Faculty Innovation Grant Program

In March of 2019, the Science Initiative launched a pilot version of the Faculty Innovation Grant Program, designed to stimulate and bolster submission of competitive interdisciplinary grant proposals to federal agencies.

These seed grants are expected to encourage 30+ competitive grant proposals over the next two years to federal agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DOD), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and United States Geographical Survey (USGS). Similar programs at other universities have yielded up to a 20 to 1 return on investment.

 

PI & UW Dept	Co-PIs & UW Depts	Project Title	Total Award
*Mike Brotherton, Physics & Astronomy	Daniel Dale, Physics & Astronomy Ruben Gamboa, Computer Science	Accelerating the computational investigation of supermassive sub-parsec binary black holes candidates	$45,000
Carrie Eberle, Plant Sciences	Steve Paisley, Animal Science	Establishing Crotalaria juncea as a new forage crop for the sustainable intensification of the Wyoming agricultural industry	$89,992
Brian Leonard, Chemistry	Elliott Hulley, Chemistry William Rice, Physics & Astronomy John Ackerman, Chemical Engineering	Understanding intercalation chemistry to design novel 2D materials	$90,000
Merav Ben-David, Zoology & Physiology	Brian Cherrington, Zoology & Physiology Vikram Chhatre, Molecular Biology	Genomic analyses of embryonic diapause in the Musteloidea with an eye towards improving assisted reproductive technologies	$77,366
Amy Navratil, Zoology & Physiology	Jay Gatlin, Molecular Biology	Understanding how the tubulin code regulates reproductive function of gonadotrope cells	$90,000
John Oakey, Chemical Engineering	Daniel Levy, Molecular Biology	Nuclear size in 3D cancer cell migration	$52,000
Ginger Paige, ESM	Melanie Murphy, ESM Fabian Nippgen, ESM Brent Ewers, Botany	Tracking eco-hydrologic changes in the hyporheic zone to improve water resource management	$88,740
**Daniel Laughlin, Botany	Dan Tekiela, Plant Sciences	The first experimental test of a new paradigm in ecological restoration	$69,232
Catherine Wagner, Botany	Bryan Shuman, Geology & Geophysics Amy Krist, Zoology & Physiology Annika Walters, WY Game & Fish Cooperative Unit	The tempo of ecological and evolutionary change: response to predator introduction in alpine lakes of the Wind River Range	$89,537
Don Jarvis, Molecular Biology	Jason Gigle, Molecular Biology Jonathan Fox, Veterinary Sciences	Assessing the impact of a viral contaminant on the biosafety profile of the baculovirus-insect cell system	$89,580
Simone Runyon, Geology & Geophysics	Susan Swapp, Geology & Geophysics Erin Philips, SER Carol Frost, Geology & Geophysics Robert Gregory, WY State Geological Survey	REE enrichment in Wyoming Roll-Front uranium deposits	$89,996
Te-Yu Chien, Physics & Astronomy	Maohang Fan, Petroleum Engineering and SER	Synthesizing graphene-related materials and carbon nanotubes from coal through microwave treatments	$90,000
Ellen Currano, Botany	Laura Viette, Geology & Geophysics Mark Clementz, Geology & Geophysics	Back to the future: interdisciplinary research on 50 million year old ecosystems will allow WY to better prepare for the year 2140	$82,931

 * Recommended for external (NSF) funding
** Externally funded by USDA-NIFA

 

As of June 2020, the Science Initiative has received communication that research groups that were awarded seed funds have so far applied for six grants, including proposals sent to the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA), the US Department of Energy (DOE), and the American Chemical Society (ACS). These grant proposals have requested a total of $2.4M.

Dr. Mike Brotherton’s grant proposal, “The Wyoming AGN Reverberation Mapping (WARM) Project”, is currently under consideration for NSF funding.

Dr. Daniel Laughlin’s grant proposal, in partnership with researchers from Chapman University, “Applying trait-based models to achieve restoration targets in rangelands”, was funded by USDA-NIFA for $480,000 over four years. The USDA-NIFA grant was secured three months after the SI seed grant was awarded, so SI funding was only used to kick-start research.

Multiple other grant proposals are currently under consideration by national funding agencies, and the SI expects 20+ more grant proposals to be submitted through 2021 as the majority of the proposals enter their second year of the two-year seed grant funding.