Category: Research Assistant Opportunity

Professor: Hayk Barseghyan

Department: Genomics and Precision Medicine

Title: Identification of mutations responsible for genetic disease

Description: The laboratory is interested in utilization of cutting-edge
genomic technologies/bioinformatics tools in order to identify the underly
genetic cause in a given disorder. These technologies include optical genome
mapping, long/short-read sequencing with utilization of specialized DNA
handling for epigenetic analysis.

Duties: The assistants will be trained in wet lab protocols and expected to
come to the lab at least 2 times a week.
The following are some of the responsibilities:
DNA extraction – regular and high molecular weight
Gel electrophoresis – regular and pulse field
Specific protocols for DNA labeling, genome assembly and variant calling

Time commitment: 7-9 hours per week (average)

Credit hour option*: 3

Number of openings: 4

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: hbarseghyann@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: David Mitchell

Department: English

Title: Disposable Humanity (feature-length documentary film)

Description: “Disposable Humanity” consists of three story strands that
create a braid across history and culture in relationship to disabled people
and their treatment in Nazi Germany during World War II and into the present.
The film will: 1) document the Nazi medical mass murder of 300,000+ “mental
patients” in psychiatric institutions (referred to as Aktion T4); 2)
examine the growing efforts in Germany and elsewhere (including the United
States, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Italy) to commemorate and
memorialize the victims; 3) explore the history of our personal family
journeys undertaken as disabled people to visit these memorial sites since
the late 1990s.  Thus, the planned film will interweave history, culture, and
disability experience into its effort to make visible a forgotten and/or
erased aspect of Holocaust history.

Duties: Research assistants will assist with tracking down key historical
documents, photos, film clips, permissions related to the illustration of key
documentary film themes, topics, and interview b-roll materials. Each
assistant will be given a key theme to track down the best illustrative
documents — for instance, one RA might watch all of the propaganda films
created around the sterilizations and, ultimately, murder of disabled people
institutionalization during World War II, select best clips to illustrate
ideas, and track down appropriate permissions related to the use of desired
materials in the final documentary film.  Another student would transcribe
remaining interview transcripts and analyze the interview discussions with
respect to key themes covered (grass roots preservation of historical T4
locations, selection process, memorialization efforts, reparations advocacy
efforts, etc.). A third RA would research key documents such as photos of
Himmler visiting the first gassing facility at Poznan, Poland, Medical
meldobogen forms for gassing selections in Berlin, biographical victim data
available on websites (for example, gedenkort-T4.com; YadVashem.org),
physician and medical personnel trial transcripts and photos/film, etc. The
objective is to employ students in important archival work that goes into the
crafting of a feature-length film documentary

Number of Openings: 3

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

Credit hour option*: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: dtmitchel@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Holly Dugan

Department: English

Title: The Famous Ape

Description: My current book project, “The Famous Ape” argues that there
is much to learn about our history from studying how we’ve treated our
closest animal relatives: apes. In it, I trace the simian celebrities
renowned in their own time period for aping our best and worst qualities,
many of whom paid dearly for having such skills. My title comes from
Hamlet’s odd allusion in that play’s famous closet scene, an allusion
that is as confusing as it is intriguing. In it, Hamlet warns his mother not
to be “like the famous ape,” who sought “to try conclusions.”  Despite
Hamlet’s specificity (he uses the definite article) and his conviction that
the lessons of this example are well known, no one seems to know a thing
about the so-called “famous” ape. Gertrude leaves the scene convinced of
Hamlet’s madness, and most critics do, too. My book takes a different
approach, addressing that absence directly by seeking to trace the forgotten
history of various “famous apes” from the sixteenth to the twentieth
century, all of whom were quite well known in their own time, and who were
used to “try” conclusions about human and animal boundaries, but who are
now mostly forgotten and excluded from our histories of modernity.

Because I’ve found more examples than I can address in the book, I am
building a public humanities website to share this information, which is
comprised of brief biographies of each “famous ape.” My hope is that in
seeing the repetition latent in these histories and by learning more about
these creatures as individuals, readers will come to their own ethical
conclusions about these entertainment practices.

Duties: All that’s needed is a willingness to learn more about historical
research and animal history.

Research tasks may include 1. primary research in newspaper archives of the
19th and 20th century (depending on students’ skills & interest); managing a
public-facing humanities research account linked to the project (ie,
summarizing research and drafting content for blog posts; strategizing about
promotion across platforms; acquiring image rights); building/maintaining
research database.

Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)

Credit hour option*: 1

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: hdugan@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Diego Abente Brun

Department: Elliott School of International Affairs

Title: The Foreign of Brazil: From the Discourse to the Facts

Description: This project consists of following up the foreign policy
decisions and positions of the Bolsanaro government and explore the
congruence/incongruence between words and deeds. Especial emphasis will be
paid to relations with Argentina. It implies also to compare and contrast his
government’s foreign policy with that of previous governments and includes
the analysis of the role of key institutions, chiefly Itamaraty, but also
private actors such as business associations, the Congress, civil society
organizations and the media.

Duties: 1. To identify key issue-areas.( In close consultation with the
Instructor)
2.  To collect data and review the literature. (Portuguese and Spanish
reading language proficiency required)
3. To trace and underline the difference and similarities with previous
official positions.
4. To explore the likely course of events in the future.
5. To conclude with a summary of the key findings, the risks and
opportunities they offer, and policy recommendations for other foreign actors
such as the United States, Europe,  and regional actores.
6. The project will be discussed with the instructor and may be adjusted
based on the student’s interests.

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

Credit hour option*: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: dabente@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Ahmed Louri

Department: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Title: High-performance, Power-efficient, and Reliable Computer Architecture
Design

Description: High performance computing architectures and technologies
(HPCAT) lab, led by Prof. Ahmed Louri, is a world-class research laboratory.
HPCAT lab investigates novel parallel computer architectures and technologies
which deliver high reliability, high performance, and energy-efficient
solutions to important application domains and societal needs. The research
has far-reaching impacts on the computing industry and society at large.
Current research projects include: (1) the use of machine learning techniques
for designing energy-efficient, reliable multicore architectures, (2)
scalable accelerator-rich reconfigurable heterogeneous architectures, (3)
emerging interconnect technologies (photonic, wireless, RF, hybrid) for
network-on-chips (NoCs) & embedded systems, (4) future parallel computing
models and architectures including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Deep
Neural Networks (DNNs), near data computing, approximate computing, and (5)
cloud and edge computing.

Duties: A research assistant is expected, on a routine basis, to be able to:
(1)     perform administrative and research tasks under the direction of faculty
member or senior research assistants;
(2)     assist with experiments, simulations, and coding;
(3)     perform literature searches, review content, and prepare written
summaries;
(4)     prepare drafts for articles, reports, or presentations.

Time commitment: 10 or more hours per week (average)

Credit hour option*: 0

Number of openings: 3

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: louri@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.

Professor: Chao Wei

Department: Economics

Title: Time Use and Labor Supply Decisions of Older People

Description: We use data from the HRS (Health and Retirement Study) to study
the time allocation, labor supply and retirement decisions of older people,
in particular, older couples.

Duties: We are looking for research assistants proficient in STATA, and
preferably have previous experience with large data sets. The research
assistant’s duties include generating summary statistics and conducting
regression analysis based on research needs.

Time commitment: 4-6 hours per week (average)

Credit hour option*: 2

Number of openings: 2

Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: cdwei@gwu.edu

*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met.  Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna
Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.