Grant List
Represents Grant table in the DB
GET /v1/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=4&sort=funder
{ "links": { "first": "https://cic-apps.datascience.columbia.edu/v1/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1&sort=funder", "last": "https://cic-apps.datascience.columbia.edu/v1/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=1397&sort=funder", "next": "https://cic-apps.datascience.columbia.edu/v1/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=5&sort=funder", "prev": "https://cic-apps.datascience.columbia.edu/v1/grants?page%5Bnumber%5D=3&sort=funder" }, "data": [ { "type": "Grant", "id": "3863", "attributes": { "award_id": "1741771", "title": "2017 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES)-National Scinece Foundation (NSF) Special Sessions", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Engineering (ENG)", "Engineering of Biomed Systems" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 12698, "first_name": "Aleksandr", "last_name": "Simonian", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2017-08-01", "end_date": "2018-07-31", "award_amount": 15000, "principal_investigator": { "id": 12699, "first_name": "Lori", "last_name": "Setton", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 950, "ror": "https://ror.org/04wrzra57", "name": "Biomedical Engineering Society", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "MD", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "This award will support two special sessions related to NSF funding: \"BMES-NSF Special Session on CAREER and Unsolicited Awards\" and ?BMES-NSF Special Session on Graduate Research Fellowships Program.? Both of these sessions are outside of the regular program of the Annual Meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society being held in Phoenix, AZ, October 11-14, 2017. The funding will be used to promote, convene and record the session and offset travel costs and registration fees for NSF awardees (3 research grant and 4 GRFP) and reviewers (5) who will serve as presenters, panelists, and potential mentors/collaborators for novice and emerging investigators. The CAREER/Unsolicited session builds on the success of similar sessions held at BMES annual meetings since 2013. The GRFP session was added after feedback from last year?s participants indicating a specific interest in this student-focused program. The 2017 BMES meeting will feature 19 Program Tracks with the theme \"Engineering Personalized Medicine and Therapies.\" Approximately 800 oral presentations, 1600 poster presentations and over 4,000 participants are anticipated. The BMES Annual Meeting serves as a primary vehicle for scientific sharing and dissemination of the latest advances in biomedical engineering, as well as a facilitator of important cross-fertilizations between the life sciences and engineering technologies, which foster a multi-disciplinary approach in the practice of Biomedical Engineering. \n\nThe research grant focused session will be a 3 hour session, featuring presentations showcasing NSF funded research and researchers (2 CAREER awardees and 1 non-CAREER awardee), a Networking Reception, a Tutorial on Essential Elements to Develop a Successful NSF BME Grant, and an Interactive Grant Writing and Submission Panel Discussion, will be held on October 13, 2017. The GRFP-focused session will be 2 hours in length and will be held on October 14, 2017. It will involve 4 past GRFP recipients, from diverse graduate and undergraduate institutions, as well as past GRFP panelists. Both sessions will include time for Q&A with the audience. Both recorded sessions will be posted on the BMES website for on demand viewing.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "4260", "attributes": { "award_id": "1643623", "title": "EAGER: Collaborative Research: Combining Community and Clinical Data for Augmenting Influenza Modeling", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)", "Smart and Connected Health" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 14400, "first_name": "Wendy", "last_name": "Nilsen", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2016-09-01", "end_date": "2018-08-31", "award_amount": 119000, "principal_investigator": { "id": 14401, "first_name": "Jeffrey", "last_name": "Shaman", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [ { "id": 196, "ror": "https://ror.org/00hj8s172", "name": "Columbia University", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "NY", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true } ] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 196, "ror": "https://ror.org/00hj8s172", "name": "Columbia University", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "NY", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "This EAGER represents timely and essential exploratory work assessing the value of community-sourced data in infectious disease modeling efforts. Community-generated data can suffer from lack of information about the reference population, which hinders prevalence estimates. In theory, real-time and near real-time community-sourced data has been recognized to offer important opportunity to improve timeliness and scope of infectious disease modeling efforts, but there are still fundamental questions regarding the value of community infection data for understanding, monitoring and forecasting. Towards this, work here will study how community and clinically generated data compare regarding measures of disease incidence, contributing population demographics, and spatio-temporal coverage in influenza dynamics. Public dissemination of our research and findings will help expose and educate the community in data generation and forecasting efforts.\n\nThis project involves a rigorous and systematic comparison between contemporaneous community and clinical data on acute respiratory infections. The goal of this work will be to first generate a diverse community-sourced data set with a defined reference population. We will then assess significance of outcomes between groups in community and clinical data, accounting for demographic and epidemiological factors. Dynamical modeling and Bayesian inference methods will be used to develop and augment disease forecasts. Normalized and municipal scale estimates from the community samples will be integrated and the data generation and modeling efforts will together be used to assess the impact of community data on real-time and near-real time simulations and forecasts. The high-risk work can potentially be paradigm shifting regarding how we collect and use data in forecasting methods for disease as well as a broader range of societal issues.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "4226", "attributes": { "award_id": "1615076", "title": "Collaborative Research: Dynamics of RNA dependent RNA polymerases", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Biological Sciences (BIO)", "Genetic Mechanisms" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 14261, "first_name": "Manju", "last_name": "Hingorani", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2016-09-01", "end_date": "2020-08-31", "award_amount": 450000, "principal_investigator": { "id": 14262, "first_name": "Saveez", "last_name": "Saffarian", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 202, "ror": "https://ror.org/03r0ha626", "name": "University of Utah", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "UT", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "The goal of this project is to understand the molecular mechanisms by which a virus, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) replicates. VSV has a similar RNA genome to other potent human and animal pathogens such as Ebola and measles. When VSV enters a host cell it synthesizes an enzyme, RNA dependent RNA Polymerases (RdRPs) that copies the viral RNA genome. This project will examine the mechanism by which RdRPs read and copy the viral genome template in infected cells, which is critical for the replication of viruses. The results from this study will improve scientific understanding of how RdRPs work and identify potential target mechanisms for inhibition of viral infections. This study will train students who are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields, by engaging them within teams doing research at the University of Utah and University of Massachusetts Medical School at Worcester. The proposed activities will also support development of Biophysics courses that will benefit undergraduate interdisciplinary education, and encourage participation of K-12 students in science by communicating aspects of the scientific results through creation of a \"virus dance\" project.\n \nThis project will use single molecule live cell imaging to visualize transcription events from single VSV genome templates in infected cells and utilize fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to measure the concentration of free RdRPs during transcription in vivo. When stretched, the genome template of VSV is more than 4 microns in size and RdRPs can only initiate transcription on its 3' end. While 50 RdRPs are tightly bound to this template, how they initiate and sustain transcription is not clear. The live cell imaging experiments will determine the number of active RdRPs per genome and their cooperativity. Measurements of the concentration of free RdRPs not bound to the genome will verify if a dissociation and 3' binding mechanism can support viral transcription in vivo. This project will also use reconstituted templates in vitro to visualize the mechanism by which RdRPs redistribute on the genome template. We have observed single RdRP sliding on purified genome templates in vitro. In this project we will further characterize the sliding mechanism of RdRPs on genome templates. By measuring the dynamics of RdRPs in vivo as well as in vitro this project will determine the mechanism of transcription by RdRPs during VSV RNA virus infection.\n\nThe project was funded by the Genetic Mechanisms Program in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "3993", "attributes": { "award_id": "1810907", "title": "RAPID/Collaborative Research: The Effects of the 2017 Central Mexico Earthquake on Reinforced Concrete Buildings", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Engineering (ENG)", "ECI-Engineering for Civil Infr" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 13385, "first_name": "Joy", "last_name": "Pauschke", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2018-01-01", "end_date": "2018-12-31", "award_amount": 19836, "principal_investigator": { "id": 13386, "first_name": "Gilberto", "last_name": "Mosqueda", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [ { "id": 258, "ror": "", "name": "University of California-San Diego", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "CA", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true } ] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 258, "ror": "", "name": "University of California-San Diego", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "CA", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) will support a collaborative team of researchers from five U.S. universities to collect data to document the performance of reinforced concrete buildings during the Puebla-Morelos, Mexico earthquake of September 19, 2017. The ground shaking from this earthquake caused widespread damage to buildings in the epicentral region, as well as in Mexico City (approximately 120 kilometers from the epicenter). In Mexico City, approximately 40 buildings collapsed, and over one thousand structures have been identified with moderate to major structural damage. The 2017 earthquake, having impacted an area that had already been shaken by a strong earthquake in 1985, provides an opportunity to learn about the effectiveness of reinforced concrete building repairs and retrofits made after the 1985 earthquake, as well as an opportunity to study how modern and older, unrepaired reinforced concrete buildings performed during strong ground motion. The majority of collapsed buildings were constructed prior to 1985 before there were major seismic revisions to building codes. There were also a few cases of newer and retrofitted buildings that also sustained damage. Mexico City has soil conditions ranging from stiff rock to very soft soil, producing a diverse set of ground conditions affecting buildings that can facilitate understanding of seismic building performance not only in Mexico, but also in the United States. Because the United States and Mexico have similarities in reinforced concrete building construction, the collected data from this earthquake will contribute to better building design and performance assessment methods, numerical simulation methods, and earthquake intensity indices in both countries, and help foster safer buildings and more earthquake-resilient communities. The collected data will be archived and made publicly available in the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure, Data Depot and Reconnaissance Integration Portal (http://wwww.DesignSafe-ci.org). Graduate students will participate in the data collection and gain valuable post-earthquake field experience. The project team will disseminate its data collection and research findings through a webinar. \n\nThe goal of this RAPID project is to collect perishable data on reinforced concrete building damage that can be used towards understanding and improving seismic performance of buildings and the resilience of communities in the United States. The data collection in Mexico will be conducted in collaboration with researchers and engineers in Mexico and include the following activities: (1) survey buildings built near recording stations with emphasis on retrofitted buildings, buildings that survived the 1985 earthquake, and modern buildings, (2) document damage to non-ductile reinforced concrete buildings for calibration of existing methodologies used to identify vulnerable buildings in the United States, (3) map damage to test commonly assumed correlations with earthquake intensity indices such as peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, peak ground displacement, and peak or discrete spectral values of acceleration, velocity and displacement, (4) document the performance of instrumented and base-isolated buildings, (5) deploy accelerometers on damaged and undamaged reinforced concrete buildings with and without retrofits to record ambient vibrations and obtain building dynamic properties, (6) evaluate numerical models of reinforced concrete buildings by subjecting them to ground motion records obtained nearby and compare the numerical estimates and observed performance, and (7) study relationships between building performance and soil conditions.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "3960", "attributes": { "award_id": "1738317", "title": "SBIR Phase II: A New Paradigm for Physical Security Information: A Platform Integrating Social Media and Online News with Information Sharing Across Trusted Networks", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP)", "SBIR Phase II" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 13133, "first_name": "Peter", "last_name": "Atherton", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2017-09-15", "end_date": "2021-02-28", "award_amount": 750000, "principal_investigator": { "id": 13134, "first_name": "Gregory", "last_name": "Adams", "orcid": null, "emails": "[email protected]", "private_emails": null, "keywords": "[]", "approved": true, "websites": "[]", "desired_collaboration": "", "comments": "", "affiliations": [ { "id": 1219, "ror": "", "name": "Stabilitas Intelligence Communications, Inc.", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "WA", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true } ] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 1219, "ror": "", "name": "Stabilitas Intelligence Communications, Inc.", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "WA", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is as follows. Commercially, the technology described herein has the capability to provide faster, granular, dynamic information about safety and security, globally, to firms, universities, governments, and NGOs. This project uses novel methods to improve Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. As a result, better geo-parsing of digital sources of news about security will result in risk content that can be aggregated, displayed, and analyzed in original ways. This enables security managers at these organizations to better understand risk and protect their staff, providing a higher quality of care. For non-governmental organizations (including firms), this enables improved decision-making about operations, travel, and investment. For governments, this enables improved physical security resource allocation. Socially, this project has the potential to improve transparency and accountability regarding trends about safety and security, by improving the aggregation and visualization of data. As an example, groups of firms and governments in emerging markets can collectively identify previously unnoticed patterns of insecurity, in support of public accountability. \n \nThis Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is an innovation over the state of the art in the following ways. First, this project builds on current geo-parsing extraction methodologies by adding methodologies unique to the safety and security space. Second, this project uses external data sources for cross correlations to improve the \"aboutness\" and granularity of extracted reports. Third, this project exploits contributions from users at the organizational level - as well as individuals. That is, this project supports the growth of an ecosystem in which human users of information also contribute to the quality, volume, and timeliness of that information. This contribution is also intended to improve the geo-parsing methodologies via machine learning. The opportunity is the improvement of geo-parsing extraction mechanisms. The research objectives are to test the hypotheses that NLP algorithms can exploit patterns unique to the safety and security space; that external sources of news can be exploited for improved granularity and \"aboutness\" scores; and that user-generated content can serve to support an ecosystem of information sharing. The anticipated results are that the above innovations will result in usability scoring sufficient for the safety and security use case.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "4003", "attributes": { "award_id": "1719550", "title": "Physics Virus of Assembly and Maturation: energetics and dynamics", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)", "CONDENSED MATTER & MAT THEORY" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 13416, "first_name": "Daryl", "last_name": "Hess", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2017-12-15", "end_date": "2021-11-30", "award_amount": 330000, "principal_investigator": { "id": 13417, "first_name": "Roya", "last_name": "Zandi", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 153, "ror": "", "name": "University of California-Riverside", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "CA", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "Nontechnical Summary\n\nThis award supports theoretical and computational research, and education at the interface of materials research and biology and is aimed to advance understanding of how RNA viruses assemble. They infect bacteria, plants, and animals among many other hosts, and with all degrees of severity. All viruses, from the simplest to the most complicated, are built from a protein shell called the capsid which protects the genetic materials (RNA or DNA) they contain. The focus of this project is on single stranded RNA viruses that under many circumstances readily assemble from solutions containing capsid proteins and genome molecules. Due to advances in experimental techniques that probe living and inanimate matter at the nanoscale, the number of experiments investigating the physical basis of self-assembly and maturation of viral particles are soaring. This research project involves applying the methods of elasticity theory, and statistical and polymer physics to develop a physical model to explain experiments related to the formation of different viruses. The PI will engage three related projects. The first is to understand the factors that contribute to the efficient assembly and stability of spherical viral particles. The PI will study how the shape of RNA or to be mathematically precise, RNA topology, affects the size, shape and stability of viral shells and how the capsid structure and charge density in turn influences the structure of the encapsulated RNA. The second project involves analyzing the structure of immature human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) shell built from protein subunits, packed with local hexagonal shape and surrounded by a lipid bilayer. An intriguing feature of the immature HIV-1 is the presence of small and large gaps, covering about 30% of the surface of the enclosing membrane. The origin of the gaps is not well understood. The PI will explore what physical properties of protein subunits give rise to the structures similar to the immature HIV shell. Finally, the last project is devoted to the process of maturation of the spherical immature HIV particles, which involves cleavage of HIV immature building blocks by a set of chemical reactions leading to the assembly of the intriguing HIV conical capsid. Through the understanding of the interplay of RNA shape and the way viral capsid structure emerges, this project will advance understanding of the process of self-assembly which shapes much of the biomolecular world as well as biomaterials and polymer-based materials.\n\nUnderstanding the physical factors that influence the formation of virus particles is currently finding applications in nanotechnology, actuators, drug delivery and gene therapy and can play a vital role in the development of new anti-viral therapies. Furthermore, this project will contribute to the education of undergraduate and graduate students, and particularly to the training of the next generation of soft condensed matter, polymer, and biological physicists in a multidisciplinary environment. The PI will also organize an outreach program for young women middle school students.\n\n\nTechnical Summary \n\nThis award supports theoretical and computational research and education at the interface of material science, soft condensed matter physics and biology. This project involves the extension of recent progress in the statistical theory of soft matter to the physics of viruses, which corresponds to the long-standing charge over-compensation problem in the physics of polyelectrolytes, the controversies about the impact of annealing and pseudoknots on the adsorption of RNA to the oppositely charged wall, and the structure of macromolecules under confinement. The research is focused on the statistical mechanics of viral self-assembly, both in equilibrium and far from equilibrium. The self-assembly and maturation of virus particles will be studied through developing new computational and theoretical models. The self-consistent field theory of polyelectrolytes needs to be extended to consider self-interaction of RNA while confined in a viral shell. Of particular interest is how the free energy of viral particles is influenced by the topology of RNA while interacting with the positively charged N-terminal domain of capsid proteins. The PI and her group will investigate the impact of the thermodynamic parameters on the size and geometry of the assembly products with the aim to explain the phenomena of co-existence and polymorphism observed in many virus assembly experiments. The PI combines the equilibrium statistical theory and classical nucleation theory to study how kinetic barriers influence the final structure of capsids. In view of complexity of the physics, in additional to analytical calculations, the PI will perform a series of both Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics computer simulations to explore both the equilibrium and kinetic aspects of viral self-assembly and maturation. The important questions to be addressed are: What physical considerations govern the maturation of HIV particles? and What determines the ratio of different assembled structures from a solution of capsid proteins and genome molecules? The PI and her team will invetigate the impact of changes in the mechanical properties of coat proteins after protease cleavage, resulting in the transformation of the immature HIV to the mature conical capsid.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "4201", "attributes": { "award_id": "1609279", "title": "EPCN: Strong Diagnoses from Weak Signals: Leveraging Network Effects for Epidemic Detection", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Engineering (ENG)", "EPCN-Energy-Power-Ctrl-Netwrks" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 14153, "first_name": "Lawrence", "last_name": "Goldberg", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2016-09-01", "end_date": "2020-08-31", "award_amount": 360000, "principal_investigator": { "id": 14154, "first_name": "Constantine", "last_name": "Caramanis", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [ { "id": 156, "ror": "", "name": "University of Texas at Austin", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "TX", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true } ] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 156, "ror": "", "name": "University of Texas at Austin", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "TX", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "Interconnection is at the core of the functionality of our modern infrastructure, spreading ideas, technology and information. Future critical infrastructure, from self-driving cars to everything cloud computing promises to enable, exploit and depend on this interconnection and spreading capability. But as recent history shows, from denial of service attacks to state-driven cyberwarfare they will also suffer from it if vulnerabilities allow. The potential for broad destructive impact of malware is clear, particularly as the importance of mobile devices is on the rise. As more of our critical infrastructure becomes linked to devices end-users (consumers) control, and not merely a computer backbone whose hardware and software are centrally managed and controlled, the importance of maintaining the cyber-health of our devices will become increasingly critical, and much more difficult. The central theme of this proposal is its motto, if it spreads, it cannot hide. The motivation is to build a theory and accompanying algorithms that do not depend on the specifics of the network or devices, or on the specifics of what is spreading. If our defenses depend on detecting specific characteristics, by definition they miss any threat that does not share those. Rather, the high level idea is that if something spreads through a network, the spread itself will leave a signature independent of the design of the malware, or of the devices it is infecting. Moreover, the proposal is built on the idea that this can be done, even if locally it leaves no trace -- that is, even if looking at a single device over time, its behavior is statistically indistinguishable from normal behavior. \n\nThis work proposes to do this by developing a new paradigm for network inverse problems: use plentiful but extremely weak or noisy signals as network forensics tools, to uncover hidden structure, properties, and phenomena spreading on the network. This requires using and developing new tools from high dimensional statistics and concentration, Markov chain coupling, graph dynamics and graph theory, to obtain a statistical theory that delineates the landscape of when global phenomena are statistically detectable, from local signals indistinguishable from noise. An equal part of the proposed work is then to develop efficient, scalable algorithms to do the detection. Building on this, the proposal tackles two fundamental challenges: developing efficient parallelizable and distributed algorithms with information requirements that do not scale in the size of the network, and second, using a notion of aggregate network feedback extracted through noisy signals, to enable network learning.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "10407", "attributes": { "award_id": "2133205", "title": "Collaborative Research: Optimized Testing Strategies for Fighting Pandemics: Fundamental Limits and Efficient Algorithms", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Engineering (ENG)", "CCSS-Comms Circuits & Sens Sys" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [], "start_date": "2022-09-01", "end_date": "2025-08-31", "award_amount": 225000, "principal_investigator": { "id": 4638, "first_name": "Weiyu", "last_name": "Xu", "orcid": null, "emails": "[email protected]", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [ { "id": 220, "ror": "https://ror.org/036jqmy94", "name": "University of Iowa", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "IA", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true } ] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 220, "ror": "https://ror.org/036jqmy94", "name": "University of Iowa", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "IA", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "Large-scale high-throughput prevalence and diagnostic testing is essential for the containment and mitigation of pandemics. The testing bottleneck in the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a resurgence of interest in group testing, where several people's biological samples are mixed together and examined in a single test. When the rate of infection in the population is low, this method can significantly reduce the total number of tests per subject and increase the throughput of the existing testing infrastructure. However, traditional group testing has the following limitations: First, efficient group testing based methods for the estimation of prevalence have been largely overlooked in the literature. Second, traditional group testing usually assumes that the testing results are qualitative (positive versus negative), not quantitative (providing viral load information). Third, the theoretical study of group testing rarely takes practical constraints, such as the sensitivity of the pooled tests and the dilution effect, into consideration, which hinders the applicability of the testing schemes in practice. The goal of this project is to overcome these limitations of traditional group testing and design advanced pooled testing strategies for efficient prevalence tracking and accurate infection diagnosis. It will develop optimized pooled testing strategies with strong theoretical performance guarantees yet feasible and cost-effective in practice.\n\nThe proposed research is organized in three research thrusts as follows. Thrust 1 aims to design effective sampling and testing algorithms to estimate the prevalence in communities and track its evolution, under scarce testing resource constraints. Thrust 2 focuses on the design of optimized pooling and decoding algorithms for compressed sensing based (COVID-19) virus diagnostic testing. Thrust 3 validates the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed pooled testing through experiments on anonymized COVID-19 samples. This project bridges group testing and online learning, the two largely disconnected areas, with the objective to effectively allocate limited testing resources for efficient prevalence tracking. Such integration leads to novel sampling strategies, broadens the paradigm of group testing, and advances the state of the art of online learning. Moreover, the proposed compressed sensing based diagnostic testing leverages quantitative measurements provided by advanced testing technologies, which can significantly increase test throughput, reduce the number of needed tests, decrease the consumption of scarce reagents, and provide results robust against observation noises and outliers. The rich compressed sensing theory provides possible approaches to the rigorous mathematical certification of the correctness of the decoded results. Besides, the clinical constraints on pooled testing also lead to novel problem formulation and theoretical characterization, enriching the study of compressed sensing.\n\nThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "3871", "attributes": { "award_id": "1713316", "title": "Developing innovative techniques for using museum-based theater and gaming to support visitor understanding of complex systems", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Education and Human Resources (EHR)", "AISL" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 12722, "first_name": "Robert", "last_name": "Russell", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2017-10-01", "end_date": "2021-09-30", "award_amount": 1999578, "principal_investigator": { "id": 12723, "first_name": "Liza", "last_name": "Pryor", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [ { "id": 622, "ror": "https://ror.org/02nyfes25", "name": "Science Museum of Minnesota", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "MN", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true } ] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 622, "ror": "https://ror.org/02nyfes25", "name": "Science Museum of Minnesota", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "MN", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will use a design-based research process to research and develop an innovative theatrical game that will improve visitors' understanding of complex topics requiring conceptual change. This project will research a novel experience that helps visitors engage with difficult content in informal science education venues, uses existing exhibit and collection assets in a new way, and creates a venue for visitor engagement that requires less capitalization than a full exhibition project. For the public, this project will blend best practices from exhibit development, museum theater, and facilitation with emerging theories about game-based learning to create a novel experience that deeply engages visitors with an evolution storyline and allows them to explore the museum and interact with one another in new ways. For the field, the project will examine how theatrical games can be valuable, viable experiences in museum environments and what game mechanics and supports contribute to players' conceptual thinking. While the project's games with theatrical elements will focus on evolution, the tested strategies will provide valuable information about effective approaches for informal STEM education more broadly wherever audiences exhibit major misconceptions or discomfort with scientific ideas. The project will disseminate findings through conferences and workshops, academic reports, a research-to-practice implementation guide, and a training video about best practices for engaging the public in theatrical gaming.\n\nThe project will focus on the creation and modification of a theoretical framework that describes the content, program format, and degree of facilitation necessary to create experiences that support conceptual change in visitors' thinking about evolution--and, by extension, other complex topics. The project team and advisors will collaboratively will build varying levels of facilitation and challenge into theatrical programming that connects objects and experiences across the museum to help visitors construct a story of evolution. Project research will focus on the creation of three variants of a theatrical game to test a theoretical framework that describes the game dynamics and facilitation necessary for experiences that support conceptual shifts in visitors' understanding about evolution. This work will take place in four phases, and will be conducted by researchers at the Science Museum of Minnesota with input and review through an external evaluation process. The questions guiding the research are: (1) How, and in what ways, do game design features support conceptual shifts in evolution concepts?; (2) Do player outcomes differ in each game? If so, in what ways?; (3) What other factors (player profile, collaboration, evolution beliefs) influence player outcomes? (4) What are the best practices for facilitating the games and supporting visitors' experiences? The research will contribute to the under-studied field of participatory museum theatre experiences; broaden our understanding of the roles facilitation and gameplay have in informal learning; and help exhibit and program developers make informed choices about the potential of various exhibit components and aligned programming.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } }, { "type": "Grant", "id": "4148", "attributes": { "award_id": "1636036", "title": "Collaborative Research: Enabling Design of Polymer Nanocomposites Guided by Mesoscale Simulations and Scattering Experiments", "funder": { "id": 3, "ror": "https://ror.org/021nxhr62", "name": "National Science Foundation", "approved": true }, "funder_divisions": [ "Engineering (ENG)", "Materials Eng. & Processing" ], "program_reference_codes": [], "program_officials": [ { "id": 13948, "first_name": "Andrew", "last_name": "Wells", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [] } ], "start_date": "2016-09-01", "end_date": "2020-08-31", "award_amount": 237977, "principal_investigator": { "id": 13949, "first_name": "Vikram", "last_name": "Kuppa", "orcid": null, "emails": "", "private_emails": "", "keywords": null, "approved": true, "websites": null, "desired_collaboration": null, "comments": null, "affiliations": [ { "id": 214, "ror": "https://ror.org/021v3qy27", "name": "University of Dayton", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "OH", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true } ] }, "other_investigators": [], "awardee_organization": { "id": 214, "ror": "https://ror.org/021v3qy27", "name": "University of Dayton", "address": "", "city": "", "state": "OH", "zip": "", "country": "United States", "approved": true }, "abstract": "Nanoscale materials are found in many consumer products to serve as particle reinforcement in a polymer matrix; the material system is called a polymer nanocomposite. One such example is the use of nanoscale silica particles in tires to improve fuel economy. Choices of material combinations are often determined through trial and error experiments. This research grant will enable the design of polymer nanocomposites via an informed approach using computational modeling and experiments, resulting in a simple tool to predict compatibility as a function of material types and processing conditions. Potential applications for polymer nanocomposites include solar cells, sports equipment, medical devices and aerospace structures. The project will involve several female undergraduate students through a program at the University of Cincinnati as well as high school students through the University of Dayton Summer Honors Institute and the Minority Engineering & Technology Enrichment Camp. Long-standing relationships with Ethiopian universities will be leveraged via grants through the NSF Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) program. \n\nMulticomponent polymer mixtures such as nanocomposites are among the most commonly used polymeric materials, but there is a significant gap in the understanding of how hierarchical structure develops in such systems. This research tests the hypothesis that it is possible to accurately determine a parameter controlling filler dispersion in a polymer matrix, and to employ this parameter in a toolbox to predict optimized structure and performance. The approach couples a pseudo-thermodynamic analysis of binary mixtures to obtain a pseudo-second order virial coefficient which quantifies binary enthalpic interactions, and which relates to a coarse-grained potential. This parameter will be employed in mesoscale simulations to predict optimal compositions, processing conditions, dispersion and/or segregation of components in complex blends, correlation functions and correlation lengths for fillers. These features can also be experimentally determined in separate x-ray and neutron scattering measurements. Therefore, the researched work involves three novel components: 1) tabulation of pseudo-second order virial coefficients using scattering and determination of potential functions for simulation; 2) dissipative particle dynamics simulations of binary, ternary, quaternary mixtures using potentials from part 1; 3) x-ray and neutron scattering, microscopy, dynamic mechanical and rheological measurements to verify simulation results. The outcome of our approach is a practical solution to compounding issues, based on a mutually validating experimental and simulation methodology.", "keywords": [], "approved": true } } ], "meta": { "pagination": { "page": 4, "pages": 1397, "count": 13961 } } }