Research Wire: September 2017

9.27.17
Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology at the School of Medicine, received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “Podocyte Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Nephrotic Syndrome.” Nephrotic syndrome causes serious morbidity and high mortality, accounting for 15 percent of prevalent end-stage renal disease. Learn more on the Division of Nephrology site.


9.27.17
Jake Rosenfeld, associate professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences, received a $259,475 grant from the National Science Foundation for a study titled “Pay Secrecy Policies and Pay in U.S. Workplaces.” The project will survey 3,000 U.S. workers to determine how company prohibitions on employee discussions about pay may influence pay disadvantages of women relative to men and racial/ethnic minority workers relative to white workers.


9.21.17
Rohan Mishra, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the School of Engineering & Applied Science, received a four-year, $361,177 grant from the National Science Foundation to design highly efficient catalysts using 2-D materials. He is collaborating with researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They hope the work could have a major impact in energy-related systems, such as carbon dioxide conversion. Read more on the School of Engineering site.


9.19.17
Gregory Bowman, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the School of Medicine, received a five-year, nearly $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Allosteric impact of non-active-site mutations on enzymatic function.”


9.19.17
Mary Kathryn Sewell-Loftin, a postdoctoral research scholar in internal medicine at the School of Medicine, received $59,166 as part of a three-year grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “The Role of Cancer-Associated Fibroblast Biomechanics on Angiogenesis.”


9.15.17
Engineers are honing in on a new way to accurately assess the effects of forces during a traumatic brain injury. The National Science Foundation recently awarded  Phil Bayly, the Lilyan & E. Lisle Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and his collaborators — Hong Chen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and assistant professor of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine, and Joel Garbow, professor of radiology at the School of Medicine — a three-year, $467,000 grant to develop and validate the new measurement method. Learn more on the engineering site.


9.14.17
Jeffrey G. Catalano, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $249,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in support of a collaborative project titled “Linking metal nanoparticle chemical modifications at the luminal/intestinal epithelia interface to intracellular alterations of essential metal homeostasis.” Catalano also received $171,000 from the National Science Foundation as co-investigator of a research project titled “Impact of redox-driven recrystallization on the stability and reactivity of uranium and lead oxides.”


9.14.17
Denise Head, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, was awarded $229,000 from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in support of a project titled “Understanding the return journey: route reversal in younger and older adults.”


9.13.17
Ximena Lemoine, a graduate student in archaeology in Arts & Sciences, received a $20,000 Wenner Gren dissertation fieldwork grant in support of research on “Pigs in Neolitithic North China: domestication in the context of diversity and regional expression.”


9.13.17
Caitlin Rankin,a graduate student in archaeology in Arts & Sciences, received a National Geographic Society Young Explorer Grant of $4,600 toward a research project titled “Wet or dry? Geoarchaeological evidence of regional climate variation in the central Mississippi River valley.”


9.12.17
Ryan Clegg-Watkins, a postdoctoral research associate working with Bradley L. Jolliff, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $48,000 grant from NASA in support of a research project titled “Determining boulder size, frequency and range distributions around impact craters at spacecraft landing sites.” Also, Michael Bouchard, a doctoral student in earth and planetary sciences, also working with Jolliff, received $44,000 through the NASA Earth Space and Science Fellowship program in support of a research project titled “Investigating Martian rock types and origins via rover observations and comparisons to Martian meteorites.”


9.12.17
Raymond E. Arvidson, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, received $50,000 from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a collaborator on a Martian mineral spectroscopy project.


9.6.17
Meredith Jackrel, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, received an $80,000 Springboard Fellowship from the Target ALS Foundation in support of her research on protein folding and neurodegenerative disease.


9.6.17
Pratim Biswas, the Lucy and Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and Richard Axelbaum, the Stifel & Quinette Jens Professor of Environmental Engineering Science at the School of Engineering, received a $499,841 grant from the National Science Foundation for a research project titled “SusChEM: Ultrafine Particle Formation in Advanced Low Carbon Combustion Processes.”


9.6.17
Todd Kuffner, assistant professor of mathematics in Arts & Sciences, received an $80,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project titled “Higher-order asymptotics and accurate inference for post-selection.”


9.6.17
Laura Hennefield, a postdoctoral research associate in psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received $57,000 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in support of a research project titled “The development of optimism in preschool-age children: individual differences and implications for resiliency and mental health.”


9.6.17
Elijah Thimsen, assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, received a three-year, $248,984 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the vaporization of nanoparticles in low-temperature plasmas. He will explore a new aerosol mechanism in these plasmas that has not been previously studied. The mechanism allows for materials, such as metals, to vaporize at room temperature, due to the nonequilibrium environment within the plasma. Learn more on the School of Engineering site.


9.5.17
Bailey Fearing, postdoctoral research associate in biomedical engineering at the School of Engineering & Applied Science, received a two-year, $120,000 grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a research project titled “Cytoskeletal Regulation of Human Nucleus Pulposus Cell Phenotype.”


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