A number of faculty members have received National Science Foundation and other competitive awards in recent months to support a range of research projects and field work.
Valerie Barr, professor and chair of the Computer Science Department, was granted $27,000 for an NSF CPATH “Research Experiences for Teachers Supplement.”
The award builds upon Barr’s “CPATH: Campus Wide Computation Initiative – A New Model for Computing Education” grant. Two teachers from Bard High School Early College in New York City will participate in activities that mirror the work at Union by consulting with faculty who have added computational components to their courses.
Karen Brison, professor and chair of the Anthropology Department, has received $96,983 for “A Cosmopolitan Ethnography of Global Pentecostal Networks: the View from Fiji” under the University of California’s Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative (PCRI).
The award, which runs through May 31, 2012, has been issued through USC’s prime sponsor, the John Templeton Foundation.
Holli Frey, assistant professor of geology, has received a $35,000 Research Corporation-Single Investigator Cottrell College Science Award to support her field work on “Weathering of volcanic rocks and their influence on regolith and water chemistry in the Deschutes Basin, Oregon.”
Frey will conduct a preliminary chemical analysis in the field and then continue her research at Union. Working with undergraduate research assistants, she will use a variety of techniques and instrumentation.
Joanne Kehlbeck, assistant professor of chemistry, received $309,950 through the NSF MRI-Recovery Act program to acquire a 400 MHz NMR spectrometer. The funding comes from stimulus dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The grant runs through April 30, 2013.
Rebecca Koopmann, associate professor of physics, has received a GSU Subaward of $3,230 for a UAT Summer 2010 Stipend (within the NSF Undergraduate ALFALFA Team project). The project begins June 1 and runs through Aug. 31.
This award enhances the existing collaborations under the project and enables new research opportunities for an undergraduate.
Kathryn Lesh, professor of Mathematics, is the recipient of an NSF Focused Research Group Collaborative Research Project award of $141,896 through May 31, 2013.
The funds will be used to probe “The Calculus of Functors and the Theory of Operads: Interactions and Applications” in collaboration with researchers from the University of Georgia, University of Virginia, Kansas State University and the University of Notre Dame.
Many parts of the project involve sophisticated use of category theory, a subject that is increasingly impacting applied subjects like computer science.
Ashok Ramasubramanian, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship that will enable him to conduct research and teach biomechanics in Sri Lanka.