PULLMAN, Wash. Five interdisciplinary teams won funding recently from Washington State University for their projects for breakthrough solutions and/or significant advancement in creative, scholarly and/or research areas.
They have until December 2013 to use the money to help develop and submit external funding proposals for their projects to a competitive, federal granting program.
The five were selected from 50 submissions to the WSU 2012 Research Advancement Challenge. Submissions were requested in four strategic areas: education/policy making, bio-medical sciences, renewable fuel solutions and technology development.
The initiative is sponsored by the WSU Office of Research and Office of the President.
“I was pleasantly surprised not only by the number of proposals submitted, but also by the quality of the proposals,” said Nancy Magnuson, interim vice president for research. “I am very glad we could fund more than just one as we had originally planned.
“If these proposals lead to large multidisciplinary grants as hoped, such success would provide compelling incentive to run this program again in the near future,” she said.
The projects receiving funding are:
“WSU Consortium for Innovations in Sustainable Nuclear Technologies and Policy,” $75,000. Team: Sue Clark, Ken Nash, Choong-Shik Yoo, Aurora Clark, Nathalie Wall, Tom Preston of the College of Arts and Sciences; Kelvin Lynn, Jacob Leachman and Cornelius Ivory of the College of Engineering and Architecture; Prema Arasu, Office of International Programs; Donald Wall, Office of Research; Brian Kraft, WSU Economic Development.
“Streams of Knowledge: Water Sciences and Education for the 21st Century,” $70,000. Team: Kimberly Christen, College of Arts and Sciences; Paula Groves Price, College of Education; Marc Beutel, College of Engineering and Architecture.
“Revealing Novel Lignin Modifying Mechanism for Plant Cell Wall Deconstruction,” $90,000. Team: Shulin Chen, College of Agriculture, Human and Natural Resource Sciences; Kelvin Lynn, College of Engineering and Architecture; ChulHee Kang, College of Arts and Sciences.
“Challenging Conventions to Combat the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance,” $65,000. Team: Douglas Call, Margaret Davis and Devendra Shah, College of Veterinary Medicine; Shira Broschat, College of Engineering and Architecture.
“Advanced Lithium-ion Batteries Incorporating Bio- and Nano-Materials and the Effects on the Agricultural Economy,” $100,000. Team: W. H. (Katie) Zhong and M. Grant Norton, College of Engineering and Architecture; Louis Scudiero, College of Arts and Sciences; Thomas L. Marsh and Hanwu Lei, College of Agriculture, Human and Natural Resource Sciences.