Congratulations to Department of Communication faculty member, Dr. Xiaoquan Zhao, for receiving the highest honor of a Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University over the summer.
This status recognizes exceptional and sustained contributions to research, scholarship, and teaching. According to Dr. Zhao's bio, he "received his Ph.D. (2005) from the Annenberg School for Communication, the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on health message design and effects, evaluation of public communication campaigns, news effects on health and risk perceptions, health information seeking, and the role of the self in health behavior and persuasive communication. The substantive topics of his work include tobacco control, substance use prevention, cancer risk education, medical adherence, and climate change. Dr. Zhao has published widely in journals of communication and public health, including Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Communication Research, Health Communication, Journal of Health Communication, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, and Social Science & Medicine. His work has received support from both public and private funding sources. In 2013-2014, he worked as a Tobacco Regulatory Science Fellow at the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products. From 2014 to 2025 (with several breaks in between), he has served as subject matter expert and scientific adviser to the Division of Research and Evaluation in the Office of Health Communication and Education at FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, providing wide-ranging research support for FDA’s ongoing national tobacco education campaigns. Dr. Zhao is the editor-in-chief for the journal Health Communication. Dr. Zhao joined GMU in fall 2005. The courses he offers include health communication, persuasion, health campaigns, and research methods".