Provost's office provides $2 million for faculty research

A $2 million grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research will help faculty members start research projects that will aid them in securing larger grants.\nThe grant, announced earlier this month, will go to IU's Faculty Research Support Program, a three-year-old fund set aside to help professors conduct initial research in their projects, according to an IU news release.\nThe idea behind the program is that governmental and other agencies will be more likely to fund an IU research project if the professor can include the findings of some preliminary research.\n"The challenge, if we are to continue to increase externally funded research, is that we must continue to increase our internal research investments, at the school and the campus levels," IU Provost Michael McRobbie said in a statement. "In short, we must invest internal IU resources to attract more external grant funding to IU."\nInternal funding programs, like the Faculty Research Support Program, are the first step in the process of receiving grants from external funding programs, said biology professor Laura Hurley. The programs raise money that provides the necessary equipment to conduct preliminary research for a project. \nOnce a professor finds a reason for a project should continue, the researcher can include that data in a grant application to organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation in hopes of receiving a grant that will pave the way for bigger projects.\n"In this very competitive environment, investigators have to provide substantial evidence to the reviewers that they can do the work that is proposed," said Vice Provost for Research P. Sarita Soni in a statement.\nHurley is one professor involved in a 2007 project. According to an IU news release, Hurley will collaborate with professors of speech and hearing sciences Robert Withnell and William Shofner to study tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. Though the condition is prevalent in the U.S., little is known about what causes it.\nHurley said her team is interested in whether serotonin, a chemical in the brain, is involved. She said there has been clinical evidence the chemical could be involved in triggering tinnitus. \n"Our main goal is to figure out whether serotonin is involved in the changes that occur in the brain as tinnitus develops," Hurley said. "If there turns out to be a link, it would help us start thinking about additional approaches to treating tinnitus. It is so important to have this support to see if there's anything there."\nOptometry professor Ann Elsner is another professor focused on a project that will benefit from the grant money. Elsner said she is attempting to develop a low-cost device that screens for retinal disease. She said that most people do not get regular eye examinations. This is of particular importance to patients with diabetes because they should get one every year and many do not. Elsner warned that most people with treatable eye diseases are not going in for checkups often enough and therefore treatments that work best when applied early are not getting utilized.\n"It's difficult to compete for federal grants and difficult to publish in review journals without that commitment," Elsner said. "Individual grants don't buy large pieces of equipment typically. You have no other way to get them if your university isn't willing to get that donation"