2016 GW OVPR Faculty Award Recipients

Presented on April 20, 2016 by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research

Distinguished Researcher Award

Akos Vertes
Professor and Deputy Chair of Chemistry,
Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Professor Vertes is a highly accomplished researcher and leader in the field of bioanalytical chemistry, pioneering the use of Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization (MALDI) and Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry to measure important biomolecules within single cells. Professor Vertes has 15 issued patents and 8 pending patent applications demonstrating his ability to translate the basic research in his laboratory into useful laboratory instrumentation such as the REDICHIP which can be used to identify ultratrace amounts of chemicals in tissue or biofluids. Marking the significance of his innovations, Dr. Vertes was inducted as Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2013. A number of his 147 peer-reviewed papers have been highlighted by journals and magazines, with articles from Physical Review Letters and Applied Physics Letters featured as frontier research. More than 10 of his papers have been featured on the cover of high impact journals and with over 4400 citations by other researchers of his papers, it’s not surprising that his research has been featured by the public and scientific media on numerous occasions and recognized by several awards.

Distinguished Scholar Award

Amitai Etzioni
University Professor and Professor of International Affairs
After receiving his PhD in Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley in 1958, Amitai Etzioni served for two decades as Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. In 1980 he was named the first University Professor at the George Washington University, a position he continues to hold today. Professor Etzioni is the founding Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at the George Washington University. The Institute, the nation’s leading center for communitarian policy research, is dedicated to finding constructive solutions to social problems through socially informed policy analysis. Professor Etzioni is the prolific author of hundreds of scholarly journal articles and more than thirty scholarly books.

Early Career Researcher Awards

Maria Pia Gualdani
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Professor Gualdani’s research focuses on the study of partial differential equations of mean field games, kinetic theory, and free boundary problems of elliptic and parabolic types. These equations arise from physical, social, and life sciences. All are at the frontier of modern mathematical research, and all are under intense development. Professor Gualdani’s research has been continuously funded by three NSF research grants and one NSF educational grant. She recently received the prestigious NSF CAREER award. She was also the recipient of the CCAS Dean Research Chair fellowship.

Oleg Kargaltsev
Assistant Professor of Physics
Oleg Kargaltsev’s area of expertise is in high-energy astrophysics of compact objects (neutron stars, pulsars and their winds, magnetars, galactic very high energy sources, pulsar-wind nebulae, gamma-ray binaries, microquasars, and SNRs). Professor Kargaltsev has 147 publications of which 62 are in refereed journals, cited 1158 times. During the last 6 years, he has secured NASA and NSF funding of $1.5 million via a number of observational and archival data investigations using the Chandra X-ray Observatory (10 programs), the XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory (3 programs), the Hubble Space Telescope (3 programs) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (1 program). The discoveries resulting from these programs are breakthroughs in the fields of pulsars and pulsar winds that have led to significant advancement in our understanding of neutron stars. Professor Kargaltsev is a member (or associate member) of several international scientific collaborations (e.g., the Athena X-ray Observatory Science Working Group, the PRAXyS mission and the OCTOCAM instrument Teams, the VERITAS collaboration) and frequent invited speaker at the prominent astronomical meetings, seminars, and university colloquia.

Early Career Scholar Award

Charalampos (Harris) Mylonas
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Professor Mylonas' research examines nation- and state-building in a variety of countries using multiple research methods. He employs quantitative and qualitative methods (in-depth interviews and intensive archival research) to answer important questions about the processes of nation-building, immigrant and refugee incorporation policies and the politicization of cultural differences in the Balkans but also in Ethiopia, South Korea, Israel and China. His first book, The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities, was published in 2012 in the top university press in his field (Cambridge University Press). The book won numerous awards and is widely recognized as a groundbreaking conceptual work that also makes important empirical and methodological contributions. He has been elected as Vice President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, and associate editor of its flagship journal. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in top journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Security Studies, and Perspectives on Politics. His research is also highly salient for policy makers, and he is a frequent producer of op-eds and policy memos on issues such as the political fallout of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, ethnic cleansing, the Arab spring, migration policy, and European politics.