Washington State University’s Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture has launched a new seed grant program that aims to support faculty research efforts.
The college awarded grants totaling $21,000 to nine tenured or tenure-track faculty members. Support from the grant program allows faculty members to work on and submit proposals to federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and Army Research Laboratory, during the summer months.
“Getting grant support from federal agencies is more challenging and competitive than ever,” said Haluk Beyenal, associate dean of research in the Voiland College. “We wanted to support our faculty with their first steps and help them achieve their research goals that are so important for their long-term success.”
As part of the review process, faculty members submitted their ideas as white papers and gave presentations to the college’s Office of Research earlier this spring. The college received 33 proposal submissions and conducted interviews with 17 faculty members. Each faculty member prepared a presentation summarizing their proposal and highlighting its key components.
We wanted to support our faculty with their first steps and help them achieve their research goals that are so important for their long-term success.
Haluk Beyenal, associate dean of research
Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture
Washington State University
Selection criteria included consideration of the proposal’s readiness, the proposed research’s impact, the originality of the idea, and the specific needs for the project. The interview process also helped to identify tailored funding opportunities for faculty members.
“We were genuinely impressed by the quality of both the proposals and the presentations,” said Beyenal. “Many of the funded proposals have already been submitted or are on track to be submitted within the next month. Furthermore, even some of the proposals that were not selected for support were still submitted — demonstrating that this program played a significant role in helping primary investigators advance their ideas toward submission.”
Among this year’s grant winners are projects on human-AI collaboration for resilient power grid operations; embrittlement of steel in liquid lithium; catalytic reactivity; a paper-based CRISPR platform to detect respiratory viral infections; monitoring and modeling of railways under extreme heat; instabilities in cryogenic systems; understanding variability of lake evaporation through atmospheric–aquatic boundary layer processes; and channel estimation for large-scale antenna arrays.
Faculty members who received grants included Wenji Dong, Jana Doppa, Anamika Dubey, Subhanshu Gupta, Hyeyoung Koh, Konstantin Matveev, Jean-Sabin McEwen, Heping Liu, and Arezoo Zare.
“This year’s summer grant program demonstrated that even modest support can generate a substantial impact on proposal development and submission activity,” he said. “We are committed to continuing and expanding this initiative in the future.”
