Featured Awards – May 2016

Zoe Burkholder (Educational Foundations, CEHS) received an Axelrod Family Award of $5,000 from the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education for the project “Human Rights Education Internship.” The internship will offer 10 undergraduate students each fall and spring semester professional training in human rights education program development, with the goal of expanding the undergraduate training in Holocaust and genocide education at MSU, including a range of prejudice reduction, bias, bullying, and racism prevention programs.

Yang Deng ‌(Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) was awarded $5,000 by the NJ Sea Grant Consortium for “Biochar-Coated Mulches for Alleviation of Stormwater N for Healthy New Jersey Coastal Waters.” This project will acquire necessary data to evaluate nitrogen removal with biofilms cultivated on biochar-coated wood mulches, with a long-term goal of developing sustainable stormwater management strategies for healthy coastal waters.

Jorge‌ Lorenzo Trueba (Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) received a $35,000 installment from the NJ Sea Grant Consortium for a two-year award that will equal $140,000 in total. This collaborative project with the University of Maryland, the University of Delaware, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, titled “Managing for biodiversity and blue carbon in the face of sea-level rise and barrier-island migration,” will conduct a study to investigate the geologic and ecologic response of coupled barrier-backbarrier systems to relative sea-level rise and the implications for the backbarrier ecosystem services of biodiversity provision and blue carbon sequestration.

‌Ruth Propper (Psychology, CHSS) was awarded $44,921 by the Army Research Office for “Individual Differences in Handedness Effects on Categorical versus Coordinate Spatial Processing,” which will determine individual differences in handedness effects on categorical versus coordinate spatial processing using ecologically valid spatial information, as well as the handedness classification scheme best predictive of performance on categorical and coordinate tasks as a function of individual differences in handedness.

Michael Weinstein (Dean’s Office, CSAM) received a $6,005 subaward from New Jersey Institute of Technology for the NJ Sea Grant Consortium-funded project “At Risk – Healthy Coastal Ecosystems and Resilient Communities & Economies in an Era of Climate Change: A Balanced Approach to Protecting People, Property and Nature in Historic Greenwich Township, N.J.” Dr. Weinstein will develop an Environmental Constraints Analysis to evaluate proposed engineering designs to mitigate storm surge and flooding during severe storm events at Greenwich, NJ.