Powering Ideas and Impact
- College of Arts & Sciences Computer Science Assistant Professor Mark Bun, Associate Professor Marco Gaboardi, and Professor Adam Smith received a new award from the US Census Bureau. The multi-institution project, backed by a total award of $3.7 million (the BU portion is $1.5 million), seeks to develop methods for providing formal privacy guarantees for data collected through complex sample surveys, and involves BU (as the lead institution), Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland.
- Barbara E. Corkey Professor of Medicine Katya Ravid was awarded nearly $3 million from the American Heart Association to lead a multidisciplinary team studying which cancers are linked to the development of blood clots and what causes the clots, using experimental models and data from the Veterans Health Administration and Boston Medical Center. They will also study how factors such as a patient’s diet, race, and living conditions impact clotting.
- Ji-Xin Cheng, professor of biomedical, electrical, and computer engineering, has a five-year $2.8 million grant to continue his groundbreaking research into sensing vulnerable plaque in vivo using an all-optical intravascular ultrasound and photoacoustic catheter. This grant, provided by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, will help Cheng and his team find new mechanisms for the detection of lipids.
- Researchers from BU’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, including Nathan Jones, associate professor of special education, received $1.6 million from the National Science Foundation for a $3 million collaborative study, with colleagues at the University of Virginia, to investigate whether teaching simulations can improve mathematics education for students with disabilities.
- Jennifer Weuve, an associate professor of epidemiology, was awarded two grants from the National Institute on Aging, totaling more than $6 million, to fund a four-year study on air pollution and community noise exposure as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, as well as a five-year study on whether the olfactory system acts as a pathway for environmental toxicants to reach the brain and cause dementia.
- Deborah Carr, chair and professor of sociology, is the lead researcher on an interdisciplinary team awarded a Templeton World Charity Foundation grant, worth $100,000 and part of a $40 million global initiative, to explore the idea of human flourishing. The researchers will study people living under conditions of extreme physical, economic, and social adversity. The BU team brings together faculty from across the University, including the College of Arts & Sciences, the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, and the School of Theology, among several others.
