Research Wire: October 2017

10.26.17
Kimberly Parker, an incoming assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, received a four-year, $469,227 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study the environmental fate of a pesticide that uses RNA interference biotechnology and is produced by novel genetically modified crops. Read more on the engineering site.


10.26.17
Brian Carpenter, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received $10,000 in seed grant funding from the Gary and Mary West Foundation. One of five seed grants awarded Sept. 28-29 at the Second National Symposium for Academic Palliative Care Education and Research near San Diego, the grant will support Carpenter’s research on “Enhancing Palliative Care Knowledge Through a National Lifelong Learning Network.”


10.24.17
Sheng-Kwei Song, professor of radiology at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology in the School of Medicine, received a three-year, nearly $650,000 grant from the National MS Society for a research project titled “How does optic neuritis impact nerve function and its assessment?”


10.24.17
Kelsey Prissel, a doctoral student working with Mike Krawczynski, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $45,000 graduate fellowship from NASA toward a project titled “Experimental investigation of lunar iron isotope fractionation and implications.”


10.24.17
Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology at the School of Medicine, received a $7,500 Children’s Discovery Institute and Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Core Pilot Grant for a research project titled “Modeling tubular endoplasmic reticulum stress-induced renal fibrosis using human induced pluripotent stem cells.”


10.24.17
Richard Powis, a graduate student studying sociocultural anthropology in Arts & Sciences, received a $34,000 Fulbright-Hays doctoral dissertation research award in support of his anthropological work abroad.


10.24.17
Jordan Brock, a doctoral student working with Kenneth Olsen, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, received $6,300 from the National Geographic Societytoward a research project titled “History of domestication of the emerging biofuel crop C. sativa.”


10.23.17
Shantanu Chakrabartty, in collaboration with Baranidharan Raman, both of the School of Engineering & Applied Science, received a two-year, roughly $230,000 grant from the BRAIN Initiative of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The research team aims to develop a self-sustaining brain implant that can record neural activity patterns over an organism’s lifetime. Read more on the engineering site.


10.19.17
Kristen Naegle, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has received a three-year, $610,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a toolkit that will allow biomedical engineers to study the effects of tyrosine phosphorylation, which becomes dysregulated in cancer. The toolkit would be a fast, inexpensive and accessible way for researchers to produce phosphorylated and soluble proteins compared to current methods. Read more about her hopes to identify new therapeutic interventions for cancer.


10.18.17
Dmitriy Yablonskiy, professor of radiology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year, nearly $2.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)for a research project titled “In vivo MRI biomarkers of microstructural correlates of brain pathology in preclinical and early Alzheimer disease.” The research aims to evaluate an innovative Gradient Echo Plural Contrast Imaging technique, developed in Yablonskiy’s lab, as an MRI tool for detecting early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.


10.18.17
Zhude Tu, professor of radiology, and Delphine Chen, MD, associate professor of radiology, at the School of Medicine, received a five-year, $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “PET Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Receptor 1 (S1PR1) radiotracers for multiple sclerosis.”


10.17.17
Postdoctoral researcher Cory Knoot received $66,000 from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation toward a project titled “Blue-green engineering: A sustainable biosynthetic production system for cyanobacterial natural products.” Knoot is working with Himadri Pakrasi, Myron and Sonya Glassberg/Albert and Blanche Greensfelder Distinguished University Professor of biology in Arts & Sciences.


10.17.17
Brendan Haas, a physics graduate student in Arts & Sciences, received a $45,000 graduate student fellowship from NASA toward a research project titled “Characterizing Comet 81P/Wild 2 with Acfer 094 and Tagish Lake analog foils.”


10.17.17
James Janetka, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the School of Medicine, received a two-year, $300,000 Career Catalyst Research Competitive Renewal Grant Program award from Susan G. Komen for the Cure for his research titled “Multifunctional inhibitors of MET/RON signaling and cross-talk with EGFR/HER2.” The work is focused on developing new drugs to treat breast cancer by dual targeting of the tumor and its microenvironment.


10.12.17
Adam Culbreth, a graduate student in psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received an $88,000 research fellowship award from the National Institute of Mental Health within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) toward a project titled “Cognitive effort avoidance in psychotic disorders.”


10.12.17
Dian Tan, a postdoctoral researcher working with Kater Murch, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, received fellowship funding from Rigetti Computing totaling $84,000 in support of a project titled “Mapping quantum states into and from noisy transmission lines with superconducting qubits.”


10.11.17
The School of Medicine is sharing a $25 million grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to support the use of health data to move basic science discoveries into clinical care.

The university’s role, which is supported by a $2 million award, is led by  Philip Payne, the Robert J. Terry Professor, and includes a collaboration between the university’s Institute for Informatics, the Health Systems Innovation Lab and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences. Read more on the School of Medicine site.


10.11.17
Benjamin Moseley, assistant professor of computer science at the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has received two multiyear grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling $900,000. In one grant, Moseley, Kunal Agrawal and I-Ting Angelina Lee, also assistant professors of computer science, received a four-year, $650,000 grant to find a way to schedule jobs so that the parallel computing process runs fairly and efficiently. In addition, Moseley has received a four-year, $250,000 grant to develop an algorithmic foundation for using a new kind of memory called high-bandwidth memory. Read more on the engineering site.


10.11.17
Marilyn Piccirillo, university fellow in psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received $77,000 from the National Institute of Mental Health within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in support of research on longitudinal risk factors for depression and development of individual risk models.


10.11.17
Corey Westfall, a postdoctoral researcher working with Petra Levin, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, received $68,000 from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation in support of a project titled “Living large: Connecting nutrients, metabolism and cell size.”


10.9.17
Mikhail Berezin, assistant professor of radiology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “An Imaging-Based Approach to Understand and Predict Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy (CIPN).” CIPN is a devastating adverse side effect of cancer treatment, occurring in nearly 40 percent of patients treated with common chemotherapy drugs.


10.5.17
Keith Hengen, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, received $747,000 as part of a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “Homeostatic plasticity mechanisms support brain function in vivo.”


10.5.17
Christine Floss, research professor in physics in Arts & Sciences, received a three-year, $648,000 grant from NASA in support of a project titled “Microanalytical characterization of presolar silicate grains:  Constraints on grain formation in stellar environments and grain survival in the early solar nebula.”


10.5.17
Todd Braver, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a two-year, $419,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) toward research on the interactions of motivation and cognitive control in older adult decision-making.


10.2.17
Virginia McKay, postdoctoral research fellow working with the Center for Public Health Systems Science and the Center for Mental Health Services Research at the Brown School, received a two-year $419,375 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “De-implementation of Low-Value HIV Prevention Interventions.”


10.2.17
Su-Hsin Chang, assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Public Health Sciences at the School of Medicine, received a two-year $419,375 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “Modeling the co-existence of chronic diseases related to obesity.” Chang will use a quantitative modeling approach to study obesity, the co-existence of obesity-related chronic diseases and mortality in the United States in terms of life expectancy and lifetime health-care costs.


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