Lawrence, Seáñez win collaboration grants

Mark Lawrence and Ismael Seáñez, both assistant professors in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, have won $25,000 Collaboration Initiation Grants from the school. 

The program awards one-year grants to projects that facilitate collaborative research among university departments for tenure-track faculty. The grants are a pathway for faculty to apply for larger interdisciplinary grants; to create a better project than one researcher in a single discipline could achieve; and to demonstrate the potential to sustain the collaboration and obtain external funding.

Lawrence, an assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering, is collaborating with Erik Henriksen, an associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, on a project looking to take advantage of the unique charge transport properties of graphene to turn single infrared photon absorption events into strong microwave signals.

Seáñez, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is collaborating with Camilo Molina, MD, and Lara W. Crock, MD, PhD, both at the School of Medicine, on a project co-funded by the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences. The team aims to speed development of applications to restore lost functions in those with neurological disease and injury.

Read more on the McKelvey School of Engineering website.