Research Highlights

Dancers’ medical needs, as athletes, have long been underserved. Jatin Ambegaonkar, an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development, has made it his goal to change that. Read more...

How do you know a community values your involvement? It steps up financially to keep your program running. That is what happened in Prince William County, Virginia, which this academic year budgeted $180,000 to continue a George Mason University program that provides athletic trainers to nine of the county’s 16 public middle schools with athletic programs. Read more...

Patricia Kelshaw has been immersed in George Mason University’s Athletic Training Education Program for as long as she has been at the university. Kelshaw’s research endeavors to establish more specific baseline measures for children participating in sports to better manage concussions. Those measures could also enhance the Child Support Concussion Assessment Tool, a standardized evaluation instrument that helps assess whether concussions have occurred and informs care throughout recovery. Read more...

The Mason Arts Research Center does not have a physical structure at George Mason University. But its co-directors want to make it a highly visible hub of research into how arts participation affects child development. It will do so with a two-year, $150,000 renewable grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the vision of co-directors Thalia Goldstein, assistant professor of applied developmental psychology; Adam Winsler, professor of applied developmental psychology; and Kim Sheridan, associate professor of educational psychology. Read more...

As the scope of potential short- and long-term damage from brain injuries in football becomes clearer every day, the mad scramble is on to try to address the crisis, which threatens the very existence of the sport. And while the leading chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, research at Boston University has made the most headlines, two scientists at George Mason University have been working on a potentially groundbreaking diagnostic tool that could change the way we test for and treat brain injury across the sports world and beyond. Read more...

George Mason is one of the highest-ranked research institutions in the country, according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Mason, the largest public research university in Virginia, has joined a group of 115 universities that perform research at the highest level. Below the “R1” rankings are universities that perform “higher research activity,” or “R2,” and then universities that perform “moderate research activity,” or “R3.” Read more...

University researchers are tackling tough problems. Three of Mason’s standout researchers, Nelson Cortes, Wilsaan Joiner, and Danielle Rudes, have earned the university’s 2015-16 Emerging Researcher/Scholar/Creator awards. Read more...