2026 GW OVPR Faculty Award Recipients

2026 Recipients

Distinguished Career Awards

Michael Barnett
Professor of International Affairs and Political Science  

Michael Barnett is University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science.  He has published extensively in the areas of international relations, global governance, humanitarianism, and the Middle East.  Among his many books that he authored or edited are Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda; Security Communities (edited with Emanuel Adler); Rules for the World (co-authored with Martha Finnemore); Power and Global Governance (co-edited with Raymond Duvall); The Star and the Stripes: The Foreign Policies of American Jews; Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism; The One State Reality: What is Israel/Palestine? (co-edited with Shibley Telhami, Marc Lynch, and Nathan Brown, and the forthcoming The End of Humanity: Humanitarianism in a Post-Liberal Age (co-authored with Unni Karunakara), and Oxford Handbook of International Institutions (co-edited with Duncan Snidal).  He has published in many top-tiered journals, including World Politics, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Foreign Affairs, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, and the Chinese Journal of International Relations.  In addition to writing about humanitarianism, he has been an active contributor to various debates within the sector.  

Elias Balaras
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering 

Elias Balaras is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering and serves as the director for graduate studies. Dr Balaras's research
program aims at the development of robust simulation tools for large-scale
computations of multiphysics problems in physical and biological systems. Current
research projects cover a wide area of applications from i) medicine, where magnetic
resonance imaging data guide high-fidelity computations of the blood flow in the heart of
patients with congenital heart disease to optimize surgical treatment; ii) applied
industrial processes, where multiscale high-fidelity simulations of liquid metal casting
are used to inform low fidelity modeling tools utilized routinely by the industry; iii) to
space applications, where boiling in micro-gravity environments is simulated to optimize
cooling of various space components. Dr. Balaras is also teaching a series of graduate
classes related to the science of simulation and advises a group of graduate students in
his lab as they tackle these challenging multidisciplinary problems. His main goal as an
advisor/educator is to enable graduate students to grow into well rounded computational
scientists ready to transition into leadership roles in the field.

Early Career Award

Alicia Solow-Niederman
Associate Professor of Law

Daisy Le
Associate Professor of Health Disparities and Oncology

Daisy Le, PhD, MPH, MA is a tenured Associate Professor of Health Disparities and Oncology in the School of Nursing at the George Washington University, with affiliated appointments in the Milken Institute School of Public Health, the GW Cancer Center, the DC Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR), and the Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. She is a sociobehavioral scientist whose research advances population health, communication, and equity-centered interventions. Dr. Le’s scholarship focuses on community-engaged cancer prevention and health disparities, emphasizing sociocultural determinants of health and culturally responsive strategies to improve access to cancer screening and preventive services among populations that have been historically and systematically excluded from care and continue to face structural barriers to participation, including individuals living with HIV. Her work integrates mobile health technologies and participatory methods to advance prevention across the cancer continuum. Her research is supported by national funding agencies and has produced numerous peer-reviewed publications on health disparities and community health equity. She serves as Principal Investigator of the MySHARE (My Self-sampling for HPV Awareness, Results, and Empowerment) study, which evaluates HPV self-sampling strategies to increase cervical cancer screening uptake among never- and under-screened women. Dr. Le earned her PhD from the University of Maryland and completed postdoctoral training in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also holds a dual MPH/MA degree and earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Research Mentorship Award

Cynthia Dowd
Professor of Chemistry

Dr. Cynthia Dowd is a Professor of Chemistry at GWU. She obtained a BA in Chemistry from the University of Virginia and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University. Following a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Dowd was an intramural scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she led a small molecule chemistry group to discover novel agents against tuberculosis. In 2007, she began her independent career in the Department of Chemistry at GWU where her research is focused on the design and synthesis of novel antiinfective therapies, directed primarily against tuberculosis, malaria and the ESKAPE pathogens. She is the co-author of many peer-reviewed papers and patents, and has earned significant external funding. She is the recipient of a Morton Bender Teaching Award, a CCAS Dean’s Research Excellence Award for Mentoring (DREAM), and election to the GWU chapter of the National Academy of Inventors. As her work is highly interdisciplinary, Prof. Dowd values her many longstanding collaborations and dozens of students trained in her lab.