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Proving ground
Provost’s SPRInG awards go to nine new interdisciplinary research projects
By Tim Stoddard
Major funding agencies look for innovative, interdisciplinary research proposals, but they’re often reluctant to invest in ambitious projects when the principal investigator doesn’t have a track record of publications. Faculty at the Charles River Campus have overcome this obstacle in recent years thanks to a grant program that provides seed money to help fledgling research projects get off the ground. Now in its third year, the Special Program for Research Initiation Grants (SPRInG) is aimed specifically at assisting interdisciplinary research projects in their early stages.
The Office of the Provost gives out the grants and expects that researchers who receive them will use the money to produce preliminary results that demonstrate their ideas are promising, thereby enabling them to secure more funding from external sources. “SPRInG has been extremely successful,” says Associate Provost Carol Simpson, who has administered the annual program. “Several excellent collaborative efforts have developed that either would not have gotten under way at all or would have struggled for survival without this funding mechanism.”
Simpson has overseen the SPRInG program since 2002, but hands off those duties to David Campbell, provost ad interim, when she leaves BU on January 31 to become provost and senior vice president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
While it is not uncommon for large universities to provide seed funding to help launch new research projects, Simpson says, “BU did take the lead in designing a program in 2002 that emphasizes interdisciplinary efforts as essential for success in obtaining an award.” Over the past decade, agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have emphasized that the most important discoveries are likely to come at the boundaries of traditional disciplines. “However, despite the call for interdisciplinary work,” Simpson says, “it is still remarkably difficult to succeed in obtaining funds for true cross-disciplinary work.” Part of this is due to the peer review system, where proposals are evaluated by experts in a particular field. The system works well when the research proposal is within a mainstream discipline, she says, but it is difficult to find reviewers who understand and appreciate completely innovative work. Hence the need for SPRInG, which gives investigators an opportunity to prove to their peers that they have the expertise and background to undertake a larger research program.
The Office of the Provost annually presents between 10 and 20 of the one-year grants, which can be as large as $25,000, to researchers whose ideas are deemed most likely to eventually receive external funding and lead to publications. The 2005 SPRInG awardees are pursuing a wide range of projects:
James Deshler, a CAS and GRS assistant professor of biology, is taking a closer look at the way mammalian nerve cells grow, and his research may someday lead to potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. Deshler studies the flow of genetic information in growing neurons, a process crucial for learning and memory processes.
Deborah Kelemen, a CAS and GRS assistant professor of psychology, is trying to understand why young children and adults construe nature in profoundly different ways. When asked why rocks are pointy, for example, many first and second graders will respond that it’s so animals won’t sit on them and smash them. Kelemen is testing the hypothesis that children treat objects of all kinds as though they are intentionally designed artifacts, and she hopes to develop new study methods that might someday be applied to work with autistic children.
Janusz Konrad is helping doctors peer into patients’ bodies and visualize organs and tissues in three dimensions. Konrad, an ENG associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is developing new ways of combining medical imaging technology such as computed tomography scanning, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound to create three-dimensional images that doctors can navigate like scuba divers swimming through a reef. The technology would be a boon in surgery and diagnostics and for scientists collecting complex data on the brain, the inner ear, and the retina.
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Elise Morgan, an ENG assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering (right), has received a SPRInG award to investigate the biology of bone growth. With graduate student Li Lui (ENG’08), Morgan is studying how mechanical forces applied to a rabbit knee joint affect bone cells and blood vessel growth. Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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Elise Morgan is looking for better ways of healing fractured bones. Working with biomedical engineers and orthopedic surgeons at Boston Medical Center, Morgan, an ENG assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, is developing new experimental techniques to study how mechanical stimulation of fractured bones either promotes or prevents osteogenesis, the growth of new bone. Her research may shed light on the interactions between osteoblasts, the cells that produce bone tissue, and endothelial cells, which line blood vessels.
Ruth Paris, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, is investigating postpartum mood disorders, which affect roughly 15 percent of women in the United States (see this week’s “Research Briefs”). Paris is evaluating the effectiveness of Early Connections, an innovative intervention providing therapeutic home visits to mothers with serious postpartum mood disorders, developed by a nonprofit community mental health agency.
Ketul Popat, an ENG biomedical engineering senior research associate, is also working on bone healing with an interdisciplinary team. But Popat is specifically interested in how bone integrates with synthetic materials such as prosthetic metal implants, and how certain metal-oxides’ surface textures can control and stimulate the growth of bone cells. Popat’s team will develop, refine, and extend new methods of fabricating metal-oxide films for skeletal implants.
Richard Primack and Xiaoyang Zhang are collaborating on a project to better forecast pollen season (see this week’s “Research Briefs”). Primack, a CAS and GRS professor of biology, and Zhang, a CAS and GRS research assistant professor of geography, will combine their expertise in botany and satellite-based remote sensing to monitor the leaf-out times of trees in the spring, the timing of pollen release, the duration of windborne pollen in the air, and the incidence of pollen allergies among people.
Joshua Semeter (ENG’92,’97), an ENG assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is developing a new kind of magnetometer, a device that measures changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Most magnetometers have been developed for terrestrial and military applications, but Semeter’s team is building one capable of sensing the magnetic field in the Earth’s magnetosphere, which extends far out beyond the atmosphere.
Anna Swan, an ENG research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is aiming for a fresh approach to carbon nanotubes, tiny structures less than one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair that are extremely strong and conductive. Despite the large amount of research in the area of nanotubes, scientists still don’t know very much about their light-emitting properties. Swan’s team will explore the electronic and optical characteristics of individual tubes and study how these change in different environmental conditions.
For more information about the SPRInG program, visit www.bu.edu/research/funding/spring.html.
28
January 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations