Richard Waters, School of Management, has been awarded a Page Legacy Scholar grant from Pennsylvania State University in the amount of $9,493. Dr. Waters will study and measure the corporate social responsibility efforts of institutions and their ability to create a connection with the community.
Nancy Glenn, Training Director for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), has received a grant from the American Psychological Association in the amount of $25,036. The purpose of the grant is to provide financial support for the pursuit of APA accreditation of USF's well-established internship program in the local Bay Area. This will enable the internship program to achieve national recognition and attract a more diverse range of applicants. With accreditation status, graduating interns will have access to a wider range of professional opportunities.
Alessandra Cassar, Economics, was awarded $8,000 from the Charles Koch foundation for a one year grant entitled “Managing Risk through Social Networks in Zimbabwe”. The funding is for graduate students to complete a research project in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. They will be conducting research on risk taking behavior, attitudes, and perceptions in lower and middle income households as managing risk plays an important role in making economic decisions for these households. The project will allow for the collection and creation of an initial data set before the UN World Tourism Organization Convention Center opens in 2013 that can be used to compare changes in risk taking after the Convention Center is built.
Janice Dirden-Cook, School of Education. The University of San Francisco has been awarded two Upward Bound Math & Science grants from the US Department of Education. Both grants are effective September 1. The first grant of $262,500 funds the first year of a five year award for $1,312,500 to support the college preparation services for 63 students from the following SFUSD high schools: John O'Connell, Phillip & Sala Burton, Thurgood Marshall, and International Studies Academy.The second grant of $250,000 funds the first year of a five year award for $1,250,000 to serve 50 students from the following three additional SFUSD high schools: Mission, June Jordan, and The Academy of Arts and Sciences.The services provided by these grants are designed to prepare participants, from families with low-incomes in which neither parent has a college degree, for college majors and careers in the STEM fields
David Wolber, Computer Science, has been awarded an NSF grant entitled "Collaborative Research in Computational Thinking through Mobile Computing". This collaborative project involves MIT, Wellesley College, the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and Trinity College, and is for three years in the amount of $565,836.USF's award is for $94,839. The goal is to motivate more students to learn the fundamentals of computing by enabling them to build apps for phones and tablets. The project leverages App Inventor, a new visual programming tool for building mobile apps and will focus on the creation of on-line, Khan Academy-like teaching resources.
Claire Castro and William Karney, Environmental Science and Chemistry, received the first year of funding from the National Science Foundation for a grant that will total $197,748. This funding will enable them to continue their research in dehydroannulenes, phenylenes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The three-year grant will provide training for undergraduate students in many aspects of computational organic chemistry and will benefit underrepresented groups in science. This is the third NSF grant for the Castro-Karney research team.
Megan Bolitho, Chemistry, has been awarded a two-year grant from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. The grant, the Single Investigator Cottrell College Science Award, provides $35,000 to faculty in the first three years of his or her academic career. This grant is centered around quorum sensing (QS), a means of communication utilized by bacterial cells to coordinate group behaviors. Because virulence is often a QS-controlled behavior, QS inhibition has the potential to mitigate disease caused by bacterial pathogens that communicate in this way. Small molecule inhibitors will be developed through both rational design (organic synthesis) and computational screening methods.
Peter Williamson, Teacher Education, has been awarded a US Department of Education Transition to Teaching grant of $423,011 to fund the first year of a five year $2,151,961 grant to support the goals of the San Francisco Teacher Residency program (SFTR). SFTR is a partnership between the University of San Francisco, Stanford University, the San Francisco Unified School District, the United Educators of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Education Fund. Through SFTR, more than 150 highly skilled teacher candidates will be recruited and prepared to teach in San Francisco’s public schools in high-need subject areas such as math, science, and bilingual education. The program integrates masters’ level courses with a year-long apprenticeship under the guidance of highly skilled demonstration teachers. The grant will support many of the fieldwork, induction, and research components of the program..
Judith Lambton, School of Nursing, has received $1.7 million from a US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity grant to help build a simulation research lab for the School of Nursing. The new state-of-the-art lab will engage in research to determine how best to teach nursing students to improve patient safety and avoid medical error by using sophisticated clinical learning equipment. Nursing faculty will research which simulation strategies can be adapted across disciplines that share high-stakes error consequences. The research design of this three year grant includes both assessment and training and will allow faculty to measure the cognitive and affective levels of the students’ ability.
Juliet Spencer, Biology, received $412,652 from National Institutes of Health for a three year grant entitled, “A Viral Cytokine as a Promoter of Tumor Progression.” Dr. Spencer and her students will research Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a widespread pathogen with the ability to persist as a lifelong latent infection. Recent evidence suggests that HCMV infection may have harmful effects on seemingly healthy adults by contributing over time to the development of cardiovascular disease and cancer. The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of a secreted viral cytokine on uninfected tumor cells.
Juliet Spencer, Biology, was awarded $79,902 from the National Institutes of Health for a one year Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research for her grant titled, “Viral Cytokine as a Promoter of Tumor Progression”. This supplemental funding is available to support minority graduate student Cendy Valle Oseguera and will enable her to perform laboratory research and travel to scientific conferences to present her work. The project examines the effects of human cytomegalovirus on human breast cancer cells and will investigate whether the viral cytokine cmvlL-10 promotes tumor growth or enhances metastatic potential.
Eunjin Jung, Computer Science, was awarded $141,991 from the National Science Foundation to provide a web-browser add-on that filters out most malicious javascript without slowing down user's web surfing. Along with her collaborator, Dr. Peter Likarish at Drew University, Dr. Jung will investigate malicious javascript scripts in the wild and develop data-mining techniques to detect them. They will also conduct a user study to find the user interface that best communicates warnings about the detected malicious scripts.
Deneb Karentz, Biology and Environmental Science, received an NSF grant for $229,625 for "Collaborative Research: Functional Genomics and Physiological Ecology of Seasonal Succession in Antarctic Phytoplankton: Adaptations to Light and Temperature," This project wil investigate the genomic basis of the physiological and ecological transition of Antarctic marine phytoplankton from a cold dark winter to a warmer, brighter spring. During a field season, functional genomics and in situ fluorometry will be integrated with classical ecological methods to investigate photosynthetic adaptation that occurs during phytoplankton species succession. She is collaborating with the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Nevada.
John Sullivan, Biology, just received a two year grant from the National Institutes of Health for $296,713. He is researching the disease schistosomiasis, which afflicts approximately 200 million persons in developing countries. The disease is caused by several species of schistosome blood flukes which develop in compatible species of freshwater snails. Compatibility between schistosomes and their snail intermediate hosts is determined in part by the outcome of the interaction of the larval parasite with the host’s innate immune system, and in incompatible snails the larval schistosome parasites are attacked and killed by immune cells. As in other innate immune systems, that of the vector snail Biomphalaria glabrata is thought to rely on recognition of common pathogen-associated molecules by receptors on these immune cells. The specific aims of the proposed research are to identify one or more specific pathogen-associated molecules to which the innate immune system of B. glabrata responds, and then to characterize this response at the molecular level.
Sami Rollins, Computer Science, has received a three year NSF grant of $179,863 for a project to encourage broader adoption of renewable energy sources which is key to minimizing our dependence on the electric grid and fossil fuels. The project will provide an improved understanding of energy consumption and generation in homes, particularly green homes. Dr. Rollins, along with her collaborator, Dr. Nilanjan Banerjee at the University of Arkansas, will conduct a broad study of 15 homes which are both grid-tied and off-grid, and powered by a variety of renewable sources. They will study energy generation and how it is consumed and conduct research critical to encouraging the adoption of more environmentally responsible practices in the home.
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