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Research
Rao and Katsumata Receive Young Investigator Research Program Awards from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
UMass Amherst’s Siyuan Rao, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Reika Katsumata, assistant professor of polymer science and engineering, are two of 58 researchers to receive grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).
Rao has received a grant from the AFOSR to develop next-generation engineering techniques that will allow scientists to investigate the nervous system and neurobiological questions behind neurological and psychiatric disorders including depression, addiction and social deficits.
Rao will use her three-year, $450,000 grant from the AFOSR’s 2023 Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) to study “Non-invasive Cell-type-specific Magnetic Neural Modulation.”
Neural modulation remotely controls nerve activity by delivering electrical or pharmaceutical agents to a specific neurological site in the body.
Rao’s research aims “to investigate a magnetic neural modulation mechanism with cell-type specificity,” she says, and in a non-invasive way using time-varying magnetic fields.
This YIP research project is part of Rao’s larger body of work to develop tools to modulate and monitor the nervous system and to further reveal the neurological principles underlying neurological and psychiatric problems. Rao’s Lab has also received support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) and the UMass Amherst Office of Research Development.
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Katsumata has received a three-year, $450,000 YIP Award from AFOSR to support her project, “Confinement Effects on Polymer Degradation in Nanocomposites.”
Nanocomposite materials are commonly used in microelectronics and aerospace engineering. Thermal stability of these materials is crucial for reliability at high temperatures and in harsh conditions.
Polymers limit nanocomposite effectiveness due to their low decomposition temperatures. These polymers are confined by fillers that can alter the degradation mechanism, so-called nanoconfinement effects, which are highly complex and not fully understood.
Katsumata’s project aims to uncover the effects of nanoconfinement on the thermal degradation of polymers in nanocomposites, focusing on thermodynamics and kinetics contributions.
Ultimately, Katsumata’s project will contribute to developing hybrid materials with excellent thermal resistivity for aerospace applications.
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