Georgetown Honors Early-Career Professors with High-Impact Research

Georgetown has awarded three early-career professors who are tackling pressing societal questions with $100,000 in funding and leave to accelerate their work.

The university's Magis Prizerecognizes faculty recently granted tenure who are making an extraordinary impact in their field. Now in its second year, the award invests in scholars' research with funding and two semesters of research leave. The awardees will also work directly with students in their research projects.

This year's winners are Ian Lyons, associate professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences studying math's impact on the brain;Blythe Shepard, an associate professor in the School of Health's Department of Human Science examining one of the most common understudied proteins; and Andrew Zeitlin, an associate professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy working to improve learning outcomes in Rwanda.

"The three remarkable scholars we selected embody Georgetown's mission to be a force for good in the world," said Interim Provost Soyica Diggs Colbert (C'01). "We are honored to support these faculty members whose interdisciplinary work expands our knowledge and makes a real-world impact beyond Georgetown."

Learn more about each of the recipients of the Magis Prize and the discoveries they are making in their fields.

The Cost of Avoiding Math

Ian Lyons is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and the founder of the Math Brain Lab.

Ian Lyons founded theMath Brain Labat Georgetown and uses psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience to understand how we learn, teach and use math. In short, he studies "how the mind/brain does math," he said.

Lyons will use the Magis Prize to learn how long-term math avoidance can erode basic math skills - skills that are crucial for future health and financial outcomes.

"Basic math skills are a core part of one's intellectual toolkit," Lyons wrote in his proposal, "and are essential for obtaining and maintaining good health and high quality of life."

Studies have found that math skills are linked to higher earnings and improved health outcomes. However, adults' math skillshave declined in recent yearsin the U.S. According to a2020 reportfrom the National Center for Education Statistics, 62.7 million Americans have low numeracy skills in English.

In a four-year study, Lyons seeks to find out what happens when Georgetown students avoid math during their undergraduate career. His lab has already found that math anxiety is the number one predictor of math avoidance: Students who are anxious about math avoid courses and activities they think involve it. His project will expand on these findings and investigate the long-term changes in the brain and behavior when students avoid math.

"Focusing on math avoidance across four years in college students will allow us to make robust inferences about how one's choices during this time form the foundation for decades of adulthood," Lyons wrote. "By identifying who is most likely to avoid math and the neural mechanisms that drive this avoidance, we will identify high-leverage opportunities for intervention."

An Unsung Hero in the Human Body

Blythe Shepard is an associate professor in the Human Science Department in the School of Health.

Blythe Shepard and her team of undergraduate researchers study an underappreciated molecule in the human body.

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) - the largest class of proteins in the human body - are present and vital in nearly every bodily function, from detecting light to regulating blood pressure. And while many drugs target these proteins (Ozempic and antihistamines, for example), they are understudied, she said.

"Our exploration of the underappreciated - termed 'unsung receptors' in a class that I teach on campus - is innovative as it expands the boundaries for discovery," she wrote in her proposal. "By determining where they are found, how they are activated and what their functions are, we will lay the foundation for developing new treatments to the most pressing diseases."

For her Magis Prize project, Shepard and students in the School of Health and College of Arts & Sciences will zero in on a subset of the proteins known as "adhesion receptors," which facilitate communication between cells and are linked to processes including immune cell activation.

Shepard found a high level of adhesion receptors in the liver and kidneys. She will spend the next few years understanding the receptors' function in these organs and how they might maintain calcium levels in the kidney and facilitate regeneration in the liver.

Shepard hopes the work will illuminate links between the receptors and osteoporosis as well as liver repair.

Students are crucial for her work, she said. Shepard mentors every single one of the undergraduate researchers in her lab.

"This award provides me with the dedicated time and resources to be able to train students," she said. "The ability to work with equally passionate researchers and mentor the future generation of scientists and doctors makes Georgetown an incredible place to work."

Improving Learning Outcomes in Rwanda

Andrew Zeitlin is an associate professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy.

Since 2014, Associate Professor Andrew Zeitlin has developed a novel approach to improve teacher recruitment, retention and learning in Rwanda.

Through his research, Zeitlin found that 20% of primary school teachers in the country were leaving their jobs annually. Their departures made it difficult for schools to recruit and retain effective teachers, and forced many to assign teachers to topics outside their speciality.

So Zeitlin came up with a plan.

He and his teampartnered with Rwanda's Ministry of Education, its Education Board and academic partners to develop and test a contract that links teachers' pay to their performance. The contract rewarded the top 20% of participating Rwandan teachers with a bonus. It worked.

"These mechanisms induce an extra year of student learning for every year spent in the classroom, effectively doubling the rate of learning growth in primary schools," Zeitlin wrote in his proposal.

At the same time, Zeitlin collaborated with the Rwandan government to deploy a centralized system that accounts for teacher preferences and district needs when matching teachers with schools, replacing the previous randomized approach.

With the Magis Prize, Zeitlin plans to build upon this work. The prize will help provide resources to implement the teacher contracts across Rwanda, support Zeitlin's team as they help unroll a comprehensive assessment to measure learning outcomes for all K-12 students enrolled in public schools in Rwanda, and enable a new trial to evaluate improvements in the teacher assignment system.

"Leveraging the administrative data infrastructure that we have worked with the government to build, we have a unique opportunity to evaluate the labor-market-wide impacts of alternative teacher matching systems," he said.

"I hope to have a lasting impact on foundational learning in Rwanda and on the next generation of scholars and policymakers trained at Georgetown."

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• Georgetown College of Arts & Sciences,
• McCourt School of Public Policy,
• School of Health