Best of Access to Excellence

For this special "Best Of" episode, we've compiled some of our most thought-provoking and compelling conversations between President Washington and our accomplished faculty. We'll revisit discussions that are more relevant than ever—from the vast mysteries of the cosmos to the hidden power of coffee grounds—to see how George Mason is blazing a path of innovation to develop bold solutions for our world's grand challenges. 

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Trailblazers in research,innovators in technology,
and those who simply have a good story:
all make up the fabric thatis George Mason University,
where taking on the grand challengesthat face our students, graduates,
inand higher education isour mission and our passion.
Hosted by Mason PresidentGregory Washington,
this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

(00:28):
Welcome to a special edition ofthe Access to Excellence podcast.
For this special Best-Of episode,
we've compiled some of ourmost thought-provoking and compelling conversations
with President Washington.
We'll revisit discussions thatare more relevant than ever,
from the complexities of artificialintelligence and the science of space,
to the incredible capacity ofhumans for both evil and good.

(00:54):
But to begin, we should zoom out.
As an R-1 research institution andVirginia's largest public university,
George Mason is organizingits vast research capabilities around what President
Washington calls the GrandChallenge Initiative.
He sat down with Andre Marshall, thevice president for research, innovation,
and economic impact at George Masonto explain what that means for our

(01:17):
community.
Well, look, I talked about thegrand challenge issue, but you know,
we often get the question,what is a grand challenge? So,
given that this is a big part of yourportfolio going forward, I'm asking you:
what's a grand challenge?
Alright, well, we spent really a lotof time thinking about this and for

(01:39):
George Mason University,from our perspective, the Grand Challenge initiative,
it's all about the future.
And specifically as we thoughtabout kind of what that means
to operationalize this,
we developed four criteria forwhat a grand challenge is. So,
a grand challenge is large and enduring.

(02:01):
And what we mean by that is we are nottrying to solve the little problems.
As you say,
we are focused on the big rocks andwe're not looking for quick fixes.
Alright? We want to havea solution that lasts.
Give me an example. Notin one of our solutions,
but give me an specificexample of a grand challenge.

(02:22):
A grand challenge that comesto mind would be a cure for
sickle cell, for example. You know,
that challenge impacts people globally.
There's a lot of suffering associatedwith that. It, it changes people's lives.
And so if you can addressthose kinds of issues,

(02:43):
you can really make a difference. Andguess what: It's big, and if you solve it,
you've solved it. And that'swhat I mean by, you know,
doing something that isbig and enduring. You know,
also a grand challenge is complex and it
requires people from not justacross the, the university,

(03:07):
but it requires external partners.
So what we mean by, youknow, this kind of complex,
interdisciplinary andexternal partner criterion,
is that you can't do italone, right? You need people,
the problem is biggerthan just you. Alright,
so we got grand challengesthat are big and they

(03:31):
endure and they require multiple partners.
Um, and now let's talk about this thirdcriterion. And this is focused on Mason.
Look,
we need to focus on challengesthat we can really do something
about. And that aligns withour strengths, our assets,

(03:52):
and our core values.
So we want things that meansomething to George Mason
University in terms of ourvalues and our expertise
and strengths. And then finally,
this fourth criterion is that wewant to move the needle and to make a
difference. So we don't want our, our,

(04:14):
our activities to just be a drop inthe bucket. The things that we work on,
they're going to really make a change.They're not just gonna be additive.
And so we have to be careful aboutthe problems that we choose and the
challenges that we choose so thatthey're aligned with our strengths and
that we can really do something.

(04:35):
So we have world-classfaculty focused on a whole
host of issues, right? From povertyto health, to engineering and science.
How would you recommend we focus oureffort? I know you, you had a committee.
This committee has met for asignificant period of time,
some of our best and brightest faculty,and you all tackled this issue.

(04:59):
So talk a little bit aboutdeploying our resources and focus.
I appreciate that questionand I appreciate the intentionality of this question.
We really need to deploy our resources.
We need to deploy our entireresearch enterprise for action
and for impact,
especially considering all the headwindsthat we have right now. We've got, uh,

(05:22):
resource limitations in terms of research.
We have increased competitionfor talent and resources,
and we have changing priorities in theresearch landscape to, to be frank.
And so we have to be intentionalabout how we're gonna deploy our
resources and ourresearch enterprise. Well,

(05:44):
our faculty, they're committedto making a difference. So we,
we need to honor that they are committedto having an impact and changing
the world. So, you know,that's our foundation.
That we want to do somethingright, that the faculty care about,
that they're good at that isreally gonna make a difference.
So we put together, uh, asyou mentioned this committee,

(06:08):
we talked about so manydifferent possibilities
of what we could do.
There were 84 differentideas that came up.
So there,
so there was a big focusing effortthat happened to get it down to six.
One, advancing 21st centuryeducation for all two,

(06:32):
building a climateresilient society. Three,
driving responsible digital innovationand sustainable infrastructure.
Four, improving human health,wellbeing and preparedness.
Five, preparing for space exploration,
research and collaboration.And six, strengthening peace,

(06:57):
trust and engagement in democracy.
And it's in the spirit of that lastgrand challenge--strengthening peace and
trust--that we turn to Rick Davis,
Dean of the College ofVisual and Performing Arts.
He shared his vision for the future ofthe arts at George Mason and the power of
art in creating community.

(07:20):
So last year, uh,
you gave a presentation to the Board ofVisitors and you began that presentation

with your mantra (07:28):
the arts create community.
Talk to us about the tagline,what inspired it and what does it actually mean?
Oh, thank you.
I call it my forward elevator speechbecause it encapsulates basically
everything I believe aboutthe value of the arts.
And I'm going back historically, you know,

(07:48):
to to ancient civilizationsthat that created, you know,
theater and dance and musicand, and cave paintings and,
and sculptures and everything that,
that the way the arts havealways expressed themselves.
Why were they born and why do they exist?
Because people need occasions to cometogether. And for a lot of people,
religion forms that functionand religion in the arts have a,

(08:10):
a strong connection, sometimesvery tense connection, but,
but a very strong connection in termsof ritual and in terms of, of symbolism.
For some people, sports frankly createthat opportunity. For me as well. uh,
I know for you, youknow, we love to go to a,
a sporting event becauseit's a ritual, right?
It's a it's a collective experience.We all see the same thing and react,

(08:32):
maybe not in the same way,but if everybody reacts right,
you can be booing and cheering, uh, atthe same play depending on your team.
But you're reacting and you'rereacting as part of a community.
Same thing happens in a,in a play or an opera.
The same thing happens quietly in an artmuseum because people are walking by a,
a painting or, or standing in,
in front of a sculpture and itcatches them and it stops them.

(08:53):
It interrupts their day alittle bit. And great paintings,
one person stops and then another personstops, and then another person stops.
And suddenly you get a littleaudience right in front.
And it's amazing what happens therebecause everybody's concentrating on the
same thing for a little while.You know, in the case of a play,
it might be two hours or three hours,or god knows, four hours, uh, .

(09:14):
But the value of bringingpeople together in,
in common contemplation orhaving a common experience,
I think is really vital to civilization.And I'm not being hyperbolic here.
I think civilizationrequires opportunities for people to come together and
witness things collectively, andthen form their own conclusions.
But when you go to a play that's working,

(09:36):
whether it's a comedy or atragedy or anything in between,
and you feel thatunanimity or that variety,
but also people breathing together,laughing together, crying together,
you are part of a temporary communitythat actually reminds us all of
our common humanity.
Well, you can't talk about communitywithout talking about the two

(09:58):
pillars of bringing folktogether in that community.
And so I want to talkabout 'em separately here,
but what makes the center of the artsa critical part of the arts community
for both George Mason and for the region?
So the Center for the Artsin Fairfax is, of course,
our signature facility hereon the, on the Fairfax campus,
where we do the vast majorityof our, of our instruction.

(10:21):
The Center for the Arts was created outof the mind of President George Johnson,
quite literally, uh, and hiswife, Joanne, to say, let,
let's put George Mason on the map asa place where the arts are happening,
and how are we gonna do that? 'cause wedon't really have big arts programs yet.
So we have to bring in, we haveto bring the world to Fairfax.
We have to bring Yo-Yo Ma to Fairfax.

(10:41):
We have to bring MichaelFeinstein to Fairfax.
We have to bring these incredibleartists. We, uh, you know, Roberta Peters,
Denise Graves--great toplevel artists, right?
Who came to and are stillcoming every year to Fairfax.
And that was something thatchanged the campus culture.
If you talk to Visitor HoraceBlackman, former rector of our board,

(11:02):
who was a student here during the opening.He, he started in the late eighties,
graduated in the earlynineties. He will tell you,
he's told me that the opening of theCenter for the Arts changed George Mason
completely. Because all of a suddenthe world was coming to Mason.
You had a place to go on the weekends.You had meaningful things to do.
You had the opportunity to be partof the world conversation about

(11:25):
music and dance and theater. And thatgave everybody, not only on campus,
but in the whole sort of NorthernVirginia region, a rallying point.
It literally created acommunity. And from that,
we have built the academicprograms because the presence of all these wonderful
artists that come in over the course ofa season has also benefited our students

(11:47):
tremendously.
So talk to us a little bit aboutthe other core facility we have for

bringing the community together: the Hylton Performing Arts Center. (11:53):
undefined
And that's on our science andtechnology campus in Manassas.
Oh, I'd love to. We built theHylton Center. And by the way,
for everybody listening on the podcast,that's H-Y-L-T-O-N, right? It's,
it's not the, not the hotelchain, it's the Hylton Foundation.
And a man named Conrad Hylton,uh, who was a major developer in,

(12:15):
in the Prince William County area. Uh,
they gave the naming gift for thatback in the mid two thousands.
The facility opened in 2010.
And we built that essentially asan expression of George Mason's
commitment to community partnerships,
because Prince William County and thecity of Manassas essentially asked us if
we would partner with themto create a distinctive

(12:38):
representative inspiringcultural facility that would help
their city and county, and that region,
take the next step into the communitythat they wanted to become. So we,
we bill ourselves...I,
this is a term I use a lot...webill ourselves as a symbol of change
and as an agent of change, we're doingboth of those things in Sci, at SciTech.

(13:02):
This is one of the most beautifultheaters anywhere on the East Coast.
The architecture is distinctive fromthe moment you walk into the lobby.
Every space is designed witharchitectural distinction in mind.
The acoustics in the main hall are praisedby every single artist who comes in,
whether they're a classical conductoror a pianist, or a jazz player,

(13:24):
or a bluegrass musician. Everybodyloves playing in that hall.
And perhaps most importantly,
it has uplifted the local andregional arts community to a
very high degree, the ManassasBallet, the Manassas Chorale,
the Manassas Symphony, PrinceWilliam Little Theater,
a youth orchestra that's going by thename of the Onyx Project now CAPAC--the

(13:45):
Creative and Performing Arts Centerfrom, from Woodbridge--these entities,
which all preexisted the Hylton,
but were doing their work in middleschool auditoriums and, you know,
church basements and everything.Now they have, truly,
a world-class facility to play in.
And over these 15 yearsthat we've been operating,
their work has gotten biggerand better and more popular,

(14:06):
and they've attracted morepeople in the audience.
But just as importantly for them,they've attracted more people on stage,
more people to participate in thesecommunity-based artistic expressions.
So it's been a,
it's been a huge success for thecommunity and for George Mason as well,
because people see us as thepurveyor and the partner that
without us, this, this thingwouldn't have happened.
And I'll, and I'll be honest withyou, this, the acoustics, the layout,

(14:29):
first of all, it lookslike a classical theater.
Yeah.
It has that, uh, classicaltheater look and feel.
But the acoustics there justseem to be outstanding. I mean,
there's no echo. It's great soundwherever you are in the facility.
People sound so clear.
And if you're on stage in thattheater and you, you're a singer,

(14:53):
whatever player,
you get just the right amount of soundcoming back to you so you know that
it's,
you know that the hall is embracing youand that people just love playing there.
And, and that, that means alot because they play better.
Well, every,
every single performance that I'veseen there has been spectacular.
It is, it's a gem.

(15:14):
To tackle a grand challenge, youmight think you need a grand solution.
But assistant professor of mechanicalengineering Jeffrey Moran is proving that
sometimes the answers are found in small,
simple things like used coffee grounds.
Earlier this year,
members of your lab made the news withthe invention of what's being called

(15:35):
the coffee bot.
And this is spent coffeegrounds coated in iron oxide
that can absorb pollutants and water.
So tell me about how it works.
Sure. So the, thelisteners can't see this,
but I'm holding a vial of what arejust ordinary coffee grounds, right?
Mm-hmm .

(15:55):
And these are coffee grounds Iliterally brought from home and.
Now spent coffee grounds, which means--
Spent coffee grounds.
They've--
Been used. That's correct.
That's even better.
That's correct. Okay.Yeah. And by one estimate,
we throw away about 23 million tonsof spent coffee waste per year.
Much of that is being sent to landfills.
Although increasingly I'm heartenedto see that places like Starbucks are

(16:19):
making just bags of the stuff availablefor folks to use for compost. Okay.
So I've got a vial ofspent coffee grounds here,
and in my other hand I have a magnet.Now if I hold the magnet up to the vial,
nothing interesting happens.Coffee is not magnetic. However,
if I have another vial here, thesealso look like spent coffee grounds.

(16:40):
They are. But they've been coatedin, as you said, iron oxide,
which is the main chemicalconstituent of rust.
So we sometimes call these rusty coffeegrounds because in a real sense they are
rusty. And if I hold the magnet up,I don't know if you can see, uh,
and for the listeners, the coffee grounds,
once they've been coated inthe iron oxide particles,

(17:02):
they will actually follow the magnet.
So I can make them go wherever Iwant to by holding up a magnet to it.
So the essence of what wedid was develop a safe and
eco-friendly approach to coatingthe coffee grounds with these little
tiny bits of rust. So whatdoes that do for us? Well,

(17:25):
it does two important things. First,
it allows us to use a magnetic fields--youasked how they move--it allows us to
use a magnetic field todrive them through the water.
So for now we're just propelling themwith the external magnetic field.
We can come back to that in a second.
We're looking at waysto improve upon that.
And one of the things we demonstratedwas that moving coffee grounds will

(17:48):
actually remove pollutants from watermore efficiently than stationary ones do.
Hmm. And this makes intuitivesense because in a sense,
the moving coffee grounds encountermore pollutants per unit time than
stationary ones do. So we demonstratedthree different pollutant types.
Methylene blue, which is kind of astand in for a chemical pollutant.

(18:09):
But methylene blue itself isa textile dye that has some
negative health effects that is itselfa pollutant of concern in some areas of
the world, particularly wheretextile production is common.
Oil spills and microplastics,
those are additionallypollutants of concern.
So both of those are problematic today.

(18:30):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Oil spills and microplastics,
so much so that fish todayhave an incredibly large
amount of digested microplastics intheir, in their, in their systems.
And potentially we do too, potentially.
And because there are so many consumerproducts that contain plastic,
they make their ways into waterways,right? And eventually in some areas,

(18:53):
uh, it probably varies significantly.I haven't seen the statistics,
but definitely lots of differentforms of life are consuming these
microplastics. And I wannasay this is not my area,
but I think we're still as a communityfiguring out exactly what the health
effects are. But they're definitelysomething to be concerned about for sure.
So we demonstrated that we canremove each of those three types.

(19:16):
So microplastics--
Oil and methylene blue as amodel for a do methylene blue is,
is a textile dye. And it's blueas the name suggests. Right.
And that was convenient because thenit's very straightforward to monitor how
much of the methylene bluewe've removed at any given time.
Because you can use an instrument thatessentially looks at how much blue light

(19:41):
is being absorbed.
You can use essentially the intensityat a certain wavelength to determine how
much of the dyes left. So it was, it was,
it was partially out ofconvenience that we chose that.
Hmm. So
reuse of these coffeegrounds was mentioned.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you, and so how often can you use them?

(20:02):
Yeah. So that brings me to the secondmajor thing that the magnetism enables.
So just to recap,
the first thing the magnetism does isit allows us to drive them through the
water. And that speeds up thepollutant removal process.
The second thing it does is it allows usto take the magnet and pluck the coffee
grounds out of the water afterthe treatment is complete.,

(20:22):
What we do next is rinse it off.
We can rinse the pollutants off andwe do still have to dispose of the
pollutants elsewhere. That is aseparate issue that is for now,
tangential to the work that we're doing.
We're mainly focusing onremoving them from the water.
But that is something that you do stillhave to do something with the oil or
with the microplastics.

(20:42):
And that's something that otherresearchers are working on.
So then after you rinse them,
we typically rinse them with anorganic solvent like acetone.
Acetone works pretty well. And
then you can actually dropthem back into the water.
And we showed in the journal paperwe published on this that you can
reuse them at least four times witha minimal reduction in pollutant

(21:07):
removal efficiency. So wehaven't gone beyond that.
But based on how well the first fivetrials went, and this is true by the way,
with each pollutant class, withdyes, oils, and microplastics,
we have reason to believethat you could go further.
So let me get this straight.
'cause I want to make sure thatthe folk out there see the depth

(21:28):
and the profoundness ofwhat you are stating.
Mm-hmm .
Spent coffee groundscoated in iron oxide can
be dropped into, say, an oil spill.
Mm-hmm . Absolutely.
And the coffee grounds willattach themselves to the oil.
That's right.
You have a process forthen pulling those grounds,

(21:50):
separating those grounds withthe oil on them from the water.
The oil is rinsed offwhere it can be disposed.
You throw the grounds backout to repeat the process.
And you can do it up to four times.
Five times total. Right. So four reuses...
Four reuses...
So five total uses. That's amazing.You nailed it. That's exactly right.

(22:13):
From the smallest coffee groundsto the vast expanse of space,
George Mason faculty are stretching ourimaginations of what lies within the
cosmos. Anamaria Berea,
an associate professor ofcomputational and data sciences,
studies the intersection of datasciences, economics, and astrobiology.
And it's that last fieldthat led President Washington to ask the question we've

(22:35):
all wondered about at some poin:
what are the chances ofintelligent life beyond earth?
So let's start with your work at NASA.
You were selected to participatein an independent study
on UAPs or Unidentified Anomalous
Phenomenon.

(22:56):
Our listeners are probably more familiarwith the term that I grew up with,

which is UFOs, : Unidentified Flying Objects. (23:00):
undefined
So can you explain the difference betweenthese terms and what is the rationale
behind the change in terminology?
Sure. So UFOs comes fromUnidentified Flying Objects,
which was the original term thatthe community and the public

(23:20):
used for several decades afterthe 40s when we had allegedly
the first observation of what more popularwas called the flying saucer, right.
But to get things more seriousand into the scientific realm,
scientists decided to change thename into unidentified anomalous

(23:41):
phenomena, which is not necessarilyabout flying phenomena. Right?
So this can be any typeof unidentified phenomena,
maybe coming from the sea or sub-sea.
Most of them might have beenobserved in our atmosphere.
So the rationale for the changein the name has been to basically

(24:03):
cast this serious scientific lens tothe phenomenon so that we can actually
study it.
The idea here is toactually emphasize the word
unidentified, and the otherword is phenomenon. Right. So,
I'm a scientist at the course.So for us in, in science,
whenever we see something thatwe cannot explain or understand,

(24:26):
we want to cast the, um,
scientific method and to tryto understand this phenomenon.
So it's science that draws thatunidentified to identify it, right?
So what we have in the middle, whetherit's anomalous, whether it's flying,
whether it's terrestrial,whether it's under the sea,

(24:47):
that is a different story.
So that speaks to where thatobservation has been made.
Understood, understood.
So you are also affiliatedwith the SETI or
S-E-T-I institute,
commonly known as the search forextraterrestrial intelligence.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about that institute and a

(25:11):
little bit more about your work?
Yeah, sure. So I've been affiliated withthe SETI Institute for a few years now,
since before I was in, uh, the, uh,
independent study panel with NASAbecause the institute is looking at all
aspects of alien life. So we arenot talking about little green man.
What we are talking about ismicrobial life that can potentially be

(25:35):
on other planets or moons within oursolar system or outside of our solar
system. And also potentialintelligent life,
which can also be potentiallywithin our galaxy.
So the SETI Institute actuallyhas two different axis of
study. One is with respect tobiosignatures, as I was mentioning,

(25:57):
microbial life, whetherit's current or past on, uh,
planets like Mars or on the moon,like, uh, Europa--in this October,
we have Europa clipper that is going tolaunch to study that further--or Titan,
right, which is themoon of, of Saturn, or,
and the other axis is on technosignatures.

(26:17):
So technosignatures meanfinding signals or signs
of technology anywhere in the universe,
and particularly on exoplanets. So,
so exoplanets being planets thatorbit other suns than our own.
Right. Well, you mentioned Europa.
What is Europa and why is it important?

(26:39):
Right. So Europa, it'swhat's called an icy moon.
So that means that with some pastmissions that were just doing
flybys, so flybys Jupiterand the moons of Jupiter,
they observe that Europa isenveloped in an ice crust.
But underneath this ice crust,there is a very vast ocean.
And wherever you have water, thereis a high probability of life.

(27:04):
Now, the only way we can accuratelydetermine whether there is life
underneath the icy crust of Europais by sending a probe, right.
Sending a mission there tobasically sample in two and
analyze the composition ofthe ocean on, uh, Europa.
So Europa is one of the high probabilitycandidates when it comes to finding

(27:28):
these biosignatures within oursolar system. So Europa is one,
Io is another one, which is another moonof Jupiter, and Titan is another one.
And there will be another missioncalled Dragonfly that will launch
probably late in the 2030s andlook for signals of life on, um,
Titan, which, uh, has,uh, oceans of methane.

(27:51):
Outstanding.
So any plans or analysesor studies in the work,
works to look at planetsoutside of our solar system.
Yes. So that is the main purposeof the James Webb telescope.
So the James Webb telescope issampling through spectrometry,

(28:11):
the exoplanetary atmospheres onthese exoplanets that orbit, uh,
suns that are not ourown sun. Right. Okay.
And through the compositionof these atmospheres,
scientists try to determine whether someof those chemicals or combinations of
chemicals can be produced bybiological processes. Right.
So you can infer from thecomposition of the atmosphere if

(28:35):
there can be life on that planet.
So going back to your question aboutmy affiliation with the SETI Institute,
it's actually then when my affiliationwith the institute came about when I was
part of this project withFrontier Development Lab,
where we simulated theexoplanetary atmospheres based on
metabolic networks. Okay. So findingmetabolic networks on the, uh,

(28:58):
surface of a planet.How will that processes,
how will they change thecomposition of an, uh,
atmosphere on that exoplanet? Right?
And we create lots of simulationsand try to understand what kind of
combinations we can have at the microscale on the surface of the planet in
these metabolic networks.
And the macro scale with respectto the planetary atmosphere.

(29:21):
Okay. So let me take that questionto the next step. Give me an idea,
give me your thoughts onintelligent life on other planets.
With respect the intelligent lifeand, and actually even the other life.
Are we talking about simultaneouslife that exists right
now living versus past versus future?

(29:44):
I'm talking about right now.
Right now. Simultaneous with us.
Right now.
So for that, I actually havea low probability for that.
We have the Drake equation, uh,
which actually is good heuristicor indicator for us in how we can
calculate these probabilities.And with the Drake equation,

(30:04):
while we might have lots ofplanets within, or exoplanets,
within the habitable zone, uh,
where life can developand emerge, there is a,
an entirely different question withrespect to whether that life can
evolve into intelligent life. That'sone step. The next step with the,

(30:25):
can that intelligent life evolve intoa life that can create technology.
Right. Because may, maybethey won't. Right, right.
But just with respect to intelligent life,
we actually don't know that becausewe only have a sample of one. Right.
I I know, I know. Mm-hmm. But,
but let me throw out some numbers andyou tell me where I'm off. Alright.

(30:46):
We know that there is an estimated about a
hundred billion galaxies.
That's right. Yeah. Okay. .
Each galaxy,
each single galaxy has billions of stars,as does ours. Mm-hmm .
And each of those stars has in

(31:08):
many sense, lots of planets onthose individual stars. Right.
A hundred billion galaxies,
billions of stars each withmost likely multiple planets.
And so if you use the Kepler data alone
It estimates 300 million habitable.

(31:29):
In habitable zones, yes.
With environments nottoo different from Earth.
That's right.
Yeah. 300 million. And outof those 300 million planets,
your estimate is very low.
For intelligent life.
For intelligent life.
Yeah. So my estimate is .
So help me, so help meto understand why that,
'cause the numbers tell me that bygolly, there's gotta be intelligent life.

(31:52):
So, uh,
your numbers are correct in sayingthat the probability for life is high
in generic. But now.
Again, I'm not talking about amoebasand protozoans, I'm talking about.
About humanlike. Right?Yes. Intelligence. Right.
But again, evolutionaryprocesses require, um,

(32:13):
millions and millions of years. Right.
But we're, but we're a young galaxy.
The question, yes.
But the question is moreabout are we early in the
evolution of emergence ofintelligent life versus are we late
on that? Right. If we aretalking about galaxy times.
So the question is whether they'resimultaneous with us, right.

(32:37):
And at the same level or similarlevel of intelligence with us.
So that is actually a
lower probability.
. Yeah, I hear you. We thinkwe're smarter than what we are.
I'm telling you right now,
my estimate is that itis a high probability of

(32:57):
intelligent life.
Last, but certainly not least, let'srevisit an old fashioned crime story.
Mary Ellen O'Toole is a professor anddirector of the Forensic Science Program.
And as a former criminalprofiler, she's helped capture,
interview and understand some ofthe world's most infamous people,
including Gary Ridgway, the Green RiverKiller, and Ted Kozinski, the Unabomber.

(33:23):
Not often do we get to talk to someonewho engaged the Green River Killer and
the Unabomber.
So how do you profile somebody and didyou find anything interesting with these
individuals?
When we profile somebody,
it means that we study their behaviorfrom a crime scene. So for example,
in the Green River Killer, he killed fora long time before he was identified.

(33:45):
He killed in the 1960s,1970s, 1980s, 1990s,
and the early 2000s.That's a lot of murders.
Yes.
That's a lot of murders. And it's a lotof time to fly under the radar screen.
So that task force was lookingfor him for all of those years.
And it became important to understandhow did he get away with it?
Because there were other cases wherethey get apprehended pretty quickly.

(34:09):
Recently, there was a serial killerin LA who killed three people.
Over the course of a couple days. Hegot arrested quite quickly, Green River,
however, decades.
And one of the reason that he did isbecause he lived a normal lifestyle.
He was married, he had achild, he went to church,
he had a regular job for some 30 years.So people thought when he was arrested,

(34:30):
they were, it couldn't be this guy 'causehe's my neighbor and he's very normal.
But what we do, we looked at all of GaryRidgway, who's the Green River Killer,
we looked at all of his murdersand he left his victims outside at
outdoor crime scenes. And in fact,
some of the remains of the victims werenot found for decades because he was
very efficient at being able tohide the bodies or dump the bodies

(34:55):
in a way that prevented them from beingfound. And of course, over the sixties,
seventies, eighties, and nineties,
we simply did not have the technologyfrom a forensic perspective to be able to
do a lot with those crime scenes. Now,
times have changed andwe can do a lot more.
But when I first met him--I became partof the task force out in Seattle--when I
first met Gary Ridgway,

(35:16):
I was really surprised byhow normal and engaging
that he was. And to look at him,
there is no way that you wouldknow what he did. I mean,
you'd sit next to him on Metro andyou would never know that he was
the most prolific serialsexual killer in US history.

(35:37):
But somehow you profiled him. So youknew. If you sat by him on that train,
would you know,
could you have said something to him orasked him a question that would say to
you, okay, I'm starting to getsome eerie feelings from this guy.
What I'm gonna tell you maynot click for a lot of people,
but the one thing that ispresent in most of the serial

(36:00):
sexual killers, and I saythat specifically because a serial sexual killer,
that's their motivation formurder. It's for sexual purposes.
They meet the criteria of thepsychopathic personality disorder.
The old term is sociopath,the new term is psychopath.
And part of the psychopathic structureis that these individuals have

(36:22):
the ability to show youwhat we call snake eyes,
which means their eyes arevery normal a lot of the time,
but when you're interviewing them orthey're angry at you during an interview,
or they don't likesomething that you've said,
their eyes transform into what we callsnake eyes. Their eyes lose their color,
they go at half mask. And when you see it,

(36:43):
it makes the hair on theback of your neck stand up.
And if I saw someone in public,and I have a couple times,
that makes it transformation tosnake eyes, then I know stay away.
And I saw that with Gary Ridgway a lot.
If I said something tohim that he didn't like,
he would lose the eye color from hiseyes and his eyes would become coal black
and they would be at half mask.

(37:04):
And I know those were the eyes that hisvictims saw right before they murdered
him. And we know it'sa neurological issue.
We don't have a lot of information on why.
We just know that it's presentin psychopathic individuals.
So do you help trainstudents now to profile?
Actually, I do.

(37:25):
And we're starting some prettyneat new initiatives that
will allow us to do even more of that.
Because I do have a group ofstudents that want to go take their
expertise more into the behavioralarea and they see the value of it.
So I have a class right now,
where students are learning how tostudy crime scenes from a behavioral

(37:48):
perspective and then analyze thebehavior. And then from that behavior,
what they do is theyexplain who's the offender,
what kind of an offender would'vecommitted a crime like this. And in fact,
in the small semester this time,
I gave them three cases to analyze.
And one of them was D.B.Cooper: never solved,
jumped out of an airplane with$200,000. We never found him.

(38:11):
They're still looking forhim. Right. This is the.
Still looking for him. Mm-hmm. Never found him.
So some of the students getthat case. Another group,
they get the Marilyn Monroe case.
Marilyn Monroe was determined tohave died as a result of suicide.
Not so sure about that.
And then the third case that my studentswork on just for their midterms is the
Black Dahlia case.

(38:32):
And Black Dahlia is a unsolved caseout of Los Angeles where this beautiful
young woman that had movedto LA to become a movie star.
And she ended up meeting up with the wrongperson who kidnapped her and kept her
for a number of days,
and then placed her dismembered bodyin a neighborhood in Los Angeles,
and she's referred to as the Black Dahlia.

(38:52):
So my students study those casesfor the first half of the year,
and they look at the behavior andfrom the behavior they draw behavioral
traits of the offender andwhat the offender is like,
what kind of a job the offender has,
what kind of relationship theoffenders have with other people.
So they learn how to take the behaviorand extrapolate that into who the

(39:14):
offender is.
What type of student goesinto forensic science?
I think there is a type, and I'vethought about this for a long time,
students who are verycurious, very empathic,
very motivated students that have a lot of
internal fortitude because they knowthey're gonna go out there, for example,

(39:36):
at least a lot of them to the body farm.
And they're gonna see some thingsthat are pretty upsetting with the
decomposition of a human donor.
So these are students that havereally thought this through very well,
and students that are critical thinkers.
That's the course I teach here is criticalthinking. You're not born with it.

(39:56):
It's not a gift. You need to develop it.
I am amazed by how quicklystudents learn to be
very adept critical thinkers in away that allows them to cut through
complex cases, tear themapart, and look at sections,
put the sections back together,

(40:17):
and then make analysisabout who the offender is.
So I see that in so many of my students,and they don't jump to conclusions.
And they understand that opinionsare just that. They're just opinions.
They're not the resultof critical thinking.
So I'm impressed by how well mystudents bring those traits together and
apply it into these cases.

(40:39):
So it's really an eclecticcombination of traits that
students really develop,
knowing that all of that is gonna benecessary if they want to be really
well-rounded in the job.
And I love the term audacity becausebeing audacious is not the same
as being arrogant. Beingaudacious is to stand up and say,

(41:02):
we've got thousands of unidentifiedremains in medical examiner's offices
throughout the United States.
What can we do to reunite thoseindividuals with their family members?
We know that we've got unsolvedcases out there of marginalized
victims throughout the United States.
Audacious means what can wedo to solve those crimes?

(41:26):
And so if my students can beas audacious as is humanly
possible, they're gonna bemagnificent forensic scientists.
This is only a preview of the incredibletalent and innovation here at George
Mason University.
There's so much more to explore and wehope you stick around to see more ways

(41:46):
that George Mason is hard at work,
developing bold solutions to thegrand challenges of our time.
On behalf of President GregoryWashington, thanks for listening.
And tune in next time formore conversations that show why we are all together
different.
If you like what youheard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's

(42:10):
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take onthe grand challenges facing our students graduates in
higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.