The University of Toledo’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs recently announced its University Research Funding Opportunities awards for Spring 2023.
“These seed grant programs are vital for UToledo faculty to make progress on projects, and the return, whether measured in publications or external grants, is very high,” said Dr. Rick Francis, UToledo’s director of research advancement in the Department of Research and Sponsored Programs. “It’s heartening to see the high quality of research and scholarship. The Research Council works hard to make difficult selections from the many worthwhile proposals submitted, and unfortunately, funds are insufficient to fund all the strong projects.”
The research grants awarded are:
Interdisciplinary Research Initiation, $85,000
• Dr. Bruce Bamber, Department of Biological Sciences, for whole-network computational analysis of sensory-driven behavior.
• Dr. Rammohan Shukla, Department of Neurosciences, for the role of ribosomal heterogeneity in chronic stress.
Research Innovation Program, $105,000
• Dr. Qian Chen, Department of Biological Sciences, for the essential role of polycystins in kidney cell cytokinesis.
• Dr. Laura Mike, Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, for the determinants of klebsiella pneumoniae urinary tract infections.
• Dr. Isaac Schiefer, Department of Medicinal and Biological Chemistry, for the synthesis and evaluation of novel dual mechanism EZH2/AR inhibitors for prostate cancer.
Research Awards and Fellowships, $144,500
• Dr. Ayendy Bonifacio, Department of English, for Paratextuality in Anglophone and Hispanophone Poems (1855-1901).
• Dr. Daniel Compora, Department of English, for Talking Baseball: The Changing Role of Oral Traditions in America’s Pastime.
• Dr. Erica Czaja, Department of Population Health, for Racial Reckoning Through Empathy? Mapping Emotions and Beliefs about Racial Inequality in the Aftermath of the Covid-19 Crisis and 2020 Protests.
• Dr. Joseph Gamble, Department of English, for trans philologies.
• Dr. Dae-Wook Kang, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, for discovering microbial biomarkers to strengthen wastewater SARS-CoV-2 surveillance.
• Dr. Clarissa Ong, Department of Psychology, for Examining Individual Networks in Context: How Does Responding Change Across Contexts?
• Dr. Iryna Pentina, Department of Marketing and International Business, for Artificial Intelligence Companions in Personal Consumer Services: Exploring Relationship Development and Addiction Potential.
• Dr. Mounika Polavarapu, Department of Population Health, for health technology as a ‘safety net’ in delivering perinatal healthcare: a qualitative study.
• Dr. Jeanine Refsnider-Streby, Department of Environmental Sciences, for the gut microbiome as a biomarker of host and ecosystem health in high-salinity environments.
• Dr. Parama Sarkar, Department of English, for Empire State of Mind: Colonial nostalgia, Orientalist fantasy, and the Crisis of National Identity in British cultural production (2000-2020).
• Dr. Courtney Williams, Department of Management, Shocks and Turnover Intentions: An Affective and Temporal Investigation.
DeArce-Koch Memorial Fund for Medical Research, $98,190
• Dr. Shahnawaz Imam, Department of Medicine, for generation of human CAR-Treg cells for inducing immunological tolerance against diabetogenic T cells in the pancreatic islets of recent onset LADA patients.
• Dr. William Messer, Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, enhancing M1 muscarinic receptor activity for the treatment of autism spectrum disorders.
• Dr. Jennifer Peterson, Department of Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, defining mechanisms of improved phenotype with miR146a overexpression in dystrophic mice.
• Dr. Lirim Shemshedini, Department of Biological Sciences, androgen down-regulation of BARD1/BRCA1 in prostate cancer cells.
Archaelogical Research Fund, $1,956
• Dr. Melissa Baltus Zych, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, for exploring the western edges of Fort Miamis.
