President's Office awards $1.4m in seed money for faculty projects
Seven Amherst campus faculty are among the recipients of $1.4 million in awards from the President’s Science and Technology Initiatives and the President’s Creative Economy Initiatives funds for the 2008-09 academic year.
Announced Aug. 19 by President Jack M Wilson, the 20 individual projects from across the five-campus system were selected to receive grants ranging from $10,000 to $175,000 for initiatives in the sciences and engineering and the arts, humanities and social sciences. Funds for the programs come from licensing income from University research.
“Faculty scholarship and research are at the core of a world-class university—these 20 projects represent the breadth and depth of academic inquiry at the University of Massachusetts,” said Wilson. “Through these funding programs, we continue to strengthen our research enterprise, enrich our students’ learning experiences, apply our faculty’s intellectual resources to efforts that will enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the Commonwealth and beyond.”
More than 70 proposals were submitted to the two grant programs. The Amherst campus is involved in 11 of the funded initiatives.
Eight projects were awarded funding through the President’s Science and Technology Initiatives Fund, which was created four years ago to provide seed investment for faculty-led projects to accelerate growth of the University’s research portfolio and promote strategic development of expertise in science and engineering fields.
The remaining 12 projects are being supported by the Creative Economy Fund, which is intended to provide seed funding to University initiatives which support the contributions of the arts, humanities and social sciences to the social and cultural fabric of the Commonwealth.
Science and Technology grants were awarded to Wayne Burleson, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Al Crosby, Polymer Science and Engineering; Paul Kostecki, vice provost for Research, and Jim Manwell, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and director of the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory (RERL).
Burleson is the principal investigator on a project to establish a multi-campus research consortium focused on integrated payment systems (IPS), a critical technology for electronic commerce. The consortium will bring together and leverage a number of active and complementary activities, such as research programs in radio-frequency ID technology, embedded security systems, and intelligent transportation systems. Existing industry partners include EMC, Raytheon, ThingMagic, Intel, and IBM. The program’s research thrusts include electronic payment systems technologies, security and privacy technologies, and IPS applications in transportation. UMass Dartmouth is a partner in the project, which received $125,000.
With a grant of $150,000, Crosby is leading project is a collaboration between faculty in Amherst and at the Medical School to develop improved and new implant materials for knee and hip replacement surgery. With nearly 1 million such procedures performed each year in the U.S. and an expected six-fold increase over the next two decades, materials that will enhance performance of implants is critical. The research plan focuses on the development of both polymeric and metallic materials and more robust antibiotics, which together are expected to significantly increase the longevity of implants and reduce the need for and cost of revision surgery. The project is representative of the type of focused collaboration which the proposed UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science (UMCCTS) is designed to catalyze and facilitate. This activity will be included in the UMCCTS portfolio as the University pursues funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the center.
The $90,000 grant to Kostecki is for an initiative that builds on the efforts of the system-wide UMass Clean Energy Working Group to accelerate and expand clean energy-related research initiatives at the flagship Amherst campus and foster inter-campus collaborations. Advanced energy research spans the entire energy continuum, from harvest, use and conservation to the environmental, social and economic impacts of these activities. A number of priority areas, including off-shore wind power; low-cost, high-efficiency photovoltaic materials and fuel cells; cellulosic biofuels; “green” gasoline; and zero-energy homes and buildings have been identified for growth. The initiative will support development of the Amherst campus’ research enterprise and collaborations with researchers at the other campuses.
Manwell’s project entails a broad-based research program in offshore wind energy that places an emphasis on institutional partnerships and industry collaborations and leverages the existing federal and state investment in the Wind Technology Test Center. The consortium’s goal is to pursue over the next two years a targeted set of federally-funded research centers, including the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontiers Research Center, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Collaborative Research Center and the NSF Engineering Research Center. Close engagement and interaction is expected with state officials and Marine Renewable Energy Consortium researchers. Faculty from the Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses are involved and additional regional partners, including Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the New England Aquarium, are expected to join. A number of industry partners with significant New England presence, have also been identified for participation. The project received $125,000 in funding.
The Amherst campus is also collaborating on two projects led by faculty at other campuses: the Marine Renewable Energy Consortium and a gene therapy project based at the Medical School.
Creative Economy Fund awards went to David Glassberg and Laura Lovett of the History Department and Stephen Schreiber of the Architecture + Design Program.
Glassberg’s project involves developing a master plan for heritage tourism at the W.E.B. Du Bois boyhood homesite and other areas in Great Barrington. The W.E.B. Du Bois Legacy Committee, in partnership with the Friends of the Du Bois Homesite and the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail, plan to transform the homestead site into a regional, national and international tourist destination as a memorial to the pioneering African-American scholar and activist. Glassberg was awarded $20,000.
Lovett received $18,000 for a project to collect oral histories, produce an historical narrative and develop an online database detailing 40 years of women’s contributions to the creative economy of western Massachusetts. The effort is intended to document what has been a long history of remarkable tolerance and talent in the Pioneer Valley.
Led by Schreiber, the Architecture + Design Program use its $30,000 grant to start a design exploration program in Springfield that will introduce at-risk high school students to careers in architecture and design. The program, which will target students who live in the Mason Square community of Springfield, will be a collaborative effort between with the Dunbar Community Center, the Springfield public schools, Springfield Technical Community College and the Western Massachusetts American Institute of Architects.
The Amherst campus is also part of a project to research on the role of the care sector in the Massachusetts economy and, for the first time, quantify the paid and unpaid labor involved in the work of caring for dependents in Massachusetts, as well as the amount of public funding invested in that growing segment of the state economy. The project is based at UMass Lowell.
Another initiative, also based at Lowell, will support the creation of Reading New England, a new imprint at the University of Massachusetts Press, which will publish an ongoing series of digital critical editions of landmark works by the region’s most important authors and make them available on the Internet. The Amherst campus is a partner on the project.
More Information
President’s Office announcement
August 19, 2008.
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