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2025 GW OVPR Faculty Award Recipients
2025 Recipients
Distinguished Career Awards
James E. Foster
Professor within the Elliott School and Economics
James Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr, Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics. He has served as the Vice Dean of the Elliott School and as Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy. His research lies within the area of welfare economics, which uses economics to understand and improve the wellbeing of people. His work has led to a wide variety of practical metrics used by countries and international organizations to guide policies that enhance people’s lives. He has held permanent or visiting positions at Purdue, Vanderbilt, Cornell, Harvard, and Oxford and received a “Doctor Honoris Causa” from Mexico’s Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Hidalgo in 2007.
Valentina Harizanov
Professor of Mathematics
Dr. Valentina Harizanov is Professor of Mathematics who specializes in mathematical logic with a focus on pure and applied computability theory. She is internationally known for her contributions to computable structure theory. She has about 90 research papers in leading peer- reviewed journals and volumes. Harizanov has received research grants from the NSF and the Simons Foundation, and was awarded Eisenbud Professorship by the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute in Berkeley. She co-authored comprehensive collaborative volumes Handbook of Recursive Mathematics by Elsevier and Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice by Springer. She has given over 180 invited talks at conferences and universities throughout the United States and Europe, and in Canada, Israel, Russia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Harizanov received the Trachtenberg Prize for Faculty Research and the George Washington Award for excellence in student life. She was a co-director of the Center for Quantum Computing, Information, Logic and Topology. She graduated fifteen PhD students and is currently advising four more.
Early Career Award
Axel Schmidt
Assistant Professor of Physics
Axel Schmidt is an Assistant Professor in Department of Physics. As an experimental nuclear physicist, Schmidt conducts research using particle accelerators to learn about the forces that hold protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei. He is a member of the GlueX, CLAS, and Positron Working Group collaborations at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, as well as a member of the EPIC collaboration to develop the primary experiment at the future Electron Ion Collider. This research is supported by grants from US Department of Energy's Office of Science. Schmidt has been on the faculty at GW since 2020, and in 2024 received a CCAS Columbian Prize for teaching and mentoring advanced undergraduate students.
Xitong Liu
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Xitong Liu is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the George Washington University. He obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Nanjing University. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University and received postdoctoral training at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a recipient of the DOE Geothermal Lithium Extraction Prize Award, the Inaugural ACS ES&T Engineering Best Paper Award, ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator Award, and the C. Ellen Gonter Environmental Chemistry Award. His research has been published in journals including Environmental Science & Technology, Nature Communications, and Journal of Membrane Science. His research has been supported by NSF, SERDP, USDA, and ACS. His research group studies environmentally relevant interfacial phenomena and aims to develop durable, selective, and cost-effective separation technologies for water purification and recovery of critical materials. His current research interests include 1) elucidating fouling and scaling phenomena for water desalination membranes; 2) applying colloidal amendments for groundwater remediation; and 3) developing selective separation technologies for direct lithium extraction from water streams.
Research Mentorship Award
Danmeng Shuai
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Danmeng Shuai is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The George Washington University (GW). He received his B.Eng. (2005) and M.Eng. (2007) from Tsinghua University, China, and earned his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. Dr. Shuai’s research focuses on the interactions between nanomaterials and microbes, leveraging these interactions for innovative engineering applications in environmental pollution control, food safety and quality, and infectious disease prevention. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and he has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles. He currently serves as an Executive Editor for the Journal of Hazardous Materials. Dr. Shuai’s contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including the GW SEAS Outstanding Junior Researcher Award, the CAPEES/Nanova Young Investigator Award, the CAPEES/UCEEF Frontier Research Award, and selection for the AAEES 40 Under 40 program. His former advisees have pursued successful careers as professors, researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders.
Adam J. Aviv
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Adam J. Aviv is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the George Washington University and is the director of the GW-Usable Security (GWUSEC) Lab. His primary academic interests lie at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer security and privacy, and he has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers and advised over 40 undergraduate and graduate students in research. Before GW, he was an assistant professor at the United States Naval Academy and a visiting assistant professor at Swarthmore College. Dr. Aviv received his B.S.E from Columbia University in the City of New York and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.