Research Wire: August 2016

8.30.16
A team of engineers at the School of Engineering & Applied Science received a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to work to improve the reliability of wireless technology in industrial applications. Led by Humberto Gonzalez, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering, they will approach the communication from both ends of the spectrum — the controller and the network. Read more on the engineering site.


8.24.16
Yinjie Tang, associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, plans to apply machine learning to guide synthetic biology applications. Tang received a three-year, $245,474 collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation to better predict the productivity of microbes by analyzing big data, or previously published results in this area. Read more on the engineering site.


8.19.16
J.T. Shen, the Das Family Distinguished Career Development Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has received a three-year, $269,003 grant from the National Science Foundation to provide a clear roadmap to researchers to explore the functions of high-throughput quantum light sources, which may ultimately improve communication and biomedical imaging technologies. Read more on the engineering site.


8.18.16
University researchers are developing a new method to help determine the state of the brain in patients in a coma. ShiNung Ching, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and Terrance Kummer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology in the School of Medicine, have received a two-year, $403,625 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop this method, termed Network Reachability Analysis. Read more on the engineering site.


8.17.16
Longfei Shu, a postdoctoral research associate in biology in Arts & Sciences, has received a three-year, $180,000 postdoctoral fellowship from the Life Sciences Research Foundation for a project titled “Proto-farming and the Carried Microbiome in a Social Amoeba” in the laboratory of David C. Queller, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology.


8.10.16
Lora Iannotti, associate professor at the Brown School, has received a $34,800 grant from the Allen Foundation for her project, “Public Health Higher Education Degree Program in Haiti: Nutrition Education.”


8.3.16
Carrie Pettus-Davis, assistant professor in the Brown School and director of the Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, has received a two-year, $361,572 grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to conduct a feasibility study to advance the implementation and testing, including a randomized controlled trial, of deferred-prosecution programs.


8.3.16
Stephanie L. Musgrave, a graduate student in physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences, received a two-year, $25,155 National Science Foundation grant to support doctoral dissertation research on “The Ontogeny of Complex Tool Use in Great Apes,” under the direction of Crickette Sanz, associate professor of anthropology. The research aims to discover how chimpanzee tool traditions are passed through generations. Ultimately, the project hopes to assist in modeling the way social learning and sexual differentiation may have contributed to the emergence of complex technology in humans.

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