Category: Notable Grants

This CAREER project focuses on the study of surfactant compounds in atmospheric aerosol and their effects on particle hygroscopic growth. Field collections and laboratory experiments using high resolution chemical and physical analyses will be used to assess the influence of surfactant molecular composition and associated properties on the hygroscopic growth of atmospheric particles. Hygroscopic growth can alter particle size and composition, both of which are important determinants in the influence of aerosol particles on visibility and human health.

The effect of surfactants on particle hygroscopic growth is expected to be nonlinear and dependent on the surfactant molecular composition, structure, and critical micelle concentration. The experimental plan will address the following questions: (1) What are the compositions, structures, and interfacial properties of surfactants in atmospheric aerosol particles? How do these surfactant characteristics vary as a function of particle size and air mass source region (e.g., natural, anthropogenic, marine, aged influences)? (2) What effects do surfactant structure, composition, and interfacial properties have on the hygroscopic growth of submicron and supermicron aerosol particles? Chemical and physical measurements of aerosol particles collected as part of two field campaigns at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, on the coast of Georgia, will be made during two seasons to capture seasonal variability. Laboratory experiments will also be conducted to measure the hygroscopic growth of model laboratory-generated aerosol particles to determine the influence of the surfactant fraction directly. Multivariate statistics will be used to determine the surfactant properties in different particle types.

The education and outreach plan includes working with high school students to collect local air quality measurements, developing a new laboratory course to explore the principles of analytical chemistry through measurements of aerosol chemistry, and conducting a first-year research seminar course and a summer research experience for undergraduate students.

• Funder: NSF
• Amount: $730,100
• PI: Amanda Frossard

Obesity continues to rise worldwide. Maternal obesity and consumption of high calorie diets continue to be public health concerns. The intrauterine and early postnatal environment provides support that is critical to the proper development and health of offspring. Maternal high fat (HF) diet consumption during pregnancy can have persistent detrimental effects on the fetus that predispose to obesity and its comorbidities. Our preliminary data in a rat model suggest that maternal HF diet has negative consequences on offspring controls of food intake via the gut- brain axis. Our overarching hypothesis is that gut dysbiosis resulting from perinatal exposure to maternal HF diet alters development of the gut-brain axis and vagally-mediated controls of feeding in offspring leading to increased susceptibility to obesity and other metabolic disorders. Aim 1 will determine how vagally-mediated controls of feeding are altered in rat offspring from dams consuming a HF during pregnancy and lactation. We hypothesize that HF offspring will be less sensitive to peripheral gut hormones, meal pre-loads, and/or nutrients that normally promote satiety. Aim 2 will determine how vagal communication between the gut and the brain is altered in HF offspring. We hypothesize that decreased satiation responses occur because (a) there is an alteration in the structure of VAN projections from the gut to the brain, (b) deficits in enteroendocrine cell number or function, and/or (c) the vagus nerve is less responsive to gut feedback signals. Aim 3 will define the role of gut microbiota composition in HF offspring propensity to obesity and other metabolic disorders. Our preliminary data indicate that HF offspring have gut dysbiosis and greater intestinal permeability by the time that they are weaned at postnatal day 21. Dysbiosis is sufficient to alter vagal structure and function, therefore we hypothesize that gut dysbiosis in HF offspring negatively affects gut-brain axis development and function. We will transfer dysbiotic HF microbiota to germ-free neonates to test sufficiency of dysbiosis in altered gut-brain axis function and determine whether use of prebiotics to normalize microbiota composition of HF fed dams, and consequently their offspring, will improve offspring gut-brain axis development and function. Together the proposed experiments will identify components of the gut-brain axis that are altered by early life exposure to maternal HF diet and could be targets for intervention to prevent adverse long-term metabolic consequences in HF offspring.

• Funder: NIH (via Johns Hopkins University)
• Amount: $902,749
• PI: Claire de La Serre

Efforts to promote diversity in undergraduate STEM education have made important inroads. Yet, these efforts remain stymied by cultural and structural factors that favor the status quo and lead to inequities and exclusion. LCC4 proposes to leverage the collective expertise and experiences of 16 institutions to establish and evaluate policies, develop and sustain instructional development, and develop and enact teaching evaluation practices that rely on multiple, valid and reliable sources of evidence. This collective effort will enable the institutions to incentivize, foster, and reward inclusive teaching and, in turn, disrupt exclusionary norms and catalyze advancement toward inclusive excellence. This proposal includes three major projects. The first aim is to establish and evaluate policies that incentivize and reward inclusive teaching, increasing its relevance to annual review, promotion, and tenure (Policy). The second aim is to develop, test, and sustain models of instructor development that widely engage faculty in using inclusive teaching practices (Instructor Development). The third aim is to develop and enact teaching evaluation practices that use multiple sources of evidence, thereby providing faculty with evidence to improve teaching over time and administrators with evidence to evaluate teaching more holistically and equitably (Sources of Evidence). These three projects will be led by small learning teams whose membership will be dynamic and driven by the needs and contexts of the institutions involved. The entire LCC4 will meet monthly online and annually in person to share progress and lessons learned. LCC4 will make decisions through dynamic governance, guided by a leadership team of four to five annually-elected individuals. LCC4 will also conduct a developmental self-study to document and share our collective journey and lessons learned. Funds from HHMI will support both institution- and LCC-level efforts. The University of Georgia (UGA) will contribute to Projects 1 and 3 by sharing our progress and lessons learned in revising institutional promotion, tenure, and annual evaluation guidelines (Policy) to require the use of multiple forms of evidence to demonstrate contributions to teaching excellence (Sources of evidence). UGA will also share the team’s experiences working with department heads to advance department-level teaching evaluation policies (Policy) as well as practices for peer and self-evaluation of teaching (Sources of evidence). UGA also aims to learn through involvement in Projects 1 and 3. Specifically, UGA aims to learn how to provide more informative student-level data regarding the effectiveness and inclusiveness of instruction (Sources of evidence), both for faculty to improve their teaching over time and for colleagues and administrators to make more equitable and evidence-based judgments about teaching quality. Second, UGA aims to learn how to build consensus around an institution-wide definition of excellent teaching that addresses both the effectiveness and inclusiveness of instruction, and to align incentive and reward systems with this definition (Policy). UGA’s team includes key individuals at all levels of the institution to carry out the work and ensure substantive, institution-wide change.

• Funder: Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• Amount: $493,065
• PI: Erin Dolan

Although 5G has dramatically improved network capacity and spectrum efficiency (SE), the explosive growth of Internet of Things (IoT) demands for more spectrum and energy resources to support high device density and massive traffics. It is estimated that at least 5.2 GHz bandwidth is required for just eHealth Care IoT if spectrum is accessed exclusively, or 1.3 GHz even with dynamic sharing strategy. It is clear that shortage of spectrum resources is a major bottleneck for the success of IoT popularity. On the other hand, current IoT devices use standards such as Bluetooth, LoRA, Sigfox, narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT), or Zigbee, which require power-hungry active radio frequency components like oscillators and converters. Battery-driven IoT devices can hardly sustain years of life-cycle goal even with infrequent transmission and optimized low-power protocols. Thus, sustainable energy consumption is another challenge. With tens of billions of IoTs desire for connectivity by 2030, there is a pressing need to address both SE and energy efficiency (EE) challenges to accommodate for such densified IoT networks. This research seeks to improve SE and EE performance while providing guaranteed quality of service (QoS) for IoTs at large-scale, thereby providing a feasible and practical connectivity solution in massive IoT era. Outcomes from this project can bring following impacts: 1) a hybrid and cooperative communication architect for IoTs, which combines benefits from both active and passive mode; 2) integration of research and curriculum design, capstone projects to both undergraduate and graduate students; 3) cutting-edge research experiences to a primarily undergraduate institution (PUI).

The core approach is to enable IoT device with a wireless-powered hybrid communication structure that can not only minimize energy footprint with energy harvesting from ambient signals, but also integrate coordinated passive and active communication to support versatile QoS needs with efficient spectrum utilization through user cooperation. This project offers a holistic solution to deliver following innovations. 1) A novel PHY transmission architect. It combines a bio-inspired symbiotic radio to coordinate excessive interference. Optimization problems for SE and EE metrics are introduced from PHY resource allocation perspective. 2) The co-designed MAC layer protocol to ensure proper user and resource coordination. Two protocols will be introduced, one for maximum performance and the other for lower complexity. 3) System validation with software and hardware implementations. Extensive experimental verification is designed to systematically validate the performance of proposed schemes and algorithms.

• Funder: NSF
• Amount: $175,000
• PI: Haijian Sun

Refractory elements are deemed to be incorporated into interstellar dust grains, but their observed presents in the gas-phase suggests the grains reside in turbulent environments, e.g. intense ultraviolet radiation fields or high-velocity shocks. To aid in the understanding of observations of refractory molecules, we propose to compute accurate collisional excitation rate coefficients for rotational and vibrational transitions of NaCl, AlCl, AlO, SiS, SH, and H2S due to H and H2 impact. This work, which uses fully quantum mechanical methods for inelastic scattering and incorporates full-dimensional potential energy surfaces (PESs), pushes beyond the state-of-the-art for such calculations, as recently established by our group for rovibrational transitions in full-dimension. All the required PESs will be computed as part of this project using ab initio theory and basis sets of the highest level feasible and particular attention will be given to the long range form of the PESs. The completion of the project will result in 12 new interaction PESs. The state-to-state rate coefficients for a large range of initial rovibrational levels for temperatures between 1 and 3000 K will be computed and extended to higher excitation using artificial neural network and gaussian process regression approaches. The chosen collision systems correspond to cases where data are limited or lacking, include less-studied refractory elements, and will provide observable emission/absorption features in the infrared (IR). The final project results will be important for the analysis of a variety of interstellar and extragalactic environments in which the local conditions of gas density, radiation field, and/or shocks drive the level populations out of equilibrium. In such cases, collisional excitation data are critical to the accurate prediction and interpretation of observed molecular IR emission lines in protoplanetary disks, star-forming regions, planetary nebulae, embedded protostars, and photodissociation regions. The use of the proposed collisional excitation data will lead to deeper examination and understanding of the properties of many astrophysical environments, hence elevating the scientific return from the soon-to-be-launched JWST, as well as from current (SOFIA, HST) and past IR missions (Herschel, Spitzer, ISO), and from ground-based telescopes.

• Funder: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• Amount: $911,454
• PI: Phillip Stancil

The University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology will use funds to rehouse and digitize its paleoenvironmental archives from Georgia’s coastal zone. The collections include artifacts and documentary archives about Native American history, represented by excavations on Georgia’s barrier islands and adjacent mainland areas and pertaining to Native American sites from 4500 years ago to the 17th century. For the project, staff will work with two graduate students, five undergraduate students, and a database consultant to inventory, rehouse, and digitize collections. Additionally, staff will consult with members of descendent communities related to the material histories of the artifacts, such as members of the Geechee (Sapelo Island and Pinpoint Community) and the people of the Muscogee Nation.

• Funder: Institute of Museum and Library Services
• Amount: $385K
• PI: Victor Thompson (Franklin College)

Systemic and structural racism is a public health crisis. However, little is known about the impact of structural racism and discrimination (SRD) on the health and emotional well-being of individuals across the life course. While prior studies have shown associations between discrimination and negative health outcomes in adults (e.g., cardiometabolic disease, depression), these studies have been cross-sectional and primarily examined individual-level sources of racism and discrimination. Much more research is needed to fill gaps in our understanding about the relationship between SRD and health disparities before interventions can be developed. To significantly advance the field regarding SRD and health equity, studies need to include: (1) multi-level measures of SRD including individual (both intrapersonal and interpersonal), neighborhood, institutional, and societal/policy levels; (2) rigorous mixed-methods designs (e.g., ecological momentary assessment (EMA), biological measures, geographic information system (GIS) data, surveys); (3) multi-site samples with urban and rural participants; (4) a life course approach; (5) whole-person outcome measures (i.e., mental, physical, behavioral health); and (6) longitudinal study designs. Including these study elements will allow for comprehensively examining the relationships between SRD and health and emotional well-being to identify mechanisms to target in interventions to mitigate SRD. The main objective of the proposed study is to examine multiple levels (i.e., individual, neighborhood, institutional, societal/policy) of SRD and associations with mental, physical, and behavioral health outcomes across the life course to identify intervention targets to promote health equity. The proposed study is built on a prospective longitudinal cohort study of 627 racially/ethnically diverse families (i.e., African American, Hispanic, Native American, Immigrant/Refugee, White) across the life course (childhood, adolescence, adulthood/parenthood) from urban settings (i.e., Minneapolis, St. Paul). The parent R01 already has three time-points of mixed-methods data (i.e., EMA, GIS, survey) that includes discrimination and neighborhood segregation measures and physical and behavioral health outcomes carried out using a community-based participatory approach. For the proposed study, a sample of 300 racially/ethnically diverse families from rural Georgia (i.e., Athens) will be added to compare SRD experiences in urban versus rural settings. In addition, cardiometabolic and stress biomarker data (i.e., heart rate, blood pressure, waist circumference, lipids, HbA1C, cytokines) and multi-level measures of structural racism (i.e., individual, neighborhood, institutional, societal/policy) will be added at two time points, 18 months apart. The proposed study will be one of the first to prospectively measure multiple levels of SRD using mixed-methods across two sites and associations with mental, physical, and behavioral health disparities across the life course in diverse families. Results of the study will inform the development of an intervention targeting multi-level SRDs to promote health equity.

• Funder: NIH (via University of Minnesota)
• Amount: $1.4 million
• PI: Allan Tate (Public Health)

Modern metabolomics have revolutionized biology and biomedical research. It is now possible to identify specific metabolic biomarkers associated with disease or response to treatment, which can translate into improved diagnostics. However, key gaps in knowledge remain that limit the impact of metabolomics. First, advances in analytical instrumentation that fueled the growth of metabolomics are limited to biofluids or extracts of tissues or cells. Metabolism is a highly dynamic process that can change rapidly with environmental conditions, but most metabolomics techniques are not able to monitor the dynamic process directly in vivo. Rather, when they are measured at all, dynamics are measured by discrete sampling, which leads to multiple samples and added variance. A second limitation in metabolomics is our ability to identify unknown metabolites with high confidence. Many of the “features” measured by LC-MS or NMR in metabolomics studies remain unknown, limiting the biological impact.  Our laboratory has recently developed methods to address these gaps in knowledge. Through NIGMS funding, we have developed improved NMR probes that allow for greater sensitivity in NMR measurements. This is important because NMR is the best method for unknow metabolite identification. Our current probe will be commissioned in February 2022 and is optimized for 13C detection at 21.1 T (900 MHz 1H); we expect that it will provide the highest possible 13C NMR sensitivity available. This technology allows for data that will substantially improve our ability to identify unknown metabolites. We have also developed metabolite “fraction libraries”, which start with chemical separation of a specific sample followed by measurement of each fraction by 1D and 2D NMR and LC-MS/MS. The data from a fraction library will allow unknowns to be identified by efficiently linking the NMR and LC-MS data. In this MIRA we will make a fraction library knowledgebase by developing tools to connect the different datasets. We have also developed an approach called continuous in vivo metabolism by NMR (CIVMNMR). We have applied CIVM-NMR to growing Neurospora crassa, a filamentous fungus that has been used to link genetics to metabolism. We can monitor the growth of N. crassa in real-time with about 1 minute resolution for over 1 week. This allows us to measure quantitative metabolic details of all the metabolites and lipids with concentrations greater than 25 µM. We have made computational tools to extract over 300 growth curves from a single CIVM-NMR dataset, allowing us to functionally characterize the metabolic changes over time as a function of carbon source, temperature, or oxygen availability. In this MIRA project, we will expand CIMV-NMR by measuring metabolic mutants under different environments and build a web server that connects all the data. 

• Funder: NIH
• Amount: $3.5 million
• PI: Art Edison (Complex Carbohydrate Research Center)

The Center of Excellence for Forestry, Biodiversity, and Conservation Leadership and Green Enterprise Development (“the FBC Center”) will link the national University of Liberia with Liberia’s one-of-kind TVET, the Forestry Training Institute. Activities will include curriculum design, capacity building, soft skills development, experiential learning opportunities, mentorship, a fellowship exchange program, extension education, youth engagement, gender equity initiatives, community inclusion initiatives, green enterprise development, other areas of need determined by the Liberian HEI partners, and training and technical assistance to promote post-project sustainability of activities.

• Funder: U.S. Agency for International Development
• Amount: $5 million
• PI: Matthew Auer (School of Public & International Affairs)