Olivia DrakeSteven Horst, professor of philosophy, received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation on July 9. The award, worth $55,000, will be applied over five years for his research on "Cognitive Psychology of Religion: Philosophical Implications." Horst's areas of expertise are philosophy of mind, cognitive science, philosophy of psychology and moral psychology.
The Etherington Scholarship Program received a grant worth $2,000 from the Liberty Bank Foundation on July 6. The Etherington Scholarships offer outstanding students from Connecticut community colleges a chance to attend Wesleyan.
David PesciAnn Burke, associate professor of biology, received a three-year, $395,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the development and evolution of the shoulder girdle using transgenic mice, frog and salamander. She also received a two-year $100,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use the same amphibian systems (salamander and frog) to develop a model system for understanding body wall defects in humans.The grants will provide funds for a team of researchers at Wesleyan working with Burke on these projects, including a postdoctoral fellow, graduate students and undergraduates.
Evan Perkoski ’10 is a recipient of a 2009-10 Undergraduate Research Program grant sponsored by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). Perkoski, who is majoring in government, will study "Counterterrorism and ETA in Spain." His faculty advisor is Erica Chenoweth, assistant professor of government. Undergraduate Research Program recipients are actively engaged in critical research related to the study of terrorism and responses to terrorism, consistent with the mission of START. Each recipient is paid $3,000 to enhance his/her START research and professional development and receives funds to attend the 2010 START Annual Meeting in College…
Lisa Dierker, associate professor of psychology, and Jennifer Rose, research associate professor of psychology, received a grant worth $521,938 from the National Institute of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse on May 14. The grant was issued under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Dierker and Rose are researching "Individual Differences in Smoking Exposure and Nicotine Dependence Sensitivity." The grant will be applied over two years.
Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology, received a grant worth $716,227 from the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program on June 1. Shusterman's project is titled "The role of language in children's acquisition of number concepts." The grant will be applied over five years.
Scott Plous, professor of psychology, received a $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the Social Psychology Network. Plous founded the web-based presence in 1996. The grant will be used to transform the site into a full featured social networking service for visitors and its approximately 2,000 members across the world. For more information read the accompanying article in The Wesleyan Connection.
Janice Naegele, chair and professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, has received a $499,988.00 grant from the Connecticut Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee for her study titled: "Brain Grafts of GABAergic Neuron Precursors Derived from Human and Mouse ES Cells for Treating Temporal Lobe Epilepsy." The four-year grant will begin in July 2009, and will support research in laboratories in Wesleyan's biology department and neuroscience program. The research is directed toward generating inhibitory interneurons that we will transplant into the hippocampus of mice that have temporal lobe epilepsy. The goal of the project is to investigate the potential…
The Green Street Arts Center received a grant worth $10,000 from Citizens Bank and the Citizens Bank Foundation to support the Community Mural Project, an 18 month-long art program that will culminate in a large public mural, to be installed in the spring of 2009 on the corner of Main and Green Streets in the North End of Middletown. Led by mural artist Marela Zacarias, the project’s participants are a diverse group of Middletown children, their families, professional artists, Wesleyan students, and other community members.
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, has received funding from NASA for three research grants. From the Space Telescope Science Institute a grant of $138,639 for his research "A SNAPSHOT Survey of the Local Interstellar Medium: New NUV Observations of Stars with Archived FUV Observations", and $50,766 for his research "Probing the Atomic & Molecular Inventory of the Beta-Pic Analog, the young, Edge-On Debris Disk of HD32297." Both awards include new observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. From the JPL Spitzer Program $41,213 for his research of "Interactions of the Cold and Hot ISM: Imaging the Nearest Molecular Clouds in…
Ishita Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a $798,368 grant from the National Science Foundation for her project "Structure and Function of Holliday Junctions complexed With Proteins Probed by Fluorescence and UV Raman Spectroscopic Methods." The grant is a continuing grant which has been approved on scientific / technical merit for approximately four years. The grant will be awarded April 1.
Lisa Dierker, professor of psychology, has received a $50,000 research grant from the Peter F. McManus Charitable Trust. The award will support her work focusing on individual differences in the development of addiction. This research is aimed at identifying youth at greatest risk for dependence at various levels of alcohol and tobacco exposure.