Featured Awards – November 2017

‌Sarita Eisenberg • Communication Sciences and Disorders
Better Together: Using Drill to Increase the Efficacy of Embedded Therapy for Grammatical Forms
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
$75,000
Dr. Eisenberg’s project will determine whether combining Clinician-Directed Drill and Child-Centered embedded therapy would work better than using only one of these approaches or using the two approaches sequentially for targeting grammatical forms in preschool children with language impairments.

Laurence Jay-Rayon Ibrahim Aibo • Modern Languages & Literature
A Colony in Crisis in Haitian Creole: Digital Scholarship and Activism through Translation
New Jersey Council for the Humanities
$4,920
This project will involve MSU students creating written and oral Haitian Creole translations of 18th century French archival sources on political life, commerce, the lives of people of color, and the moments leading to the Haitian Revolution. The creole translations will be part of a larger digital humanities project called “A Colony in Crisis.”

Tamara Leech • Public Health
Pockets of Peace: Investigating Urban Neighborhoods Resilient to Adolescent Violence
William T. Grant Foundation
$46,804
Pockets of Peace is a study that conceptualizes neighborhoods themselves as potentially resilient.  The project focuses on resilient communities rather than individual resiliency in communities. The intention of the work is to augment the body of research on neighborhood rates of violence such that it can be more easily translated into actionable policies and programs.
SAMHSA Young Adult Survey
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
$32,414
This project addresses the lack of available data on young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 years old in support of a program designed to address two of the nation’s top substance abuse prevention priorities: underage drinking among persons aged 12 to 20; and prescription drug misuse and abuse among persons aged 12 to 25. Supported by a subaward from Indiana University, Dr. Leech will maintain, analyze and report results from the database containing responses to the 2017 phone survey portion of the project.

Jorge Lorenzo Trueba • Earth and Environmental Studies
Exploring the Role of Organic Sediment Dynamics on Channel Clustering and Alluvial Architecture
American Chemical Society – Petroleum Research Fund
$110,000
This award will support the development of models to explore whether internal (autogenic) processes in sediment transport systems can partially explain self-organization in alluvial architecture.

‌‌Joshua Sandry • Psychology
Mathematical Models of Motor and Mental Speed
Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers
$39,083
Dr. Sandry’s study aims to use mathematical modelling and behavioral experimentation to differentiate between motor and mental processing speed and identify how measures derived from mathematical modelling relate to traditional clinical assessments. By doing this, the study will potentially transform the understanding of disease-related motor and cognitive changes.

‌Meiyin Wu • Passaic River Institute
Amy Ferdinand • University Facilities
Develop a Geodatabase for Essex County, NJ – Part 1
Essex County Department of Parks
$2,169
Dr. Wu and Dr. Ferdinand will work with the Essex County Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs on creating a geodatabase of the Park system. The geodatabase will be populated with available data to investigate and manage complex environmental challenges such as pollution and contamination, pollution reduction, flooding, sediment remediation, ecosystem restoration, etc.