Spring 2020 Seed Grant Award Winners

Below are the winners of the Spring 2020 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. 72 applications were received from the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the School of Health Technology and Management, the School of Nursing, and the School of Medicine. The following projects were selected for funding with an award start date of August 1, 2021.

 

Maya Shelly, Department of Neurology and Behavior: Molecular mechanisms that initiate principle dendrite polarization during embryonic neuronal development

Alexander Orlov and Anatoly Frenkel, Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering: Observing and modelling new ceramics materials that can breathe out uniform and tunable nanoparticles

Shan Lin,  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Scott Smolka, Department of Computer Science, and Marina Charitou, School of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism: A Smart Artificial Pancreas for Patients with Diabetes

Mengkun Liu, Dmitri Kharzeev, Jennifer Cano and Xu Du, Department of Physics and Astronomy: Building Quantum transducers at GHz to IR frequencies using topological materials

Heather Lynch, Department of Ecology and Evolution, and Monica Bugallo, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Moving beyond mark-recapture: Advanced Bayesian inference for inferring demographic rates from unmarked individuals

Brooke Ellison, School of Health Technology and Management, Xiaojun Bi, Department of Computer Science, Mikhail Gouzman, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Kimberly Noel, Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine: Next Generation Orally-Activated Multi-Modal Assistive Technologies for People with Severe Disabilities

Jonathan Rudick, Robert B. Grubbs, and Scott Laughlin, Department of Chemistry, Daniel Knopf, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences: Biomimetic Polymers and Coatings to Combat Freezing and Icing

Erich Mackow and Jorge Benach, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Center for Infectious Diseases: Determinants of Powassan Virus Pathogenesis in Human Brain Endothelial Cells