GIA Scholars

Congratulations to Mason's Graduate Inclusion and Access (GIA) Scholars!

Javonna Friend is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at GMU. Javonna earned her B.A. in English from Virginia State University and her M.A. in English from George Mason University with a specialization in British Literature from Oxford University. During her graduate studies, she became interested in the representation of race and illnesses in prose and media. Through deep examination, she recognized how public health advocacy can sometimes lack proper communication and conform to hegemonic ideals. To that end, Javonna realized her desire to evaluate critical issues in health communication. Thus, her research interests are mainly in exploring and developing the connections between health communication, social justice, and advocacy that will illuminate the relationship between social conditions and health outcomes and provide the necessary insights to reduce the prevalence of chronic illnesses in marginalized communities. She is also interested in developing, implementing, and evaluating health communication strategies to change attitudes, actions, and approaches to mental health in African American communities.

Jade Jehad Halawani is a doctoral candidate at the College of Education, George Mason University. Her research focuses on teacher qualification and professional development in the Global South. Drawing on her international experiences in Palestine and the United States, Jade critically examines the intersections of education policy, teacher development, and socio-political contexts, particularly in under-resourced regions. Jade has extensive experience in learning technologies design research and evaluation, with a particular emphasis on STEM teaching and learning programs, as well as professional development for STEM educators. Her work bridges global education frameworks with localized practices, advocating for culturally responsive education systems and innovative professional development models to enhance teaching efficacy in diverse, international contexts.

Rafael is a Ph.D. student in the clinical psychology program at Mason. He earned a dual B.S. (2019) from Virginia Commonwealth University in psychology with a concentration in addiction studies, and philosophy with a concentration in philosophy and science. Previous to Mason, he worked as a research assistant in projects focused on culturally enhancing substance use interventions for Latinx adolescents and young adults. He is interested in Latinx community-oriented research, and the impact of sociocultural-spiritual factors in the development or buffering of psychopathology. He is also interested in culturally enhancing construct measurement, assessment, and interventions. He enjoys hiking, biking, and spending time with family.

Timmia King is a fourth-year doctoral student in the History and Art History program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University. She is also a Graduate Research Assistant at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and is working on the History and Culture Access Consortium (HCAC) project. Timmia earned a dual Master of Arts in African American and African Diaspora Studies and the Master of Library Science at Indiana University Bloomington in 2021 and her Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies at Howard University in 2014. She is passionate about advocating for Black people’s representation and participation in all aspects of the archival process. Timmia’s research interests focus on Community Archiving, Personal Archiving, and Personal Digital Archiving in Black communities. Her work focuses on examining Black Archival Theory and practice.

Gifty Mensah is a first-generation college student that was part of the first GIA cohort at Mason. She earned her doctoral degree in Cell/Cellular and Molecular Biology from George Mason University in 2022. Gifty also earned her master’s degree in Biology with a concentration in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases at Mason. Prior to her admission into the PhD program, she interned at Inova Fairfax Hospital and worked at Quest Diagnostics where she got her first exposure to clinical laboratory functions and developed a keen interest in the field. Gifty was a doctoral student in the Biosciences program and a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the undergraduate Microbiology department. She worked in the molecular virology lab of Dr. F. Kashanchi. Her research focus was on the role extracellular vesicles play in viral infections such as HIV-11,2,4 and HTLV-13,5. Her research aim was to discover more effective therapeutics that can mitigate the devastating effects of these viral infections.  During her time in the Biosciences program, she participated in the publication of five peer-reviewed scientific articles, two of them co-first authored. She presented her research at local and educational meetings including Mason’s School of Systems Biology Research Day and Graduate Interdisciplinary conferences; as well as national conferences such as the Extracellular Vesicles and Infections conference and the American Society for Exosomes and Microvesicles annual meeting. She is currently focusing on understanding the role of exosomes and how they affect diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s in relation to infections.

João Pereira is a second-year Physics Ph.D. student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Science at GMU. He holds dual Bachelor's of Science degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Maryland. Originally from Portugal, João moved to the U.S. with his family when he was eight and has lived in Maryland since then. His current research centers on predicting strong solar flare events using parameter- and image-based machine-learning techniques. Through this work, he aims to enhance our ability to anticipate different solar activities and understand their driving mechanisms. João has presented his research at the Solar Heliospheric and INterplanetary Environment (SHINE 2024) Workshop, and will present at the upcoming American Geophysical Union (AGU24) conference. You can often find him at various science outreach events, enthusiastically explaining some fun space weather concepts to anyone he meets. He hopes to make lasting contributions to the space weather and solar physics communities, while also inspiring future generations of scientists.

Sky is a third year doctoral student in the Mathematics PhD program at George Mason University. They recently completed their master's degree in Mathematics while on said PhD track. While they've been a resident of Fairfax for a few years now, they originally come from a small town in upstate New York deep in the Adirondacks. It was there that they received their BS at St. Lawrence University with a focus on mathematics and chemistry. They were also initially introduced to fellow first generation students during their undergraduate degree via the McNair program and are happy to find similar representation within the GIA Scholars cohort. They identify as nonbinary and enjoy creating digital art and partaking in TTRPGs within their fellow LGBTQIA+ community on their off time.

May is a third-year PhD student and a film scholar. Her work focuses on using cinema as a cultural studies tool for colonized film economies in the Caribbean with a focus on Puerto Rico. She possesses a BFA, producing Little Girls (2013) as her undergraduate thesis film as part of a study of teen films and the effect they have on female teen societies. She also possesses an MFA where she created Nightgaze (2017), a “visual album” based on music video theory to depict a young woman’s visceral experience with depression. Her work has screened across the country, including the Brooklyn Women’s Film Festival, Tampa Bay Comic Con, Florida’s Undergraduate Research Conference, Orlando Film Festival, and more. May currently runs a foreign-horror-based podcast she hosts and writes, Horrorspiria. She also has co-edited an anthology that analyzes Amazon and its influence on culture and society titled Amazon: At the Intersection of Culture and Capital, out in December 2022 with Rowman & Littlefield.