FROM: Philip Rous, Provost
TO: The UMBC Community
RE: The UMB-UMBC Research and Innovation Partnership Seed Grant Program
We are delighted to announce the first set of grants awarded in the UMB-UMBC Research and Innovation Partnership Seed Grant Program. This program is designed to promote structured collaboration between UMBC and UMB and to advance the institutions’ joint goals in research and innovation.
We would like to acknowledge the creativity and hard work of all UMBC faculty that submitted proposals and we recognize that it was not possible to fund in this first round every deserving project from over 40 proposals received. We encourage those not funded this year to revise and resubmit their proposal next year. Proposals submitted to the program were evaluated using a peer review process that included faculty from both the UMB and UMBC campuses. Each proposal was reviewed for: (1) how well the project meets the goals of the Seed Grant Program; (2) meeting criteria (e.g., relevance to future public health concerns, significance, innovation, approach and qualification of investigative team/environment to carry out the aims); and (3) likelihood of attracting outside funding in the future. The grant recipients were chosen based on merit as assessed by peer review.
Although we had anticipated making only four or five awards, based on the outstanding overall quality of the submitted proposals, we selected six projects for funding in FY2014, each of which brings together creative teams of investigators from UMBC and UMB working across disciplinary boundaries and campuses to support new research foci.
Please join me in congratulating this year’s grant recipients. The RFP for the next round of the UMB-UMBC Research and Innovation Partnership Seed Grants will be announced later this fall.
Awarded Research Grants
Pain after Spinal Cord Injury: Experimental and Computational Studies
UMBC PI: Kathleen Hoffman, Mathematics and Statistics
UMB PI: Asaf Keller, School of Medicine
Targeted Inhibition of Protein Kinase CK2 (CK2) and Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase (ERK) in Cancer Cells
UMBC PI: Charles Bieberich, Biology
UMB PI: Paul Shapiro, Pharmaceutical Sciences
Independent Vector Analysis to Investigate Cognitive Neural Networks after Stroke: A Comparison between Two Rehabilitation Interventions
UMBC PI: Tulay Adali, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
UMB PI: Kelly Westlake, Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science
Novel Anti-biofilm, Anti-caries and Anti-fatigue Dental Nanocomposites
UMBC PI: Dwayne Arola, Mechanical Engineering
UMB PI: Huakun Xu, Dental School UMB Clinical Co-Investigator: Ashraf Fouad, Dental School
Comparative Studies of the Intracellular Trafficking of Several Classes of Dendronized Drug Nanocarriers
UMBC PI: Marie-Christine Daniel, Chemistry and Biochemistry
UMB PI: Peter Swaan, Pharmaceutical Sciences
Seed Grant for Monitoring and Modeling the Nuclear-cytoplasmic Movements of the Atrophy Promoting Transcription Factor Foxo1 in Cultured Adult Skeletal Muscle Fibers
UMBC PI: Bradford Peercy, Mathematics and Statistics
UMB PI: Martin Schneider, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
