SPHHS Faculty Among Teams Receiving 2024 Interdisciplinary Research Grants
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SPHHS faculty Katherine Boyer and Jacquie Kurland are among the members of the 10 teams of UMass Amherst faculty and librarians who have been awarded Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IRG) for 2024 by the Provost's Office.
Associate Professor of Kinesiology Katherine Boyer joins Seth Donahue (Biomedical Engineering) from the College of Natural Sciences for a project titled "Bio-inspired Footwear: Variable stiffness lattice design shoes to mitigate knee pain in knee osteoarthritis." Associate Professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Jacquie Kurland will collaborate with Anna Liu (Mathematics and Statistics) and Brendan O'Connor (Computer and Information Sciences) from the Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences on a project titled "Leveraging Large Language Models to Provide Clinically Feasible Tools for Assessing Discourse in Individuals with Communication Impairments."
A complete list of projects and team members can be viewed on the Provost’s website.
Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IRG) are offered to teams of faculty and librarians from at least two different schools or colleges within the university with the goals of empowering creativity, strengthening the campus’ areas of interdisciplinary excellence, promoting equitable collaborations and attracting external funding and other forms of recognition across our colleges and schools. The grants are offered in two categories: up to $20,000 and up to $50,000.
The IRG program complements the Large-Scale Integrative Research Awards (LIRA) program, with LIRA supporting large-scale research initiatives and the IRGs supporting early-stage collaborations among faculty and librarians.