Olivia DrakeConstance Leidy, assistant professor of mathematics, received a grant for $130,436 from the National Science Foundation's Division of Mathematics Science on Sept. 9. The grant will support a project titled "Non-commutative Techniques in Knot Theory" through August 2014.
Wesleyan's Center for Prison Education Program at the Cheshire Correctional Intuition, received a grant worth $5,000 from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving on Sept. 14. The grant will support the general operating expenses for the program.
Tsampikos Kottos, associate professor of physics, received a grant worth $140,121 from the National Science Foundation on Sept. 1. The grant will support a project titled "IDR:Novel Photonic Materials and Devices based on Non-Hermitian Optics" through August 2014. Kottos is collaborating with faculty from Southern Methodist University, University of Central Florida, University of Arkansas and Yale University.
Pam Tatge, director of the Center for the Arts, received a $600 grant from the Middletown Commission on the Arts (MCA) to support the Arts Walk at Riverview Plaza this summer. Arts Walk was a pilot program of the Middletown Commission on the Arts to host arts activities at Riverview Plaza as a way to attract people to visit downtown Middletown on weekends in the summer. The Center for the Arts and Center for Creative Youth used the funds to provide performances/activities for people who passed by the plaza.
David PesciJennifer Rose, research associate professor of psychology, received a grant worth $450,000 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The grant will fund research on the use of Integrative Data Analysis to inform the development of nicotine dependence symptoms among novice smokers.
Professor Laura Grabel has received a $750,000 grant from The State of Connecticut Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee for her study titled "Angiogenesis of Embryonic Stem Cell Derived Hippocampus Transplants." It is her third grant from the Committee since Connecticut began its state-funded human stem cell research program in 2006, and second where she is the principal investigator (P.I); she was co-P.I. on the other. Grabel, professor of biology and Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science in Society, is also a co-director of Connecticut’s Human Embryonic Core Facility, a research center in Farmington, Conn. that houses some human stem cell…
David Beveridge, the Joshua Boger University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, professor of chemistry, received a five year graduate student training grant from the National Institutes of Heath (NIH) in support of Wesleyan's interdepartmental program in Molecular Biophysics and Biological Chemistry (MBBC). This program is co-coordinated by Ishita Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, director of graduate studies. The MBBC Program involves 12 faculty members from chemistry, biology, MB&B and physics departments along with both graduate Ph.D. students and undergraduate certificate students. The grant, worth $662,820, is the latest in a series of awards to this program, which…
Ruth Nisse, associate professor of English, associate professor of medieval studies, received a $40,000 fellowship grant from the American Council of Learned Societies for 2011-12. During the fellowship, she will complete her book Jacob’s Shipwreck. The study focuses on the “co-emergence” of Christians and Jews in12th and 13th century England and Northern France. She argues that the the two communities mediated their relations through the reception, translation and rewriting of ancient texts.
Margot Weiss, assistant professor of American studies and anthropology, received a $22,372 Post-Ph.D. Research Grant (with Osmundsen Initiative funding) from The Wenner-Gren Foundation, and a $6,250 grant from the Joan Heller-Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies from The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Both grants will support Weiss's ethnographic research project titled "Visions of Sexual Justice Among Contemporary Queer Activists" during the 2011-12 academic year.
Eric GershonPo-wei Weng, a Ph.D. candidate in Wesleyan’s ethnomusicology program, has won a $15,000 grant to support his dissertation work on a popular Taiwanese Puppet television series. Competing with applicants from all disciplines and many top colleges in the United States, Weng was this year the only person from the music studies field to win an award from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. His dissertation project is "Music, Technology, and Mediated Modernity: Soundscape of Pili Budaixi in Taiwan." Currently in Taiwan, Weng returns to Middletown in August.
The Department of Film Studies received a $7,500 grant from the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to support the AMPAS Speaker Series in 2011-12. The grant was awarded on May 1. Lea Carlson, associate director of film studies, is the grant's P.I. This is the third year Wesleyan received support from the Academy to fund the speaker series. Film Studies will welcome about four speakers to campus in the second half of the fall semester.
Suzanne O'Connell, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, director of the Service Learning Center, received a grant worth $21,000 from the Keck Geology Consortium on April 27. The award will support an undergraduate research project titled "Sediment Dynamics in the Lower Connecticut River" this summer.