GW Researchers Pack the Smith Center for InnovationFest

May 8, 2026

Authored by:

Ruth Steinhardt

Usually, athletes hold the floor at the George Washington University's Charles E. Smith Center. But last week, the space was packed with a different group of superstars: scholars and inventors from all 10 schools, who showed off their research projects at InnovationFest. Researchers presented unique work, demonstrated scientific equipment, discussed their publications and more.

InnovationFest marked a season of end-of-year research and capstone showcases at GW, including the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences' (CCAS) Research Showcase, the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design's NEXT Festival, the Milken Institute School of Public Health's Research Day, the School of Engineering and Applied Science's R&D Showcase and others.

Seniors Logan Dempsey and Nick Rothwein gave participants an up-close-and-personal view of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a microscopic roundworm. In their undergraduate-led biophysics laboratory, a collaboration between the departments of biology and anthropology at CCAS, they're doing interdisciplinary research on C. elegans' learned response to thermal stimulation-work that could have a bearing on human issues like discomfort tolerance and chronic pain.

On a laptop attached to a powerful microscope, Rothwein scanned a plate until he located "The Big One"-a fully grown C. elegans that registers as a screen-spanning, serpentine tangle on the display, but in fact is only about a millimeter long. Participants could use the arrow keys to deliver a localized change in temperature and observe the worm's movement in response. (The process does not cause pain to the worms, Dempsey and Rothwein said-their response to stimulation with the thermal laser is analogous to a human pain response, not the same thing.)

Rothwein and Dempsey were two of more than 200 presenters giving onlookers a window into their research worlds. Not all these demonstrations depended on cutting edge technology, though many incorporated it, like the emotion-sensing robot dog Arty and conversational robot Pepper, who attracted a crowd throughout the event. Across the floor from Dempsey and Rothwein, art therapy master's students Rebecca Steynberg and Fiorella Boschetti Tamayo invited visitors to sit down with tech even children know how to use: markers and a handmade coloring zine, which guided readers through three artmaking activities and reflections. As a means for engaging with art, these low-tech tools could be key to fighting the very adult scourge of stress, as research from the World Health Organization has found.

"The process of artmaking is for everyone, and just engaging in art in general has a massive effect on your nervous system and your brain," Steynberg said. "When you specifically design [artmaking activities] to focus on managing stress, that can have major therapeutic impacts as well."

AI in the real world

On the higher tech end of the spectrum, InnovationFest spotlighted GW's growing strengths in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The showcase's main stage hosted first a panel on developing trustworthy AI with experts from engineering, business, computer science and the humanities, and then another, in partnership with biopharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, on how AI can accelerate life sciences research.

School of Medicine and Health Sciences Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine Raja Mazumder moderated the conversation with two AstraZeneca scientists: Gayathri Mohankumar, director and head of multi-modal & multi-omic foundation models, and Kamen Bliznashki, senior director of data science and AI at Evinova.

Panelists discussed how AI models and machine learning may be able to safely close the gap between drug discovery-the identification of a promising drug combination or pathway-and clinical trials in patients.

The first challenge of implementing such tools may be filtering out the "noise," Mohankumar said. In a technological and news ecosystem that can be overwhelming, even AI professionals can have trouble keeping up with the rapid proliferation of tools and use cases-so it's important to stay adaptable, flexible and curious. "Being more hands-on, actually trying out the technology rather than just following what is trending, I think is quite an important skill."

Calling back to the earlier panel, Mohankumar said trustworthiness is a key benchmark for AI tools-one that should be built into the models themselves, for example by requiring all conclusions to be accompanied by a confidence score and an exact accounting of how those results were reached. This transparency also allows users to learn from and correct flawed reasoning on the models' part, since human oversight is still required to monitor and validate their findings.

As a developer, Bliznashki said he often aims to automate time-consuming, low-level tasks so scientists can focus on solving difficult and complex problems. However, he'll often receive feedback suggesting that users want more help with those harder tasks-after all, they can handle the easy ones. Indeed, Bliznashki pointed out, psychological research suggests that certain simple tasks "let your brain rest" and enable deeper and more meaningful focus: "You kind of need easy tasks in your day, so you don't want to automate all of those."

Unfortunately, too much "cognitive offloading" can limit people's ability to think critically and creatively, Bliznashki said.

"When we're building applications now, people will come to me and say, 'Here's the answer, here's what Claude thinks,'" he said. "And it's like, 'What do you think? And why do you think that?'"

On the InnovationFest floor, one presentation table showcased art therapy students who help people with profound disabilities use generative AI tools to create images that are meaningful to them. At another, visitors could try the multimodal, multilingual platform Teach Anything, through which professors can build permanently free, open-source, open-access AI applications. And at another, researchers and simulation educators from the School of Nursing demonstrated how AI chatbot simulations can provide a consistent and psychologically safe space for nursing students to develop communication skills with patients, especially those facing the end of their lives.

Some presenters also focused on the social science issues surrounding widespread AI adoption and human readiness. Shaista Khilji, a professor of human and organizational learning in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, presented research on how people respond to AI initiatives within organizations. Her team found that implementation of the technology can snag when enthusiastic rhetoric from the top-where attitudes toward AI tend to be more favorable-fails to address the concerns of rank-and-file workers, who tend to be more hesitant. Often, members of these two camps "are not really talking to each other," Khilji found.

"Our recommendation for business leaders and tech leaders is, first of all, be transparent and to explain to your people and the public the real benefits," Khilji said. "We need to have these open debates and dialogues, but right now people are very much in their own silos."

Recognizing distinguished graduate work

The final mainstage panel was "Publishing for Impact: Authors' Stories from Concept to Conversation," at which GW faculty members from across the disciplines laid out the paths they took to publish books on subjects ranging from the Tuskegee Airmen to children's music in the Civil Rights Movement, from Bronze Age correspondence on clay tablets to the policing in the age of data surveillance. Afterwards, the InnovationFest stage showcased a similar range of subjects-at an earlier career stage-as it hosted GW's inaugural Outstanding Dissertation and Inventor Awards, established this year to celebrate exceptional work by GW's graduate students.

"Today, we recognize exceptional doctoral scholarship-work that reflects originality, rigor, persistence and the ability to advance knowledge in meaningful ways," Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Suresh Subramaniam said. "A dissertation is one of the most demanding intellectual projects in academic life, and our awardees have completed work that brings distinction to their programs, schools, and the university."

The honorees, who are either doctoral students graduating this spring or doctoral graduates from the summer or fall of 2025, represent "some of the most exciting research taking place at GW right now," Assistant Director of the Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Affairs Autumn Anthony said.

Winners were recognized in three categories, as follows:

Humanities and Social Sciences

• First place: Stephen C. Rangazas, Ph.D. '25, Political Science, CCAS
  "Breaking Insurgent Economies: State Indiscriminate Violence during Civil War"
• Second place: Jingwen Zheng, Public Policy and Public Administration, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration
  "Essays in Urban and Real Estate Economics"

Biological and Health Sciences

• First place: Xin (Tracy) Li, Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Milken Institute SPH
  "Dietary quality, metabolomics, and changes in physical function and frailty in older adults"
• Second place: Yashan Wang, Ph.D. '25, Environmental Health, Milken Institute SPH
  "Agriculture-driven Human Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance: A One Health Analysis of Bacterial and Fungal Threats"

Physical and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering

• First place: Xiaochen Jin, Ph.D. '25, Civil and Environmental Engineering, GW Engineering
  "Short-range Order in Group IV Alloys"
• Second place: Huizheng (Ali) Guo, Mathematics, CCAS
  "From Branched Covers to 4-Manifolds: Alexander Modules, Skein Modules and Mapping Class Groups"
  

Left to right: Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs Suresh Subramaniam with Outstanding Dissertation Award winners Huizheng (Ali) Guo, Stephen C. Rangazas, Jingwen Zheng, Xin (Tracy) Li and Yashan Wang. (GW Today/Florence Shen)

Sumner Gubisch, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical and aerospace engineering, received the Student Inventor of the Year award for his creation, a 3D-printed heat exchanger that simultaneously produces electric current. Heat exchangers are a component of many technical systems, from a building's HVAC system to a car's radiator.

"This award provides a tangible symbol of GW's commitment to translating research outputs into useful products that impact lives and to training the next generation of innovative researchers," said Brian Coblitz, executive director of GW's Technology Commercialization Office.

"If we can get any additional power out of the heat exchange, we can make the whole system more efficient," Gubisch explained in prerecorded remarks. "It's a clean source of energy that we get from everything we have around us."