is incredibly complex,” said team member Nesma Khalafalla. “Economics, regulations, and politics often create perverse incentives. One thing became clear very quickly: if aid could move from ship to shore as fast as helicopters but at a lower cost, it would fundamentally improve the system.”

Exploring alternatives, the team examined the use of remotely piloted, heavy‑lift electric drones, an emerging technology capable of matching helicopter speeds at significantly lower operating costs. However, the drones presented a critical limitation. “The problem is battery recharge time,” explained team member Amr Hamza. “It slows the entire operation.”

A depiction of the Automated Floating Power Line System. Image provided.

The breakthrough came when the team discovered a catenary power system—an overhead power system similar to those used by city trams. In this approach, drones draw continuous power from an overhead electric line through what’s known as a pantograph, eliminating the need for battery recharging.

Designing that power infrastructure posed the next challenge. “We needed a power line that could stretch five miles from ship-to-shore,” said Shipman. “Our solution was a series of floating utility poles equipped with propellers that allow them to motor into position and hold steady against ocean currents. Detailed simulation models showed the concept is feasible.” The result was the Automated Floating Power Line System (AFPLS), a novel approach to ship‑to‑shore humanitarian aid delivery.

“The comprehensive nature of this design really showcases the power of system engineering,” said Guiping Hu, chair of the Systems Engineering and Operations Research Department. “We are extremely proud of our students and their ability to tackle complex, real‑world problems.”

“I highly recommend this course to any undergraduates who really want to learn how to develop innovative solutions to the world’s toughest problems,” said Filali.

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Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Patriot Pitch Competition

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Two SEOR faculty named Fellows in their fields

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:18:01 +0000

Two SEOR faculty named Fellows in their fields Nathan Kahl Tue, 04/28/2026 - 14:18

In This Story

Janis Terpenny

Two 91�� College of Engineering and Computing faculty were honored with the rank of Fellow in 2025. Janis Terpenny and Chun-Hung Chen were named Fellow in their respective professional societies, a recognition reserved for leaders with significant contributions in their discipline.

Janis Terpenny

Terpenny, professor in the Departments of Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) and Mechanical Engineering, was named a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The distinction honors her as a “pioneer and thought leader in engineering education dedicated to impacts of partnerships and real problems on motivation and learning.” Terpenny’s work influenced new degree programs, innovative courses, revised curricula, and faculty development initiatives across multiple institutions.

Terpenny views engineering education as a holistic ecosystem. “We should approach what we do in preparing the next generation in a very thoughtful way,” she said, emphasizing motivation, retention, and pedagogy. Her decades of involvement with ASEE included leadership roles, more than 40 conference papers, and service as director at large for the manufacturing division.

Chen, a SEOR professor, was named a Fellow of INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics. INFORMS recognized Chen for “fundamental contributions to simulation optimization and stochastic sampling methodology; contributions to O.R. practice in manufacturing, healthcare, air transportation and defense systems; and sustained service to the profession.”

Chun-Hung Chen

Chen is internationally known for advancing simulation-based optimization, rare-event simulation, and efficient sampling techniques, work influencing both theory and real-world decision-making. His research has been applied across industries, from improving manufacturing processes to enhancing aviation safety and supporting complex defense systems. Chen has served on editorial boards for major journals, chaired key professional committees, and mentored generations of graduate students who now work in academia, government, and industry.

Chen is active in both INFORMS and IEEE and was named a Fellow of IEEE in 2015.

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Systems Engineering and Operations Research Faculty

Faculty and Staff News

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George Mason researcher receives NSF CAREER award to study how autonomous systems communicate

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:42:06 +0000

George Mason researcher receives NSF CAREER award to study how autonomous systems communicate Nathan Kahl Tue, 04/28/2026 - 08:42

For Daigo Shishika, robots are not just machines that move…they can also be experts at communication of various types. With a new CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), he is advancing a line of research that asks a deceptively simple question: what if robots could “talk” to each other—and to humans—without ever sending a signal?

Daigo Shishika. Photo provided

Shishika, an assistant professor in 91��'s Department of Mechanical Engineering, will lead a five-year, $549,000 award focused on how autonomous systems can signal intent through motion alone. The idea draws from everyday human experience, Shishika said, giving the example of how drivers read each other’s behavior on the road not just through turn signals, but also through speed, positioning, and subtle cues. Pedestrians do the same when navigating crowded sidewalks. The research aims to give robots that same intuitive layer of interaction.

“There's a lot of information that comes from pure observation of movement. So how can robots take that into account? If I move in this way, how would that be perceived?” he said. Citing the ubiquitous Starship food-delivery robots around campus, he added, “When you walk near one, you kind of have to guess what it's trying to do based on what you see it doing.”

The project builds on years of research at the intersection of robotics, control systems, and game theory. Shishika’s path to this point has been shaped by a longstanding fascination with motion. As an undergraduate at the University of Tokyo, he studied aerospace engineering, initially drawn to flight systems and small aerial vehicles. That interest led to research on bumblebee flight dynamics. Over time, his focus expanded from how individual systems move to how multiple systems interact. His graduate work at the University of Maryland involved drone swarms inspired by insect behavior.

As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, he worked on multi-agent systems in defense-related contexts, where coordination played a critical role. That experience laid the foundation for his current work, examining both cooperative and adversarial interactions among autonomous agents.

Professor Daigo Shishika working with students on blimps in the MARC aviary. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

A central concept in the project is what Shishika described as the spectrum between transparency and deception. In some cases, robots need to clearly signal their intent to build trust and operate safely alongside humans. In others, such as security or defense applications, limiting the information revealed through motion can be just as important.

“If a system moves in a certain way, it may unintentionally reveal what it’s trying to do,” he said. “So the question becomes, how much information are you giving away through your actions, and can you control that?”

The implications span a range of applications. Delivery robots, for example, could plan routes that make their destinations less predictable, improving security for sensitive shipments. In public spaces, robots that better communicate intent through motion could navigate more smoothly around people, reducing confusion and improving safety. On a larger scale, the work could inform how infrastructure and policies are designed.

The project will also integrate theoretical and experimental work through Shishika’s RoboGame Arena, a platform combining mathematical modeling with physical robot experiments. By testing how real systems behave and how humans interpret those behaviors, he aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

The NSF CAREER award is reserved for the nation’s most talented up-and-coming researchers. From the NSF website: “The Faculty Early Career Development Program offers NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.”

For Shishika, the award represents both recognition and opportunity. It is his first project developed as a full lab effort, bringing together students working across theory, machine learning, and hands-on robotics.

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Electrical engineer powers back to the pool after a rocky start

Nathan Kahl — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:49:29 +0000

Electrical engineer powers back to the pool after a rocky start Nathan Kahl Thu, 03/12/2026 - 07:49

When Ryan Serbia arrived at 91��, he had already done something most students never consider, finishing high school at 16. Arriving on campus on a swimming scholarship, the electrical engineering major was ready to get his swimming career started, but two weeks after coming to Fairfax, a scooter had other ideas for him. He hit a patch of gravel, went down, and broke his right arm, requiring surgery. “I tell people to stay away from those things,” he said sardonically.

Ryan Serbia. Photo by Raphael Suanes/George Mason Athletics

His parents had to drive 1,500 miles from his hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma, to sign the paperwork authorizing medical attention, since he was still a minor. For a freshman recruited to swim Division I, it was a tough start. He redshirted the entire season, keeping his scholarship but watching meets from the pool deck. “It was a good experience being there,” he said. “But it stung. I wanted to be competing.”

Swimming has shaped much of his life, though it did not begin in the typical way. He grew up in a military family and switched to online homeschooling in sixth grade after moving from North Carolina to Oklahoma. The online program allowed him to advance quickly and after a placement test, he skipped ahead to eighth grade and then went back to public schools.

He started swimming at 11, later than many elite competitors. At first, he struggled; at his first tryout, coaches told him to come back a week later because he was too slow for the team. By the time he was 14, however, something shifted. At a state meet, he earned a qualifying time for a regional championship by one one hundredth of a second.

“That kind of started my journey,” he said. From there, his times began to drop. He switched club programs after disagreements about training and saw major improvements. By 16, he had earned Futures and Junior National cuts and was competing against swimmers several years older.

Serbia did not let a broken arm hold him back. Photo by Raphael Suanes/George Mason Athletics

He chose George Mason because the East Coast location appealed to him, along with the university’s strong engineering reputation and proximity to Washington, D.C. His father, now a systems engineer with Boeing after 20 years in the Army, encouraged him to look at schools with strong research connections.

He chose electrical engineering as his major, knowing it would be demanding alongside Division I athletics. “It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done besides swimming,” he said. “But when it clicks, it’s really satisfying.”

During the season, his schedule includes early morning weightlifting, afternoon practices, classes, and study sessions. Managing time is the biggest challenge. “You get to the end of the day and it’s six o’clock, and that’s when you can study, but your body’s exhausted,” he said. Even so, he has earned a spot on the Provost’s Student-Athlete List with a GPA above 3.8.

Now healthy and competing, he has balance in his routine. Outside the pool and classroom, he appreciates the university’s walkable campus and the cooler Mid-Atlantic climate compared to Oklahoma’s heat.

Looking ahead, he is considering graduate study, possibly in quantum information or another research-intensive field. For now, he is focused on continuing to improve in the 200 breaststroke and building the foundation for both an engineering career and the next stage of competition.

For students considering the same path, his advice is simple: “Be ready to manage your time.”

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The cherry blossoms will bloom on…

Tama Moni — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 17:48:50 +0000

The cherry blossoms will bloom on… Tama Moni Fri, 03/06/2026 - 12:48

In This Story

Jonathan L. Auerbach

David Kepplinger

Now in its fifth year, 91��’s Cherry Blossom Prediction contest again received entries from around the world, with teams attempting to predict peak bloom in five different locations. But what local folks want to know is: how will all that “snowcrete” and our wacky winter impact the trees at the Tidal Basin and around Washington, D.C.?

The cherry blossoms by Mason Pond on the Fairfax Campus. Photo by Office of University Branding

“Typically, trees need a certain amount of cold weather and then a certain amount of warm weather to bloom,” said Jonathan Auerbach, an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and the competition co-organizer. “If they don't get enough of either, then the bloom is delayed. For this reason, many contestants are predicting a late bloom this year.”

In fact, the average contestant is predicting a peak bloom in the D.C. area on April 2, about a week later than in recent years.

“One challenge many contestants chose to tackle this year was the effect of prolonged snow ground cover,” said David Kepplinger, also an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and a competition co-organizer. He noted that some of the entries use snow coverage in their models.

A key challenge is while cherry trees tend to bloom earlier as the climate warms, complex weather patterns make annual predictions extremely difficult. “It wasn’t a record amount of snow or a record amount of cold, but it was a unique combination of the two,” Kepplinger said.

The contest received more than 30 entries, which is typical.

Last year, artificial intelligence (AI) made its appearance as a new tool for predictions. Auerbach said many contestants actually did better than AI. “This year we did the opposite of AI. We held a hackathon in person and got the students to network and meet,” he said, referring to an event on February 21 at Georgetown University.

The contest asks contestants to submit predictions for trees in Washington, D.C., New York City, Kyoto, Liestal-Weideli in Switzerland, and Vancouver, B.C. Entries must include a compelling narrative and reproducible analysis with any data and code they used.

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cherry blossoms

Department of Statistics

Research

Protecting production through physics-powered detection

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:25:04 +0000

Protecting production through physics-powered detection Nathan Kahl Tue, 02/24/2026 - 08:25

In This Story

Matthew Jablonski

When a manufacturing machine is cutting, drilling, or shaping metal, it is following a precise set of digital instructions, with every motor turn intentional. But what happens when there’s a subtle change along the way?

That is the problem Matt Jablonski is working to solve. Jablonski, an assistant professor in the 91��'s Department of Cyber Security Engineering, received $50k from Virginia’s Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) through its Industry Faculty Collaboration Acceleration Program. He is teaming up with Northern Virginia-based startup SARC Solutions, which is developing a product called Beholder based on technology licensed from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The project focuses on protecting cyber physical systems, complex machines that blend software, electronics, and physical components. These systems power everything from manufacturing equipment to critical infrastructure. Securing them is challenging because traditional cybersecurity tools can interfere with real-time operations.

Beholder is the product that Jablonski is working on with SARC. Image provide.

“If you add too much security overhead to a control system, you risk disrupting the very thing you are trying to protect,” said Jablonski, who has a master's and a PhD degrees from George Mason.

Instead of monitoring a machine directly with heavy security software, Jablonski is taking a lighter approach, collecting indirect measurements, including electrical power traces from motor drives and select operating system statistics, to observe how a machine behaves during operation. These indirect signals, often called side channels, can reveal patterns about what the system is doing without interfering with it.

The concept builds on Jablonski’s previous research in cyber physical system safety and security. It also connects directly to a course he teaches on practical side-channel attacks and defenses. Historically, side-channel analysis has been used by attackers to extract secrets by studying metadata such as timing, temperature, or power usage. Jablonski is applying those same ideas defensively.

In this project, the focus is a large manufacturing machine that follows digital instructions known as G-code. A 3D computer-aided design is translated into G-code, which tells the machine exactly how to move and cut. The team’s goal is to align those instructions with the physical signals coming from the machine’s motors and systems.

By mapping the expected digital commands to the observed physical behavior, the team is developing artificial intelligence models that learn what “normal” looks like and can flag when the system drifts from that state. Rather than generic anomaly detection, the models aim to identify subtle signs that the machine is not operating as intended.

“We are looking for indications that the system is not performing in a normative sense,” Jablonski said.

The grant will help support doctoral student Sanjay Kumar Samala, who begins his PhD in the fall. Together, they are building out the testbed and developing early models, with a demonstration targeted for this summer.

The partnership with SARC reflects the broader CCI mission of accelerating collaboration between academia and industry. By pairing faculty expertise with emerging companies, the program aims to move ideas more quickly from lab to application.

“This award is exactly what Virginia does well: pair applied academic expertise with a startup that can transition research into a deployable capability,” said Joseph Carter, strategy, execution and adaptation at SARC Solutions. “Our goal with George Mason is to turn Beholder into a pilot-ready, ‘signals-to-decisions’ monitoring layer that helps manufacturers detect subtle manipulation before it impacts quality, safety, or uptime.”

For Jablonski, whose interest in security deepened during his freshman year of college in the wake of 9/11, the project fits squarely within a decade of work focused on making cyber physical systems safer. “We live in interesting times,” he said. “As systems become more connected and more intelligent, safety has to remain a priority.”

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Alumni

Building a career that holds water

Nathan Kahl — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:26:51 +0000

Building a career that holds water Nathan Kahl Thu, 02/12/2026 - 10:26

“Some passions are genetic,” said Michael Smedley, a senior civil and infrastructure engineering student in the College of Engineering and Computing at 91��. “My mom was a proud water engineer at Fairfax Water. After she arranged for a cub scout troop tour of the Griffith water treatment facility on the Occoquan, water processes were my passion.”

Smedley is in the Bachelor's to Accelerated Master's (BAM) program, concentrating on environmental and water resources engineering. His particular interest is in water treatment.

While Smedley’s three older siblings chose other Virginia universities, the Burke native appreciated how close George Mason was to his home, and the campus tour impressed him.

“In high school I got really good at calculus and AP environmental science and my mom said, ‘Oh, well, you know what that means. You can try civil engineering,’” he said with a smile. “I don't regret it.”

Smedley loves every opportunity he has to get out in the field. Photo provided.

He cites BAM’s benefits. He was working on a minor in environmental engineering and his advisor, Lisa Nolder, currently director for student affairs and academic excellence in the Department of Cyber Security Engineering, explained that he could forgo the minor and spend that time working toward his master’s. “Lisa really helped me get set up with that and understand what it was.”

While at George Mason he first had an internship at Fairfax Water, where he worked in the planning department, running simulations on water pressure at fire hydrants, called fire flows, and enjoying the opportunity to take field trips to the water treatment facility. He then had an internship with CDM Smith, an engineering, design, and construction firm.

“I’ve been there for two years and I'm going back this summer. I really like the nitty gritty calculations, and you get to go see the work up close. And that's really, like, magical for me,” he said.

At Fairfax Water, he helps with design calculations, which is what he wants to focus on professionally. “It’s doing calculations on flows and making a rough sketch of what a device or system then should look like, based on flow simulations.”

Smedley said last summer he learned from his experience at a water treatment plant in Fredericksburg, a facility in the process of doubling in size. He was stationed out of the facility for two weeks, where he had free rein to look at different treatment processes and collect data. “I saw every stage of that water treatment plant.”

Where some people don’t think twice about some rainfall or the course of a flow, Smedley loves it. “I would watch the stream outside my bedroom window during high precipitation events. The flow of water has always fascinated me.”

He’s graduating with his bachelor's this semester and plans to complete his master’s in December 2026. “I have learned so much about how we try to control the uncontrollable. I learned how the private and public sectors differ, and I hope to incorporate this into how I contribute to the water industry,” said Smedley. “Water is a topic that is discussed more frequently in this ever-changing environment. I hope to bring a little piece of stability and consistency to a world that thirsts for more.”