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CSU Researchers Receive $1.3 Million Dr. Moo-Yeal Lee, assistant professor, and Dr. Chandra Kothapalli, associate professor, from the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, have received a four-year, $1.3 million award from the National Institutes of Health for their proposal, entitled "Mechanistic Study of Developmental Neurotoxicity on 3D Cultured Stem Cell Microarrays."
The R01 grant, or Research Project Grant, is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by NIH, considered one of the NIH's most competitive awards. Understanding human toxicity has important implications for health and disease prevention. Through this research project, Drs. Lee and Kothapalli will develop an improved in vitro human toxicology system to directly test the effects of xenobiotic agents. Using innovative systems including microarray chip technology and three-dimensional cultured human neural stem cells, their research will decipher the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of toxic compounds. Read more here. This federally funded proposal was developed with support from the Faculty Research and Development (FRD) program from the Office of Research.
Dr. Ungtae Kim, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, joined CSU in Fall 2014. Dr. Kim is an established researcher, with more than 15 journal papers and 30 conference proceedings published in the field of hydrology and water resources engineering. He teaches hydrologic modeling, open channel hydraulics, groundwater hydrology, and water resources engineering. Dr. Kim's research focuses on solving real-world problems in the field of water resources engineering, watershed science, and environmental engineering by utilizing high performance computing techniques. His current research project involves developing a stochastic cost optimization toolkit (SCOToolkit) for optimal decision making in groundwater remediation practices. The project is currently funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). Dense non-aqueous phase liquid such as trichloroethene (TCE) has been used as a solvent for degreasing and dry cleaning in many military bases around the world. Once TCE is released into the environment, it can threaten drinking water sources for hundreds of years. Therefore, properly engineered remedial practices (thermal mass removal, biodegradation, in-situ chemical oxidation, etc.) are critical to protect and secure groundwater systems. The transport and fate of contaminants is very complex, and currently employed engineering designs generally adopt averaged measured parameters that result in over- or under-performance.
To combat these problems, Dr. Kim developed SCOToolkit which utilizes a semi-analytical method with parallel computing schemes to better handle uncertainty while also reducing processing time. SCOToolkit has been applied to multiple contaminated sites at military bases such as Dover AFB, Fort Lewis, Lake Hurst, and Parris Island. Results show potential cost-saving up to 30% while increasing success probability compared to conventional non-optimized design. Dr. Kim and his colleagues contribute to improving the DoD's environmental performance, reducing costs, and enhancing and sustaining mission capabilities through this project.
Jearl Walker, professor in the Department of Physics, has taught physics at CSU for 42 years but, surprisingly, has yet to get tired. His first book, The Flying Circus of Physics, was published soon after he arrived here and was translated into at least 10 languages (with at least one bootleg). The second edition, published in 2006, is still being translated into other languages but has already been bootlegged in Persian in Iran. In 1990 he took over the textbook that he used as a first year student at MIT. Since then he has published seven editions of the book, which is the number one book for science and engineering majors, both in the US and worldwide, with at least 16 translations. He is currently working on the next version, which will be a fully interactive, online education product (sadly, print textbooks are now disappearing). He has long been known in radio, television, and the press for his dramatic demonstrations, such as plunging his wet fingers into molten lead as seen in the image here, which is from his new video series with CSU. Thankfully he has not lost any fingers (so far). _____________________________________________________________________________ Please share with us important news or updates on your research, scholarly, or creative activities. Updates may be related to a paper that has been accepted for publication in a high-impact journal, a book you've just published, your work that will be exhibited at a prominent institution, or other updates you wish to share with our office. Send details to j.yard@csuohio.edu.
Featured Researcher Video Series - Wendy Regoeczi
Research by Dr. Wendy Regoeczi is the focus of the latest installment of the Featured Researcher Video series. Dr. Regoeczi is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology and is Director of the Criminology Research Center. Her research interests are in the area of violent crime, particularly homicide, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Much of her research has focused on homicide investigations and the factors that influence whether and how police solve these crimes. We encourage you to learn more about Professor Regoeczi's work, and to take a look at our previous Featured Researcher Videos.
Conor McLennan Returns to Faculty Position
After three years in the Office of Research, Dr. Conor McLennan, associate vice president for research, has decided to return to his faculty position in the Department of Psychology in the College of Sciences and Health Professions, effective July 1, 2015. Dr. McLennan maintains an active research lab, the Language Research Laboratory, and works with undergraduate, M.A., and Ph.D. students. Our office appreciates his significant contributions to many important initiatives in the past three years. The Office of Research is currently looking for his successor.
News from the Technology Transfer Office CSU Patent News. Anti-thrombotic agent technology developed by Dr. Michael Kalafatis, professor in the Chemistry Department, has received a clear patentability assessment and work is underway preparing a provisional patent application. Dr. Wenbing Zhao, associate professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, has submitted his "Discriminative Human Motion Tracking" invention to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and received Application No. 62/183515. The TTO has been approached by an early stage company interested in licensing a virus and bacteria detection technology invented by Dr. Siu-Tung Yau, professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. When do royalty payments end? Some faculty have asked this question. And while inventors have tried to extend royalty payments past the life of a patent, a recent United States Supreme Court ruling has upheld a long standing 1964 decision as highlighted here.
Medical Innovation Summit. CSU healthcare innovators are encouraged to consider participating in the 2015 Medical Innovation Summit hosted by the Cleveland Clinic Innovations. The Summit will be held at the Global Center for Health Innovation Cleveland Convention Center and will draw entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, providers, payers, researchers, clinical, medical affairs, regulatory and business development executives.
Attend the Research Poster Session on September 3rd The Office of Research encourages students, faculty, and staff to attend the 2015 Undergraduate Research Poster Session on Thursday, September 3, 2015, from 10am - 2pm in the Student Center Atrium. Students and faculty will discuss their research funded with a 2015 Undergraduate Summer Research Award. The Office of Research encourages undergraduate and graduate students to become actively engaged in research.
Mandatory Use of Cayuse on January 1, 2016
Effective January 1, 2016, SPRS will no longer accept Proposal Transmittal Forms (PTF). All proposals must be submitted through the Cayuse Grants Management System. If you are not currently utilizing the system, Teri Kocevar can provide one-on-one training or group sessions. Please contact her at x3675 or by email m.kocevar@csuohio.edu to schedule your training.
NIH Releases "Reproducibility" Website
Foundational to the scientific method is the notion that research results should be rigorous and independently reproducible. The issue of reproducibility has emerged as an important topic of conversation during the past several years, with considerable attention in the life and social/behavioral sciences. Discussions about it are occurring in a wide array of venues, ranging from publishers and Federal agencies to Congress and leaders of research institutions. Spurring these activities are a number factors, including the open data revolution, calls by many quarters for greater transparency and accountability, increasingly complex research problems that require new experimental approaches, and evidence that the results of many published studies cannot in fact be reproduced (as noted in a recent editorial, the reproducibility of a result does not mean it is correct, nor does the lack of reproducibility mean it is incorrect). The National Institutes of Health released a new website offering principles and guidelines, publications, training materials, and information intended to help researchers improve the rigor and reproducibility of their research. This webpage helps address the growing need for rigorously designed published preclinical studies that can be reproduced. _____________________________________________________________________________
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