IMPACT Awards Spring 2015

The aim of IMPACT is to encourage collaborative research across the Realizing UB2020 theme areas of Humanity, Justice, Innovation, Environment and/or Health. The IMPACT program is focused on funding innovative interdisciplinary projects whose goal is to develop preliminary data that can support external grant applications and directly demonstrate outcomes in these themes. In this round, the 42 applications submitted were reviewed by panels of faculty and, based on the panel recommendations, 10 projects were funded. The research teams noted below have received up to $35,000 to support their one-year collaborative projects (full descriptions of these funded projects may be found here).

The winners are:

• “A Community Response to Mental Health Crisis:  Developing A National Model,” Daniel Antonius, Department of Psychiatry; Michael Cummings, Department of Psychiatry; Thomas Nochajski, Department of Social Work.

• “Robust Nanoscale-Patterned Membranes for Wastewater Treatment Using Laser Chips-Based Lithography,” Liang Feng, Department of Electrical Engineering; Haiqing Lin, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

• “The Contribution of the Carotid Body Chemoreceptors and Physical Activity to Heat Stress Compensatory Responses in Heart Failure,” Blair Johnson, Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences; James Fallavollita, Department of Medicine; David Hostler, Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences; David Pendergast, Department of Physiology & Biophysics.
• “Engineering Literacy the Elementary School: Learning the Engineering Design Process to Read, Write, Think, Talk, and Act Like an Engineer,” Mary McVee, Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction; Kemper Lewis, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Ken English, NYSCEDII; Deborah Moore-Russo, Department of Mathematics Education; Lynn Shanahan, Department of Literacy Education.

• “The Neonatal Microbiome Study: A Pilot Study in Meru County, Kenya,” Amy Millen, Department of Epidemiology and Environment; Pavani Ram, Department of Epidemiology and Environment; Blair Rachel Hageman, Department of Biostatistics; Kelly Kam, Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health; Michael Buck, Department of Biochemistry; Yijun Sun, Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

• “Marianne Moore Archive (MMA): Notebooks Project,” Cristanne Miller, Department of English; Ifeoma Nwogu, Department of Computer Science and Engineering; Setlur Srirangaraju, Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS); James Maynard, Library Special Collections.

• “Iron (II)/(III) Complexes Linked to Liposomes or Nanotubes for Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” Janet Morrow, Department of Chemistry; Javid Rzayev, Department of Chemistry; Jonathan Franklin Lovell, Department of Biomedical Engineering; Ferdinand Schweser, Department of Neurology; Poulsen, David, Department of Neurosurgery, Joseph Spernyak, Department of Biophysics.

• “Strategies to enhance stem cell homing to sites of damage following myocardial infarction,” Sriram Neelamegham, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; John Canty, Department of Medicine.

• “Identification of E4A as a target for treating memory Impairment,” Ying Xu, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Arin Bhattacharjee, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

• “Stereolithography 3D printing of humn organ on a chip,” Ruogang Zhao, Department of Biomedical Engineering; Chi Zhou, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.