The work awarded spans four schools and five departments between the IU-Bloomington and IU-Purdue University Indianapolis campuses. This speaks to IU’s ability to identify, recruit and welcome the leading young teacher-scholars of this generation, José said in an IU Newsroom press release.
José believes this is also a clear reflection of IU’s history of building the foundations necessary for nurturing lifetimes of leaderships within both education and research.
Funding is spread out during five years, and individual awards cumulate to a total of more than $4.4 million for the time span. This is split between the winners to date depending on their respected fields. The range of the individual award money is between $455,000 and $2.2 million depending on the specific research being acknowledged.
More winners of this award can be named later in the year.
These awardees are representative of a young, diverse faculty that presents a clear picture of a future that bodes well for IU, José said in the press release.
The winners already chosen are Mary C. Murphy, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, IUB College of Arts and Sciences; Noah Snyder, assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics, IUB College of Arts and Sciences; Lei Li, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, School of Science at IUPUI; Chien-Chi Lin, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI; Ryan Newton, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Informatics, IUB School of Informatics and ?Computing.
“It allows me to do more research with the award money,” Li said. “Once the signs are proposed, the research will start.”
Murphy was awarded more than $2.2 million to advance research designed to increase the number of women who enter and remain in STEM careers. These fields are usually more male-dominated and have larger salaries as well. Her funding will start in June.
Murphy’s work will examine the effect of casual, situational cues in the classroom that may signal to women whether they belong, and are valued in, these ?disciplines.
She and her team will use a variety of methods, including interviewing women about their experiences, to create concrete recommendations, educational materials and videos for teachers. These are designed to improve all students’ interest and motivation in STEM.
Snyder’s research money will also start in June. His research is looking to advance the study of quantum groups and sub factors, a form of theoretical mathematics with potential applications in areas such as physics and quantum computing.
In addition to advancing knowledge in the field, Snyder’s grant will support the development of new curriculum based on his work, which employs a technique known as higher dimensional algebra, for high school students at Canada/USA Mathcamp, an elite mathematics summer program.
Li was awarded $650,000 to investigate DNA damage and repair related to ultraviolet light in endospore-forming bacteria that are a direct link to a number of serious diseases in humans, including anthrax and botulism.
The ultimate goal of this research, which starts receiving funding in May, is to establish a spore photoproduct lyase (SPL) mechanism, leading to novel decontamination abilities against ?deadly spores.
SPL is a metalloenzyme that repairs the “spore photoproduct” dithymine DNA lesion. The research will evaluate spore photoproduct repair in different DNA local environments and reveal the detailed reaction mechanism, Li said.
“We may be able to tell effective ways to make breakthroughs of national security,” Li said.
Lin will begin receiving more than $496,000 in July for his research on developing reversible dynamic hydrogels to study stemness and drug responsiveness of cancer stem cells.
Lin’s work has focused on the development of highly tunable hydrogels, a type of cross-linked polymer that imbibes large amounts of water without dissolving, for tissue regeneration and drug delivery applications.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, Lin hopes to incorporate six different fields of science to help his research.
Newton began receiving more than $530,000 in support last month for his work to advance new programming techniques designed to operate the parallel processing power now found in most consumer electronic devices in a more sufficient way. This is his fourth award received from the National Science Foundation.
Most software employs sequential programming, in which single sets of commands are applied in order, despite the fact that devices such as smartphones and laptops now contain multiple processors capable of carrying out multiple, concurrent successive processes to ?increase speed.
“Albert Einstein once said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” Newton said. “But with parallel processing you must keep doing things over again.”
All recipients of the award were personally recognized by José for their prestigious honor.
