Research Wire: September 2018

9.27.18
Xinyi Liu, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, won a $312,000 National Science Foundation grant in support of research on the origins and spread of millet cultivation.


9.26.18
Arye Nehorai, the Eugene and Martha Lohman Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and collaborators have developed a method to estimate electrical current in the uterus during contractions from magnetomyography (MMG), a noninvasive technique that maps muscle activity by recording the abdominal magnetic fields that electrical currents in muscles produce.

The results, published in PLoS One, could have clinical applications in better understanding pre- and post-term birth and dysfunctional labor.


9.25.18
Odis Johnson, associate professor of education and of sociology, both in Arts & Sciences, and Sheretta Butler Barnes, associate professor of social work at the Brown School, have received a National Science Foundation grant of $100,000 to examine the impact of race, gender and social control in U.S. schools on educational and occupational attainment in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.  The collaboration took shape at a Collaboration on Race, Inequality, and Social Mobility in America (CRISMA) event that sought to stimulate research partnerships among faculty from across the university.


9.24.18
Roger Chamberlain, professor of computer science and engineering at the School of Engineering & Applied Science, received a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant to improve the efficiency of streaming computer applications. His co-investigators, also at the School of Engineering, are Jeremy Buhler, professor, Ron Cytron, professor, and Angelina Lee, assistant professor. The group is working to expose new tuning knobs that will enable performance auto-tuning while executing applications on architecturally diverse computers.


9.24.18
Joseph Jez, professor and chair of biology in Arts & Sciences, will collaborate on a $762,000 National Science Foundation grant on the mechanisms and impacts of de-regulating aromatic amino acid biosynthesis in plants. The goal is to understand how plants regulate the biosynthesis of these molecules and how different upstream and downstream pathways, which move substantial amounts of carbon into building blocks for growth, are coordinated.


9.20.18
Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have used a unique set of state-of-the-art imaging techniques to discover how calcium carbonate nanoparticles nucleate, which is important for those manufacturing the carbonate nanomaterials and controlling metal carbonation during CO2 sequestration.

Young-Shin Jun, professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the School of Engineering & Applied Science, and Quingun Li, a former doctoral student in her lab, are the first to measure the activation energy and kinetic factors of calcium carbonate’s nucleation, both key to predicting and controlling the process. Nucleation is the initial step in forming a solid phase in a fluid system, such as sugar crystals forming on string to make rock candy. Results of the research were published in Communications Chemistry Sept. 19.

Read more on the School of Engineering website.


9.20.18
Brett Wick, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in Arts & Sciences, will use a $230,000 National Science Foundation grant to study “Applications of harmonic analysis to Riesz transforms and commutators beyond the classical settings.”


9.20.18
Hani Zaher, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, received a $136,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the role of the ribosome in determining the fate of damaged mRNA.


9.18.18
Bronwen Konecky, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $317,000 National Science Foundation grant toward a collaborative research project titled “A Model/Proxy Synthesis of Walker Circulation Trends During the Last Millennium.”


9.18.18
William Buhro, professor and chair of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, received a $480,000 grant from the National Science Foundation toward his research on intramolecular anodic olefin coupling reactions.


9.17.18
James L. Gibson, the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government in the Department of Political Science in Arts & Sciences, is co-recipient of a $150,000 Russell Sage Foundation grant for research examining how judicial decisions contribute to inequalities in such areas as school funding, collective bargaining and state restrictions on citizens’ ability to vote. Michael Nelson of Pennsylvania State University is co-recipient of the grant.


9.12.18
Researchers led by ShiNung Ching at the School of Engineering & Applied Science and Todd Braver in Arts & Sciences are working together to better understand cognitive control thanks to a $610,560 National Science Foundation BRAIN Initiative grant.


9.10.18
Jeffrey G. Catalano, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $676,000 grant from NASA to investigate “Life on clays: Evaluating Fe(II)-smectites as electron donors on the early Earth and on other planetary bodies.”


9.10.18
Ram Dixit, associate professor, Erik Herzog, professor, and Ian Duncan, professor, all in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences, received $650,000 from the National Science Foundation to acquire a multiphoton microscope system as a shared instrument for the Washington University research community.


9.10.18
Katharine Flores, professor, and Rohan Mishra, assistant professor, both of mechanical engineering and materials science in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, received a three-year, $496,077 grant from the National Science Foundation to work toward creating high-performance metallic alloys that are resistant to corrosion and fatigue. They plan to find the best combination of elements using computational methods and additive manufacturing, rather than trial and error, building on foundational work in high-entropy alloys. Read more on the engineering website.


9.10.18
Douglas A. Wiens, Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, received a $173,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in support of research on “Comprehensive seismic and thermal models for Antarctica and the Southern Oceans: A synthesis of 15 years of seismic exploration.”


9.5.18
The National Science Foundation recently awarded Christopher Gill and Sanjoy Baruah, of the School of Engineering & Applied Science, a three-year, $501,797 grant to develop a unified framework for the design, verification and deployment of dynamically customizable safety-critical systems.

The engineers will combine computing theories, including real-time scheduling and formal methods, to develop methods to enable dynamically customizable software. Any software produced during the research project will be open-sourced and shareable. Read more on the School of Engineering website.


9.5.18
Erik Henriksen, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, was awarded a $406,431 National Science Foundation grant for his project, “Pursuit of Quantum Spin Liquids in Exfoliated Anti-Ferromagnetic Insulators.” Henriksen will apply techniques adapted from his graphene research to investigate the physical properties of ruthenium trichloride —  a layered, crystalline material that exhibits the special magnetic characteristics of quantum spin liquids. Using samples that are only a single atom thick, Henriksen’s new work will take advantage of the surprising ability of graphene to “feel” the behavior of materials it touches. Quantum spin liquids may hold the key to developing such groundbreaking technologies as room temperature superconductivity or topological quantum computation.


9.4.18
Joel Myerson, research professor of psychological and brain sciences, and Leonard Green, professor of psychological and brain sciences and of economics, all in Arts & Sciences, received a $1.61 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project titled “Decision-making in younger and older adults: A discounting framework.”


9.4.18
Bruce Carlson, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, received $700,000 from the National Science Foundation for research on “Adaptive rewiring of a sensory network through spike-timing-dependent plasticity.”


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