Grants
A grant writing discussion was held at McCormick Lounge, sponsored by the CAS Grant Advisory Board. George K. Thiruvathukal, chair of the Computer Science department, talked about general grant writing tips and guidelines. If you'd like to be notified about upcoming CAS-GAB events, please fill out this short form to be added to the mailing list.
Looking for some guidance on writing grant proposals? Check out this series being held virtually in September!
Calling all scholars! Are you interested in strengthening your scientific article writing skills? Are you planning to submit a grant proposal in a STEM field? Are you looking for a support group that provides accountability and consistency as you prepare a manuscript or grant proposal?
This year's How-To Series will include 4 Structured Writing Groups (SWG), presented by LUC INSPIRED* for the 2022-23 academic year. What is an SWG? SWGs will be led by senior faculty who will serve as Facilitators on 4 different topics. Facilitators will meet with a group of faculty for 9 weeks for 1 hour via Zoom to help with:
- Developing a regular writing practice
- Putting writing tips into practice while balancing teaching, service, and research responsibilities
Before the first SWGs begin, we will hold a kick-off panel event on Wednesday, September 14th, from 1:00 - 2:30pm via Zoom for ALL TT/NTT faculty. Please join us for general information and a Q&A session on this year's topics with our facilitators:
- STEM Articles with Peter Kekenes-Huskey (Cell & Molecular Physiology)
- Book Proposals with Melissa Bradshaw (English)
- Humanities Articles with Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz (Anthropology)
- NIH Proposals with Heather Wheeler (Biology)
ALL TT/NTT faculty are welcome to attend the panel event.
To register for this event, and to provide us with any questions you may have for the panelists, please click here, or paste the following link to your browser: https://forms.gle/RWbwzyLfYxVEWCcr9.
There will be a separate registration process for the SWGs.
*This program is part of NSF ADVANCE - LUC INSPIRED, which focuses on mentoring professional advancement/success, mitigating service workload inequities, and creating opportunities for interdisciplinary connections among women, underrepresented minorities, and women of color faculty, particularly those in STEM fields.
Please visit our website to learn more.
Please direct any questions to advance@luc.edu.
Thank you,
The NSF Advance - LUC INSPIRED Team:
Badia Ahad, PhD
Dana Garbarski, PhD
Christine Li-Grining, PhD
Robyn Mallett, PhD
Walter Tangarife, PhD
Dr. Krueger was awarded a grant from NSF to acquire Artificial Resynthesis Technology
This NSF grant supports the acquisition of Artificial Resynthesis Technology (ART) to establish the Chicago Experimental Wear (ChEW) laboratory at Loyola University Chicago. ART is an innovative chewing simulator that accurately replicates the many components of the oral environment, including temperature, jaw movement, bite force, and the action of the cheeks, tongue, and saliva. Although originally developed for human dentistry, this ART will be customized to include parameters for humans, non-human primates, other mammals, and reptiles, allowing for an unparalleled understanding of the formation and ramifications of dental wear and maximizing the scope of interdisciplinary research and education across Chicago, the Midwest, and beyond.
ART will significantly expand the ability of clinical and basic science researchers to address questions related to oral biology. These questions are multi-disciplinary in nature, bringing together dentists, anthropologists, biologists, and engineers to cross-pollinate ideas and enrich teaching and learning opportunities. Specifically, ART will help unravel the contributions of abrasives to dental wear and how primate oral processing behaviors change in relation to food geometry (e.g., size) and food material properties (e.g., toughness or hardness). It will also provide insight into the relationships between dental design and motor control during the evolution of vertebrate feeding systems. Clinically, ART will be used to unravel the biological and/or mechanical factors responsible for dental implant failures in human patients, and the wear of existing and experimental dental materials. It will be used to investigate the impact of nighttime grinding (sleep bruxism) on tooth wear and dental appliance longevity. Beyond this, ART will provide insight into the role of oral microbiomes, pH, and enzyme activity in the saliva during digestion, and how changes in the microbiota impact nutrition and health.
Professor Daniel Becker has just been awarded an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for synthesizing inhibitors of the sodium-dependent NADH: ubiquinone oxidoreductase (Na+-NQR) as antibiotics with a new mechanism of action. This research is directed toward the discovery of more effective antibiotics for treating cholera and to combat antibiotic resistance. The enzyme complex Na+-NQR is the main ion transporter in many pathogenic bacteria, including Vibrio cholerae, the causal agent of cholera, a devastating gastrointestinal disease with a worldwide distribution that has developed multidrug-resistant phenotypes. This research combines Becker’s medicinal chemistry team in the Loyola Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in a collaborative effort with the biomedical research team of Professor Oscar Juarez of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago.
Congratulations to Yoel Stuart and his Lab!
The Stuart lab was recently awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award for their work in evolution research!
Figure: Low armored (top) and high armored individuals of G. doryssus. The low armored for evolved from the high armored form over ~20,000 years (10,000 generations). The low armored form has a reduced pelvic girdle, missing pelvic spines, and only a single dorsal spine.
Can biologists predict long-term outcomes of evolution by extrapolating what we know about short-term evolutionary processes? Does knowing something about populations and the forces acting on them today help predict where populations will eventually evolve? The answers to these questions relate to pandemic forecasting, design of medicines for infectious disease and cancer, as well as predicting how agriculture and agricultural pests will respond to human activity. And yet they are hard questions to answer because the time scale scientists need to observe are typically inaccessible to experiment and observation. Biologists either observe evolution today for as long as possible to extrapolate forward or observe evolutionary endpoints and infer backwards. Both approaches miss the middle of the evolutionary trajectory. The Stuart lab was recently awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award to aim for the middle, documenting 20,000 years of evolution of a fossilized lineage of Threespine Stickleback fish (Gasterosteus doryssus). Stuart will measure the population at the start of the trajectory and test whether that information predicts evolution observed by the end of the trajectory.
Using a museum collection of fossil G. doryssus, the Stuart lab will measure 19 anatomical traits from ~4,500 fish sampled at a continuity, resolution, and length of time rarely available in studies of living or extinct species. Because Stuart is observing evolution directly in a single lineage through time, the ancestral form is known. Thus, Stuart can better ask about rates of evolutionary change, how selection shaped trends, how ancestral genetic correlations among traits constrained evolution, and whether constraint itself evolved. This study organism has the added strength of being a stickleback and part of a family whose evolution, ecology, genetics, and development have been thoroughly studied in living populations. As such, Stuart can place observed change in G. doryssus into a broader biological context to better answer whether macroevolution is microevolution predictably writ large.
You can read more about Stuart Lab research here, and a bit more about this system, with pictures, here.
Figure: Diatomite rock is formed from dead diatoms, which inhabited this lakebed 10 million years ago. When they died at the end of each season, diatoms sank to the bottom and fossilized, creating a new layer each year. Fish would fossilize alongside the diatoms. Here, colleague T. Frank is measuring distance between diatomite layers, akin to measuring tree rings, to help date time between fish specimens. There are about three layers (years) per mm of rock. Occasionally, there were volcanic ash falls (the thick layer near Tanner’s hands), which allow us to radioisotope date the rock. We can follow stickleback evolution over 20,000 years by cutting out the rock, splitting it open, and finding fish fossils.
Dr. Jim Devery, Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for $404,000 to use over the next three years. The award will continue to support the research the Devery lab has explored in carbonyl-olefin metathesis and Lewis acid catalysis. Click here to read more.
NIH Grant awarded to Associate Professor Catherine DeCarlo Santiago in the Department of Psychology
The Children Adapting to Stress and Adversity (CASA) research team, directed by Dr. Cate DeCarlo Santiago at Loyola University Chicago is continuing to expand their work supporting refugee and immigrant newcomer students in Chicago!
Associate Professor Catherine DeCarlo Santiago and her research team received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (R15MH128722) for $413,187, entitled “Supporting Refugee and Immigrant Youth’s Mental Health: Examining Effectiveness and Implementation of a School-based Intervention” . This award will enable the evaluation of the Supporting Transition Resilience Of Newcomer Groups (STRONG) program in Chicago Public Schools over the next 3 years. The project will employ a group randomized design to evaluate the effectiveness of STRONG in promoting mental health and resilience among newcomer students. This research enhances understanding of effectiveness of an intervention optimized for refugee and immigrant youth and delivered in schools to promote access. Ultimately, building the evidence-base for and expanding implementation of the intervention has the potential to support the mental health of many more refugee and immigrant children across the United States.
STRONG was developed to reduce the potential for mental health disparities among newcomer students by (1) promoting positive adjustment during resettlement through a trauma-informed, strengths-based approach and (2) improving access to mental health supports through school-based programming. Using a mixed methods approach, we conducted interviews with students and parents. In partnership with Center for Childhood Resilience (CCR) at Lurie Children’s Hospital and Chicago Public Schools (CPS), CASA piloted this school-based intervention for newcomer students in Chicago during the 2019-2020 school year. Despite the disruption of the pilot due to the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures, the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of the STRONG program was examined, and the results were promising. This award supports expansion of this partnered work and provides valuable information about how to better support the mental health of refugee and immigrant youths, as well as support for graduate and undergraduate student researchers.
Congratulations, Prof. Santiago! We are looking forward to hearing more about the project’s successes in the future!
Check back soon for information about current and past grants awarded to Loyola University's College of Arts and Sciences! In the meantime, check out the Office of Research Services to learn more about grants that are currently funded.
