The National Science Foundation (NSF) approved $55,000 to fund rising sophomores at Davidson College who are interested in careers in science or medicine through the Research in Science Experience (RISE) program, headed by RISE program director and Assistant Professor of Biology, Mark Barsoum. The reallocation award was issued as a “Diversity for STEM Education” broader impact of “Collaborative Research: RUI: Broadening the Application of Programmed Evolution for Metabolic Engineering” award (1613203), held by Kimbrough Professor of Mathematics and Chair of Genomics, Laurie Heyer, and Herman Brown Professor of Biology, A. Malcolm Campbell.

The RISE program focuses on students from groups historically underrepresented in science, including minority, first-generation, and low-wealth students. To prepare the rising sophomores for more extensive academic-year and future summer research experiences, students engage in a four-week, closely mentored research internship program which will culminate in the students’ presenting the results of their research at the Davidson College Summer Research Symposium in October. Funding from NSF enabled RISE to meet the demand of 49 qualified first year student applicants this summer, a 100% increase from previous years.

We are thankful to a cohort of Davidson faculty willing to share their grant success expertise across all academic divisions, in the video links below.

We look forward to meeting with you.

Humanities and Arts: https://youtu.be/YQ5dGYqUyOo

Social Sciences: https://youtu.be/p7O71jhybwM

Natural Sciences: https://youtu.be/1u5zzT_E7_Y

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Albert and Lena Keiser Assistant Professor of Art and Digital Studies, Joelle Dietrick, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Digital Studies, Owen Mundy, on an Immersive Scholar Residency from North Carolina State University Libraries, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

The $25,000 award contributed to the development of “Tally Saves the Internet,” a free, web-based game which alerts users to webpage data tracking, allowing players to battle and block capture of their online actions and protect their data privacy. Development of Tally offered experiential learning opportunities for several Davidson student researchers. Professors Dietrick and Mundy previewed the game at the October 2020 Immersive Scholar Symposium hosted by North Carolina State University.

The digital and creative efforts of Professors Dietrick and Mundy have been recognized and funded through organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, North Carolina Arts Council, Center for Long-Term Security at the University of California at Berkeley, MacDowell Colony, Resilient Network, Bacca Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Davidson College.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Assistant Professor of Educational Studies, Chris Marsicano on a grant from the Education Credit Management Corporation Foundation.

The $75,000 grant supports the “College Crisis Initiative (C2I)” data dashboard project, reporting and tracking the response of higher education institutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. The grant supports a team of student researchers, including programmers and data scientists from Professor Laurie Heyer’s Project PRONTO++ (PRoductive ONline TOols) data solutions team. Read more about the initiative here.

Professor Marsicano has also received a Resource Legacy Fund – Student Borrower Protection Center grant.

The $9,815 grant funds the “Student Loan Law Initiative” project. Professor Marsicano with collaborators Daniel A. Collier, Ph.D., W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Dan Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., University of Michigan will investigate if enrollment in Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans influence participants’ financial behavior and living arrangements.  The project team will present their research in upcoming academic journals and conferences, and directly to policymakers.

Registration is required for each session. If a session has reached capacity for the Zoom webinar, you may stream the presentation on YouTube Live. Please visit the registration webpage on the session date for the YouTube Live link. All webinars will be recorded and made available on the NSF Resource Center webpage following the event.

Contact the Office of Grants and Contracts to discuss proposal planning and research funding opportunities.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Assistant Professor of Physics, Michelle Kuchera, and Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Raghu Ramanujan, on a National Science Foundation Research in Undergraduate Institutions – RUI grant (2012865).

The three-year project titled, “Machine Learning Approaches for Accelerating Scientific Discovery in Nuclear Physics,” enables collaboration between theoretical and experimental nuclear physicists and computer scientists to aid in scientific discoveries using state-of-the-art machine learning methods at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Argonne National Laboratory, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, and the upcoming Electron Ion Collider.

The grant provides Davidson students who have an interest in physics, computer science, or mathematics with the opportunity to make significant contributions to national efforts which investigate fundamental properties of matter. To accomplish this, they work closely with world-renowned scientists at large-scale research facilities, which complements the experiences students enjoy at a small liberal arts institution. The students also have the opportunity to visit these laboratories and to present their work to a national audience at professional scientific conferences.

This NSF-funded project will be an integral part of the ALPhA group (Algorithms for Learning in Physics Applications), an ongoing research collaboration headed by Professors Kuchera and Ramanujan and driven by Davidson students. In addition to providing interdisciplinary research experiences that bridge nuclear physics, artificial intelligence, and data science, the project seeks to create an environment where students from different backgrounds – including women and students from traditionally underrepresented groups – can explore and launch their careers in scientific research.

We are very proud of this national recognition and support for the research conducted by the ALPhA group, under the leadership of Professors Kuchera and Ramanujan.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Assistant Professor of Physics, Anthony Kuchera on a National Science Foundation grant (2011398).

The $176,680 Collaborative Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) award titled “Study of Exotic Nuclear and Neutron Detector Response,” is a 3-year collaboration between Professor Kuchera and Professor Warren Rogers of Indiana Wesleyan University, who received a similar award. Both professors are  members of the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) Collaboration which consists of faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions and Michigan State University.

The grant provides funding for 6 Davidson research students who will work alongside the collaborative team consisting of professors, graduate students, and postdocs. The students will be involved at every step of the research project, including weekly video conferences, participation in experiments, and attending professional conferences. There are typically limited opportunities for students to learn nuclear science in the classroom – particularly for undergraduate students in a small liberal arts setting – and this opportunity for training in research at state-of-the-art national facilities has the potential for producing the next generation of nuclear scientists who are also widely educated in the broader context of the humanities and social sciences.

The collaborative team will perform experiments using the Modular Neutron Array at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) in Michigan – the largest radioactive beam facility in the United States – as well as at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The focus of the project is to study the properties of atomic nuclei that have many more neutrons than protons.

“We use beams of radioactive particles to undergo nuclear reactions and produce short-lived nuclei that decay by giving off their excess neutrons. We use MoNA to detect these neutrons while simultaneously detecting the remaining nucleus. Our measurements help guide and verify modern models of the nucleus. Additionally, our work at LANSCE focuses on understanding the details of how our neutron detectors work by using a beam of neutrons to interact with them. We measure properties such as the neutrons’ scattering pattern and energy which we will use to improve simulations of neutron interactions.”

Professor Kuchera is the only pre-tenure (and youngest) faculty member of the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) collaboration at NSCL and serves as Executive Director. We congratulate him on his accomplishments, and this competitive NSF grant.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Mitch Anstey, on a National Science Foundation Chemical Structure, Dynamics & Mechanisms grant (1955619). 

Professor Anstey joins collaborators Professor Chris Bejger of University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Professor Todd Coolbaugh of Johnson C. Smith University, on the $456,394 grant to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, for the project titled “CAS: Radialene Radicals: Aqueous Soluble Organics for Energy Storage.”

The three-institution team will engage undergraduate student researchers to examine redox flow batteries (RFBs) for electrochemical energy storage, to develop low cost and environmentally friendly energy storage devices.   

In addition to NSF funded research, Professor Anstey has provided interdisciplinary science experience for Davidson student researchers on projects funded annually since 2016 by Sandia National Laboratories.  Read more about the Anstey Research Group here.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Director and Curator of the Van Every/Smith Galleries, Lia Newman, on a grant from the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) through the COVID-19 Emergency RFP Round, to provide digital access to the college’s permanent art collection.

The collection includes over 3,900 works by such artists as Rembrandt, Picasso, Matisse, de Kooning, Motherwell, Bearden, Kollwitz, and Hockney, and only a small number are highlighted on the Galleries’ web site. The ACS grant will allow the creation of an expanded online database so that students and faculty who have current needs related to the collection can have access to the artworks.

While the short-term goal is access for courses that are being taught online due to COVID-19, having the expanded permanent art collection online will be a resource to faculty and students both at Davidson and other ACS schools beyond the period of the pandemic.

The Van Every/Smith Galleries play a fundamental role in the pedagogical life of Davidson College and the surrounding community. The Galleries provide a challenging forum for the on-going presentation, interpretation, and discussion of primarily contemporary artworks in all media, nurturing individual thinking, developing visual literacy, and inspiring a lifelong commitment to the arts.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates senior psychology major, Foivos Isakoglou ’20, on receipt of an Undergraduate Research Grant from Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. The award funded Foivos’s senior thesis, studying the role of empathy in response to literary fiction and non-fiction, with emphasis on narrative transportation: how empathy affects readers’ experience of feeling ‘lost’ in a story.