Fall 2023 Seed Grant Award Winners

Below are the winners of the Fall 2023 Seed Grant Program competition. Faculty were asked to submit an abstract and brief proposal, including a timeline that demonstrated how this seed funding would help to develop a highly competitive proposal for extramural funding. Sixty-six applications were received from Stony Brook colleges, including, but not limited to, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Renaissance School of Medicine, the School of Communication and Journalism, the School of Dental Medicine, and the School of Health Professions. The following projects were selected for funding with an award start date of January 12, 2024. 

Dimitris Assanis and David Hwang, Department of Mechanical Engineering: Overcoming Carbon-Free Fuel Challenges: Laser-Induced Ammonia Combustion

Niranjan Balasubramanian, Aruna Balasubramanian, and Anshul Gandhi, Department of Computer Science: Significantly Reducing Energy Consumption of Deep Neural Networks

Isadora Botwinick, Department of Surgery, Ulas Sunar, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lucian Manu, Department of Psychiatry, and Charles Mikell, Department of Neurosurgery: Neuromodulation for Delirium in Critically-Ill Patients

Quinton Bruch, Department of Chemistry: Bimetallic Catalysts for Upcycling CO2 and Oxygenase Mimicry

Nicholas Carpino, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and  Iwao Ojima, Department of Chemistry: Targeting Sts to Optimize Host Antimicrobial Immunity

Holly Colognato, Department of Pharmacological Sciences: Enhancing Regeneration in Demyelinating Conditions by Using Metformin to Promote Myelin Repair

Marine Frouin, Department of Geosciences: Understanding the relationship between the variability of the Radiofluorescence Signal and the Variability in the Geochemistry of Individual feldspar grains

John Haley, Department of Pathology, Robert Rizzo, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, and Peter Tonge, Department of Chemistry: Development of neutral ceramidase (nCDase) Inhibitors for Colorectal Cancer

Briana Last, Department of Psychology: Policies as Structural Determinants of Sexual and Gender Minority People's Mental Health

Wenbo Li, School of Communication and Journalism: Combating AI-Generated Science Misinformation: Investigating Impact on Racial Minority Communities and Developing Effective Science Communication Strategies

Mina Mahdian, Department of Prosthodontics and Digital Technology, Prateek Prasanna, Department of Biomedical Informatics, and Haibin Ling, Department of Computer Science: Automated Characterization of Carotid Artery Calcification in Dental Cone Beam Computed Tomographic Images as a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Disease

Sharon Martino, Department of Physical Therapy, Wei Yin, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Adam Gonzalez, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health: Effects of Activity Tracking and Virtual Reality Mindfulness on Stress and Cardiometabolic Health of College Students

Thomas McFadden, John Frederick Bailyn, and Sandhya Sundaresan, Department of Linguistics, and Thomas Graf, Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computational Science: Syntactic Locality: An Interface of Typology, Theory and Computation

Robert Rizzo, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, and Peter Tonge, Department of Chemistry: Structure-Based Design of Anti-Bacterial Agents Targeting LpxC

Chander Sadasivan, Department of Neurosurgery, Shikui Chen, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and David Gu, Department of Computer Science and Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics: Topology Optimization for the Design of Deployable Personalized Medical Devices

Neelima Sehgal, Department of Physics and Astronomy: Enabling the Sharpest Baby Picture of Our Universe

Maya Shelly, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior: Mechanistic Elucidation of Active Forgetting in the Management of Memory

Jawaad Sheriff and Danny Bluestein, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wadie F. Bahou, Department of Medicine, and Yuefan Deng, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics: Platelet Mechanical Stiffness and Shear-Mediated Response Across the Lifespan

Josef Stiegler, Kimberley Chapelle, and Andrew J. Moore, Department of Anatomical Sciences: Paleontology of Early Dinosaurs and Their Kin at the Snyder Quarry: An Exceptional Late Triassic Site in the Chama Basin of Northern New Mexico

Ken-Ichi Takemaru, Department of Pharmacological Sciences, Michael Airola, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Christopher Percival, Department of Anthropology, and  Natalia Peunova, Department of Anesthesiology: Mechanisms of Ciliary Membrane Shaping in Airways

Peter Tonge and Alyssa Pollard, Department of Chemistry: Targeted Degradation of Indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) and Tryptophan 2,3- Dioxygenase (TDO) as a Novel Anti-Cancer Strategy