Featured Awards – March 2016

Gerard Costa (Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health, CEHS) received a $200,000 subaward from Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey for the NJ Department of Human Services-funded “Grow New Jersey Kids.” The Center will partner with Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey and three Regional Technical Assistance Centers to provide support to GROW NJ KIDS-engaged centers.

Yang Deng (Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) and Lei Zheng (PhD Student, Environmental Management) were awarded $5,000 by the New Jersey Water Resources Research Institute for “Toward A Greener Water Reuse Technology with Ferrate(VI) – Phosphorus Removal and Recovery” which seeks to develop an environmentally sustainable solution to water reuse with ferrate(VI), an emerging, green water treatment agent.

Nina Goodey (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and Andrew M. Tobias (Chemistry Undergraduate Student) were awarded the 2016 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Undergraduate Research Award in the amount of $1,000 for “Expression, purification, and enzymatic characterization of W. bancrofti DHFR.” The goal of the project is the cloning, expression, and purification of the potential pharmaceutical drug target within W. bancrofti, dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR).

Pankaj Lal (Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) was awarded $69,845 by the National Science Foundation for the first year of “CAREER: Geographic Suitability, Socioeconomic Uncertainty, and Environmental Consequences: Exploring Place-based Opportunities for Bioenergy Sustainability.” This project will explore place based solutions for cellulosic bioenergy sustainability, through a unique approach that coordinates three strands of research: fuzzy logic theory based geospatial suitability, stated preference survey and stochastic analyses based socioeconomic uncertainty, and life cycle assessment based environmental analyses. Two dominant cellulosic bioenergy feedstocks, namely switchgrass in Midwestern US and pine in Southern US, will be studied.

Sarah Lowe (Psychology, CHSS) received a $44,787 subaward from Social and Scientific Systems, Inc., for the National Institutes of Health-funded “Gulf Long-Term Follow-Up Study: Mental health Analyses.” The study will investigate potential short- and long-term health effects associated with the clean-up activities following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Robert Meredith (Biology, CSAM) was awarded $136,451 by the National Science Foundation for “Collaborative Research: Advancing Bayesian Phylogenetic Methods for Synthesizing Paleontological and Neontological Data.” This project, in collaboration with Iowa State University, will develop new statistical models, extensions of stochastic birth-death processes, that will integrate information about stratigraphy,taphonomy, and biogeography from the fossil record for use in phylogenetic methods that consider both extant and fossil taxa. The PIs will investigate macroevolutionary patterns in two exemplar clades: Sphenisciformes (penguins) and Crocodyliformes, addressing key hypotheses about phylogenetic relationships, lineage diversification, and biogeography.

Jennifer Urban and Miriam Linver (Family and Child Studies, CEHS) were awarded $1,288,328 by the John Templeton Foundation for “Partnerships for Advancing Character program Evaluation.” The PACE Project is designed to immediately increase the capacity of participating staff from character virtue development programs to evaluate, improve, defend, and seek funding for their programs.