University—

The Department of Psychology in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been awarded a prestigious National Institutes of Health T32 Training Grant to train graduate students in cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research.

Spearheaded by professors Susan Lutgendorf and Daniel Tranel of the Department of Psychology, with assistance from their psychology faculty colleagues Molly Nikolas, Michelle Voss, and Mike O’Hara, the five-year grant, "Mechanisms of Health and Disease at the Behavioral-Biomedical Interface" aims to teach the next generation of behavioral science researchers to utilize biomedical methodologies and conceptual frameworks for making breakthroughs in understanding both health and behavior.

The training program funded by the grant will be conducted by faculty from the Department of Psychology and the UI Carver College of Medicine, with Lutgendorf as director.

Faculty—

Daniel O’Leary, a professor of psychiatry, has received a supplemental grant to include students who use marijuana as well as binge drink as part of his five-year study to explore the effects of binge drinking in college freshman. He is particularly interested in the effect of an increasing trend to “extreme” binge drinking, which is 10 or more drinks over a 90-minute period. In total, O’Leary has received $2.8 million in grants from the Nation Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for his study which began last year. O’Leary’s primary interest is in both structural and functional brain imaging. In the past, he has researched schizophrenia and the acute effects of marijuana on the brain.

Suely Oliveira, professor in the department of computer science, has been awarded a Big Data curriculum grant from the NSF. The grant will be used to develop a multidisciplinary Certificate in Large Data Analysis and Visualization (LDAV) that will extend to undergraduate students training currently available only to graduate students.

In addition, there will be summer schools and undergraduate first year seminars to introduce high school and undergraduate students respectively to Data Sciences. Special activities and events will be created specifically for attracting women to Data Sciences.

Walter Seaman, associate professor in the department of Mathematics, will be in charge of project evaluation. Seaman will work with project principal investigators to develop end-of-course content questions which record whether students have mastered mathematics, statistics, computer science or data analysis skills which were targeted for that course. These "outcome assessment" question will be a measure of course effectiveness.

Co-principal investigators are Bruce Ayati, associate professor in the department of mathematics; Kate Cowles, professor in statistics and actuarial science; Isabel Darcy, associate professor in mathematics; and David Stewart, professor in mathematics.

Allan Guymon, professor and departmental executive officer of chemical and biochemical engineering and director of the Photopolymerization Center, has received a $309,272 research grant from the National Science Foundation to study the control of photopolymerization kinetics and thermodynamics in self-assembled surfactant systems to direct polymernanostructure.

Wilf Nixon, professor of civil and environmental engineering, received a $75,000 research grant from the University of Illinois to conduct development of chloride reduction training.

Fred Stern, George D. Ashton Professor of Hydroscience and Engineering, professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, and faculty research engineer at IIHR—Hydroscience & Engineering, has received a $49,606 research grant from the U.S. Department of the Navy to conduct CFDShip-Iowa code development, fluid-structure interaction and V&V for semi-planing and deep-V planing hulls.

George Constantinescu, professor of civil and environmental engineering, received a $40,504 research grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative proposal on mixing at stream and river confluences.

Youjia Hua, associate professor in Teaching and Learning in the UI College of Education, has been awarded a grant for her project, "Providing Evidence Based Practice for Children with Disability: A Collaboration Between the U.S. and China."

John Spencer, professor in the Department of Psychology in CLAS, has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to stage a "civic science" workshop this fall in Washington, DC.

The $25,000 grant, including an additional $20,000 from other sponsors, will go toward building the civic science concept. According to John Spencer, the grant's principal investigator, civic science "is about working with communities to create innovative solutions to real-world problems by developing the collaborative civic skills and civic identities of scientists and tapping the creativity and expertise of community partners. We are doing this locally with our ‘Get Ready Iowa’ initiative which will be highlighted at the workshop, along with other ‘case studies’ of civic science in action."

The workshop will be held at the NSF offices in October.

Alumni—

Erin Barnes, (BA '01; MA '05; Ph.D. '11) of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Texas at El Paso, was awarded a $19,250 grant from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. She is one of nine tenure-track assistant professors at seven Texas universities to receive the 2014 Mental Health Research Grants. The grants fund promising and innovative mental health research. Dr. Barnes’s research will examine the relationship between the cognitive attributions of veterans with service-connected mental health conditions and their recovery.

The two-year grants are capped at $19,250 apiece. In addition to research, the grants fund the dissemination of research findings through presentations at state and national conferences and meetings.