NSM Faculty/Staff Newsletter

From the Office of the Dean

Office of Research Update

If you haven’t already done so, please review our submission timetable. We routinely have multiple grants due at or near the same time, so it is imperative that everything is in order well ahead of the deadline. This also gives us time to properly check for errors.

For those of you who submit or plan to submit proposals to NSF, please create an account with SciENcv. As of October 5, 2020, you need to use SciENcv to create your biosketch and current and pending support documents. There are YouTube videos on the SciENcv homepage that explain how to use the service.

Let us create your budgets! Many of you like to fill in the UH budget worksheet yourself, but we end up transferring that information to the most current version and looking up everyone’s salary and benefits information anyway. It is simpler to just send us an outline of what you would like in the budget, and let us create it for you. A great way to do this is to make a draft of your budget justification. We can use that to create the budget.

Please check out the NSM Office of Research website for useful links and information.

– The NSM Research Team


Awarded Research Grants

Congratulations to the following faculty members for their recent awards:

Margaret Cheung (Physics) was awarded a $650,000 grant from Rice University: “Center for Theoretical Biological Physics.”

Wa Xian (Biology & Biochemistry) was awarded a $643,609 grant from DoD: “Subset of Preexisting, Poly-Resistant Cancer Stem Cells in High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer.”

Zhigang Deng (Computer Science) was awarded a $477,733 grant from NSF: “CHS: Small: An Analysis-and-Synthesis Framework for Small Group Conversations.”

T. Randall Lee (Chemistry) was awarded a $318,609 grant from U.S. Air Force: “Compositionally Tunable Stimuli-Responsive Nanoparticles Having Uniform Sizes, Shapes, and Core-Shell Architectures.”

Yingcai Zheng (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) was awarded a $314,146 grant from NSF: “Verification of Predicted Consequences of Strong Seismic Anisotropy in Subducting Slabs.”

Tony Frankino (Biology & Biochemistry) was awarded a $299,970 grant from NSF: “IRES Track I: Immersive Undergraduate Research in The Galapagos as a Tool for Building URM STEM Careers.”

Jakoah Brgoch (Chemistry) was awarded a $75,000 grant from Sloan Foundation: “Application for 2020 Alfred P Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry.”

Judy Wu (Chemistry) was awarded a $75,000 grant from Sloan Foundation: “Application for 2020 Alfred P Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry.”

Mehrdad Kalantar (Mathematics) was awarded a $42,000 grant from Simons Foundation: “Boundary Actions and Operator Algebraic Rigidity.”

Olafs Daugulis (Chemistry) was awarded a $40,765 grant from DOE: “Catalytic Conversion of Ethylene to Value-Added Materials.”

Oleksandr Lytvynchuk (Physics, TcSUH) was awarded a $15,000 grant from CRDF Global: “Development of Advanced Thin Film Photovoltaic Materials Based on Nanocrystals of Cation-Substituted CU2ZNSNS4.”

Announcements

National Institute of Health (NIH)
New Vertebrate Animals Section Training Module

Calling all applicants proposing research with vertebrate animals – check out the latest online learning module on the Vertebrate Animals Section in grant applications. This interactive module will assist applicants in preparing this section of the application and will serve as a valuable resource for reviewers in evaluating the Vertebrate Animal Section of applications and proposals.

This engaging module takes 30 minutes or less to complete and includes:

  • An overview of the requirements,
  • A checklist for applicants and reviewers,
  • Detailed instructions, and
  • Responsibilities of applicants, reviewers, and NIH staff.

See additional resources on the humane care and use of animals in PHS-supported research on NIH’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) website.

Internal Awards

GEAR

The Grants to Enhance and Advance Research (GEAR) program for FY2021 has been announced. The required pre-proposal must be received by 5 pm on November 9 by the NSM Office of Research. Those applicants invited to submit a full GEAR proposal will be notified by January 11, 2021.

Interested faculty should submit their completed pre-proposals to nsm_research@uh.edu.