At the new Biomedical Research Laboratory, infectious diseases researcher Kylene Kehn-Hall is studying viruses such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, West Nile virus, and influenza. “Viruses are amazing,” Kehn-Hall says, “when we catch a virus, that virus encodes very few proteins, but it has the power to take over our bodies. My job is to figure out how this happens.”

Daniel Cox and Monique van Hoek win J. Shelton Horsley Research Awards from the Virginia Academy of Sciences

In the Astrophysical Ice and Matrix-Isolation Spectroscopy Laboratory, Paul Cooper and his students are studying how chemistry and physics processes occur in space.

A renowned figure in the world of environmental science and policy, Mason University Professor Thomas E. Lovejoy has dedicated much of his work to preserving species in the Amazonian region of South America. He coined the term “biological diversity.”