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NSF

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). General audience abstract: Optical atomic clocks are now the most precise and accurate tabletop measurement devices ever constructed by humankind, offering sensitivity to new and exotic physics. The PI has recently developed a new kind of atomic clock apparatus and has used it to demonstrate a comparison between two optical clocks at a precision below one part in 10^19. To give a sense of scale, this corresponds to resolving a difference in the rate the two clocks tick at that would result in them disagreeing with each other by only 1 second after 300 billion years. The PI and a graduate student will use this new apparatus to develop and test ways to use optical atomic clocks to search for dark matter and to detect gravitational waves. This project therefore has the potential to result in new tools for studying the universe through gravitational wave astronomy, and new ways to search for answers to one of the biggest mysteries in physics, the nature of dark matter. The PI will integrate these research topics into new demos and hands-on activities designed to introduce K-12 students to modern physics concepts. Students will engage with these activities at live shows and interactive events as part of the University of Wisconsin “Wonders of Physics” outreach program, with an emphasis on reaching rural communities and Native American reservations in Wisconsin. This project will thereby strengthen public support for modern physics research and help students develop intuition for atomic technologies and their applications. Technical audience abstract: This research project aims to explore and develop emerging applications of optical atomic clocks. The PI has recently demonstrated a first-of-its-kind “multiplexed" optical lattice clock apparatus that enables differential clock comparisons between two or more spatially resolved ensembles of strontium atoms within the same vacuum chamber. These differential measurements eliminate the detrimental effects of clock laser noise and common mode environmental fluctuations, pushing the limits of achievable clock stability and atom-atom coherence. Record differential clock stabilities and fractional frequency precision have now been demonstrated in this apparatus, with a clear path to further gains in performance. The PI and collaborators will use this multiplexed optical lattice clock to develop and demonstrate novel measurement sequences and data analysis techniques for future gravitational wave detection with space-based optical lattice clocks, including the blind injection of simulated gravitational wave signals at realistic strengths. The PI and collaborators will also use the multiplexed optical lattice clock to search for foggy dark matter in previously unexplored regions of parameter space, and to develop new techniques to search for other forms of dark matter. The PI will work with collaborators to develop interactive and engaging demos and inquiry-based activities to introduce K-12 students to modern physics concepts, including the basic principles of atomic clocks and their applications, and will assess their effectiveness using surveys. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

With support from the Environmental Chemical Sciences (ECS) program in the Chemistry Section, Professor Alison Bain at Oregon State University is investigating the impact of atmospheric micro- and nanoplastics on the physical properties of mixed-phase aerosol droplets. Field studies now routinely find micro- and nanoplastics in atmospheric aerosol samples. However, the impacts of these plastics on aerosol-phase properties and processes are not well understood. Professor Bain and her students will conduct macroscopic and aerosol droplet-scale experiments utilizing plastics of different chemical structures and morphologies to systematically study the impacts of the timescale of environmental aging on the surface morphology and chemistry of micro- and nanoplastics; the uptake of water and other chemical species; and the mixing of micro- and nanoplastics with existing aerosols. Their studies could establish a fundamental understanding of the impact of micro- and nanoplastics on aerosol physical properties, which could significantly contribute to the scientific understanding of the interactions between atmospheric plastics and other aerosols. The educational efforts of this project include training undergraduate students to efficiently handle large datasets common in analytical and environmental chemistry, and developing science lessons investigating microplastics for students in rural Oregon. This project will investigate how plastic type and the changing surface chemistry and morphology during environmental aging impact aerosol properties and processes. Using a wide variety of plastics commonly found in the environment, such as polyethylene, polystyrene, and nylon, Professor Bain and her team will age plastics in the lab and investigate the sorption of water and surface-active organic molecules to and from plastic surfaces. Additionally, they will develop new instrumentation to investigate the physical processes of mixed plastic-aqueous aerosol at the single particle level. Specifically, this project will investigate where these nano- and microplastics are located in mixed-phase systems, and how they might alter aerosol hygroscopicity and the partitioning of surface-active molecules. The education efforts will integrate technical computing into undergraduate analytical chemistry, where students will learn to work with large datasets and leverage AI to efficiently develop code for data analysis. Additionally, in collaboration with the SMILE (Science & Math Investigative Learning Experiences) program, a hands-on science lesson characterizing microplastics will be developed for middle and high school students. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will fund research that intends to develop an interdisciplinary framework to improve the resilience of unreinforced masonry buildings in tornado-prone areas of the United States. Unreinforced masonry structures, prevalent in rural town centers and inner-city neighborhoods, play an important role in preserving cultural identity and contributing to social and economic resilience; however, their vulnerability to tornadoes is not well understood or modeled. Through integrating engineering, social science, and preservation perspectives, this research aims to advance the science behind vulnerability and recovery models for unreinforced masonry buildings. The project intends to enhance community resilience, preserve cultural heritage, and support sustainable development in historically underserved areas. A key component of this project is its educational program, which will cultivate a new generation of professionals equipped with interdisciplinary skills to address disaster resilience and recovery challenges in communities dense with older, unreinforced masonry structures. The educational program will include new undergraduate and graduate coursework, hands-on research opportunities for students, workforce development programs, and community co-learning experiences. By bridging the gap between academic research and practical application, these educational activities will prepare students, professionals, and community members to tackle real-world challenges in disaster preparedness and recovery. This award will contribute to NSF's role in the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). This research intends to develop a framework for understanding and modeling the complex dynamics of older unreinforced masonry buildings during tornado events and recovery. By identifying and operationalizing key structural, social, and preservation features to create more accurate predictive models for damage and recovery, this project intends to advance both pre-disaster mitigation strategies and post-disaster recovery efforts. The research methodology will include (1) collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from tornado-affected communities using remote sensing techniques, in-situ surveys, and socio-economic assessments; (2) performing feature importance analysis through machine learning algorithms such as random forests and gradient boosting; and (3) developing updated fragility curves using Bayesian statistical methods and Monte Carlo simulations. The project outcomes will include refined damage and recovery models for unreinforced masonry structures, practitioner guides, and community tip sheets, thus translating research findings into actionable resources for disaster preparedness and recovery planning. This approach intends to provide communities, policymakers, and practitioners with valuable tools to enhance the recovery and resilience of unreinforced masonry structures in tornado-prone areas. By providing the first interdisciplinary framework for assessing and enhancing the resilience of unreinforced masonry structures in tornado-prone areas, this research will advance the field of disaster resilience, transforming how communities approach disaster preparedness, mitigation, and recovery while preserving irreplaceable cultural heritage. Project data will be archived and made publicly available in the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Data Depot (https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

Because light can be collected freely or produced efficiently, driving chemical transformations with light instead of heat can have significant advantages over traditional chemical production methods. However, challenges remain in bringing these mostly academic findings to the scale necessary for industrial adoption, limiting the benefits to society that would result from safer and milder chemical processing conditions. An important factor in restricting the scalability of photochemical processes is that while high light absorptivity of the feedstocks is desirable for reaction efficiency, it also limits light penetration depth into the reaction medium. Commonly used photocatalysts can also be prohibitively expensive, and residual catalyst impurities in the final products often leads to discoloration or degradation. To address these limitations, this CAREER project will study the use of photocatalyst-coated optical fibers to guide light into the reactor vessels. If successful, the proposed work will lay the scientific foundations to facilitate the implementation of modern photochemistry on an industrial scale and enhance the impact of academic photo-reaction engineering innovations. Immobilizing photocatalysts on optical fibers is anticipated to improve light-penetration and efficiency of the catalytic process. Because the catalysts are immobilized and will not be added continuously with the reactor feed, the proposed approach will improve the process economics and will provide a path to manufacturing both pristine small molecules and polymers free of catalyst impurities. Eliminating such impurities is of importance for synthesis of high purity chemicals in biomedical and electronic applications where trace metals can introduce toxicity or be detrimental to device performance. The research plans have the potential to accelerate the implementation of modern and mild photochemistries on large scales and benefit society by helping to bridge the academia-industry divide. Education and outreach activities will also benefit from the close academia-industry ties to be developed, connecting undergraduate and graduate students and potential employers through field trips and panel discussions with industry leadership. Further, this program will develop and distribute inexpensive polymer science laboratory kits that will benefit underserved middle and high school students by improving access to a quality STEM education experience. This CAREER project will provide the fundamental engineering knowledge needed to translate academic advances in modern photochemistry to large-scale industrial applications. The objectives of this research program are to identify critical chemical structure-property relationships for organic photoredox catalysts that will enable surface-grafting to immobilizing substrates without affecting catalytic activity. By investigating a range of approaches to control the optical fiber evanescent field, optical fiber surface-tethered catalysts will subsequently be tested as heterogeneous photocatalysts in both batch and continuous-flow reactor systems. Catalyst surface density will be controlled through a combination of surface monolayer grafting and the use of bottlebrush polymer tethers. Once an optimal fiber unit spacing and distribution is identified, process throughput and scalability will no longer limited by light absorption, but exclusively by the size of the reactor. By bringing light into the reactor, Beer-Lambert absorption limitations will be circumvented to provide a highly scalable continuous throughput methodology. Because the photocatalyst is immobilized within the reactor (and not continuously added), it can be recycled for multiple reactions; furthermore, the final chemical product will be free of catalyst impurities, a condition necessary in many pharmaceutical and electronics chemical products. From an educational and outreach perspective, this program will broadly impact students of all ages and backgrounds by forming a coalition between university entities, rural schools, and industrial partners. The principal investigator will increase interfaces between undergraduate and graduate students and potential employers through field trips and panel discussions with industry leadership. Further, this program will pilot and distribute inexpensive at-cost polymer science laboratory kits to secondary students to benefit underserved middle and high school students by improving their access to quality STEM education. Finally, targeted community outreach events will promote university enrollment of socioeconomically challenged students while communicating scientific principles and the importance of sustainability and plastic waste recycling to non-technical audiences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

Abstract Title: Developing next-generation transparent and broadband light-emitting diodes from earth-abundant and nontoxic materials for lighting and display applications. Abstract: Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are increasingly used in households, industries, and automobiles for both lighting and display purposes. Globally, the current LED market is valued at over $70 billion, accounting for more than 50% of the market share. In the United States, household and industrial lighting accounted for ~16% of the total electricity generated in 2017, and LEDs saved around 185 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy. Therefore, the use of LEDs is projected to increase dramatically in the coming decades. To meet this global demand, there is a need for low-cost, earth-abundant, and non-toxic new materials for LED applications. This CAREER proposal targets the development of efficient LEDs that are cost-effective, stable, non-toxic, earth-abundant, and solution-processable, made from ternary copper halides. The ternary copper halides proposed here exhibit broadband emission with tunable colors across the spectrum, making them more suitable for lighting applications. The proposal aims to understand the underlying mechanism of emission to tune the emission colors for targeted applications rationally. Most importantly, unlike many existing materials, the ternary copper halides exhibit nearly 100% transmittance in the visible region, showcasing great potential for developing transparent LEDs used in emerging technologies such as virtual reality screens, automobile head-up displays, TV screens, and transparent window lighting. The proposed educational and outreach activities train the 4-H youth leaders and K-12 students across the state in fields that intersect robotics and semiconductors. The educational plan is specifically designed to provide students in rural areas of Mississippi with exposure and access to emerging fields. Low-dimensional ternary copper metal halides are advancing rapidly in LEDs due to their exceptional optical properties, including near-unity PLQYs and tunable broadband emission with strong exciton binding energies. Additionally, copper is earth-abundant and non-toxic, and the copper halides are solution-processable and stable to ambient conditions. This proposal aims to develop efficient, broadband, and transparent LEDs that emit various colors using ternary copper halides as emissive layers. High efficiency and tunable emission will be achieved by rationally controlling the carrier concentration in the emissive layer. Concurrently, this proposal seeks to tackle the mechanism of broadband emission in copper halides using state-of-the-art pump-probe X-ray absorption spectroscopy (TR-XAS). Further, the role of electrons/holes in the overall emission will be uncovered by selectively injecting holes into the emissive layer. Finally, this proposal aims to build highly transparent, broadband copper halide LEDs (T-LEDs) due to the high transmittance of copper halides in the visible-NIR region. In addition to the research plan, the proposal outlines a comprehensive educational and outreach plan that targets training students from a younger age in semiconductor electronics and robotics. Several tasks with hands-on experiments are designed to tackle the challenges of current enrollment in materials chemistry and the future need for a skilled workforce in electronics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

Interactions among entities are fundamental to physical, social, and cyber-physical systems worldwide. In these complex networks, vertices symbolize entities, and edges depict their interactions. Large-scale networks are prevalent in scientific and business applications, such as protein similarity networks with billions of vertices and trillions of edges. As networks continue to grow, there is an increasing demand for algorithms and software capable of utilizing large-scale cyberinfrastructure for analyzing massive networks across scientific domains. This project addresses this need by developing a software infrastructure consisting of foundational algorithms for scalable, portable, and user-friendly graph analysis, ensuring scalability to trillions of edges, optimal performance on heterogeneous infrastructures, and accessibility for domain scientists. This software infrastructure directly enhances vital applications in extreme weather prediction, the discovery of novel proteins, and forecasting energy usage in industrial settings. The project extends the accessibility of these advanced technologies to students at various academic levels. Integration with university courses and initiatives for high school students and teachers in rural Indiana ensures widespread educational impact. A complex network, modeled as a graph in mathematics, reveals intricate topological features encompassing dynamic edges, vertices, and a mixture of static and dynamic ones. Due to such networks' unpredictable and dynamic nature, the independent development of scalable algorithms and software for each application has become prohibitively costly in terms of time, effort, and research funding. This project addresses these challenges by introducing a general-purpose software infrastructure tailored to analyze and learn from complex networks. Users can leverage this infrastructure to expedite a multitude of graph-based applications. Confronting the diversity of graphs and computing platforms, the project employs a flexible two-layer framework. This framework seamlessly maps dynamic graph and machine learning computations to a concise set of sparse matrix operations, followed by the development of parallel algorithms. This linear-algebraic mapping offers a transparent pathway from mathematical algorithm descriptions to sparse-matrix functions, ensuring multiple levels of parallelism, communication reduction, and extreme scalability. Usability, the second challenge in this undertaking, is addressed through a comprehensive set of novel unsupervised and supervised graph algorithms tailored for complex and dynamic networks. Integrating these innovative graph algorithms with massively parallel sparse matrix operations results in a versatile software framework that analyzes complex spatiotemporal systems such as streamflow, traffic flow, and energy systems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

Preschool and kindergarten-aged children are still developing the skills needed to reflect on and manage their own thinking, a process often referred to as metacognition. Without strategic support from their teachers, young children may struggle to make sense of inquiry-based science activities and possibly form enduring misconceptions that may hamper future science learning. Yet, many teachers are unfamiliar with the metacognitive processes or how to intentionally facilitate their development. This project explores both how to improve early childhood teachers' understanding of metacognition and develop strategies to guide teachers in using language and feedback to more effectively support emerging metacognition and science learning in young children. Working with teachers and children in rural Idaho, the project includes classroom observations, experimental studies on teacher-child interaction, and the development of a professional development program designed to help teachers strengthen young children's reasoning and reflection. The findings will contribute to improving science instruction in early childhood and offer practical guidance for teacher education and professional learning. The project includes three interconnected research studies designed to explore and enhance how early childhood teachers support young children's science learning through metacognitive development. Study 1 will assess current science instruction in rural Idaho classrooms by collecting data from 55 teachers and 330 children, including classroom observations, teacher-child interactions, and child science assessments. Quantitative and qualitative analyses will identify features of classroom environments that support or hinder metacognitive engagement. Study 2 uses an experimental design with 121 children to examine feedback type-either focused on their performance or aimed at helping them reflect on their thought processes- delivered either during or after structured science activities influence performance. Researchers will analyze how these variations influence children's ability to reflect on their own thinking using coded video data and statistical comparisons. Study 3 builds on these findings to design and evaluate a year-long professional development program for 25 teachers, incorporating online modules, curriculum implementation, and in-person coaching. Throughout the program, the research team will gather classroom observation data, teacher and child surveys, and interview responses to evaluate changes in teaching practices and children's learning. Findings from all three studies will inform both theory and practice by identifying effective ways to support teachers' conceptions and awareness of metacognition as well as how they can use language and feedback to support young children's metacognitive growth in science. The CAREER award is funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) which seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed project. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

The future of the engineering and technology workforce will rely on robotics engineers to aid in unleashing ground breaking discoveries and translational solutions to the nation’s greatest challenges. Robots developed through a human-centered design approach have a focus on the end user and designs to best meet their needs. Soft robots describe those electro-mechanical devices made from low-modulus materials that can safely interact with people for a variety of applications. Soft robotics innovation sits at the nexus of advances in materials, automation, and biotechnology. Current strategies to attract K12 students to robotics-aligned engineering majors and careers are not equipped to meet the needs of the future workforce. This project will aim to deliver new curriculum for students to develop their science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) talent by embedding a curricular strand of human-centered soft robotics throughout science courses in high school. This project will study the implementation of a design-based curriculum and the opportunities it creates for students to design solutions to challenges relevant to the United States and its people to increase engagement in engineering. By centering end users, we can reveal for students that robotics requires a multidisciplinary approach and can align with personal goals to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare. Given the intentional partnership with high schools in rural, suburban and urban schools, our findings can be translated across educational context to support professional formation of robotics engineers. This will ultimately lead to a stronger technical workforce and global science and engineering competitiveness. This project will build on pilot work to conduct the first mixed methods, longitudinal study of the impact of human-centered soft robotics on student career attitudes. This project will reveal aspects of a multi-year robotics curriculum that appeals to students’ engineering agency beliefs through validating a new measure, human-centered design self-efficacy for high school students. This project will ask, how can pre-college curricula be reimagined to change students’ perceptions of engineering majors through emotional connection to curricular applications? To answer this question, this CAREER project will conduct an integrated research and education project to disrupt traditional robotics education with a science-integrated, human-centered soft robotics curriculum and career resources. Robots developed for wearable technologies, for example, may align with engineering agency beliefs and aid in development of self-efficacy, identities and career interest. We argue that supporting engineering identity and career interest in robotics will require a multifaceted approach that equips teachers, schools, families, and students with resources, hence our planned educational activities. Understanding more deeply how human-centered design can create an enriching educational environment will fundamentally change approaches to engineering education to recruit roboticists and engineers to meet society’s most significant technical challenges. New knowledge generated in methods to measure human-centered design engineering self-efficacy can be used to improve existing robotics and engineering curricula. While studied in the context of soft robotics, findings from this project will be broadly applicable to other robotics and STEM fields. This integrated research and education project will produce a framework by which educators can teach engineering concepts in science to (1) change perceptions of robotics, and (2) empower students to develop robotics engineering career interest as early as high school. Directly through this project, thousands of students will benefit from a new multi-year science curriculum. Findings from this study will pave the way for increasing the number of students in the engineering workforce, so that new innovative technologies that benefit all of society can be realized. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

For over a century, the idea that biological molecules such as DNA or proteins could survive in ancient fossils was assumed impossible. However, the advent of high-resolution imaging technologies and biochemistry techniques over the last 30 years has shown this is not the case. In fact, paleontologists have recently made numerous remarkable discoveries of fossilized cells and soft tissues in fossil bones of dinosaurs and many other extinct animals. These discoveries are forcing paleontologists to revise models of fossilization to account for the preservation of biologic molecules in the fossil record. However, it remains unclear how such remarkable preservation occurs, which materials are most resilient to decay, and why. This project will identify which portions of bone material are most resilient to decay both before and after burial. These answers will help paleontologists and archeologists revise models of fossilization and discover new instances of molecular preservation in fossils, and they could also see future applications more broadly in the fields of forensics, historical art conservation, and tissue engineering (such as for wound healing and bone regeneration). In addition, this CAREER award will provide training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students at the University of North Dakota in the application of new and cutting-edge analytical techniques. The researchers will also create and run a novel hands-on activity about fossilization with regional K-8 classes and youth STEM camps, and develop a high school biology curriculum module for regional schools which explores the structure of protein molecules. Integration of this research with education activities during this CAREER award will annually serve ~500 K-12 students from rural communities of eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. Altogether, these efforts will bring scientific attention to rural communities of this region, create exciting new research infrastructure and opportunities for undergraduates at the state’s namesake university, and foster broad participation and public engagement with exceptional fossils recovered from the state, such as the mummified dinosaur “Dakota.” Through integrating modern trace element geochemistry and proteomics approaches, this research will illuminate how several environmental variables influence initial decay of collagen I, a bone structural protein, after death. Two complementary forms of high-resolution mass spectrometry will be completed on naturally-weathered bones from Texas and Alaska to determine the influences of ambient temperature on the sequence-level decay of collagen. To further explore the importance of entombing sediments on protein decay, the same analyses will also be performed on bones subjected to decay after simulated ‘burial’ and exposure to flowing, simulated ‘groundwaters’ in a year-long laboratory experiment. Results from these three complementary projects will clarify relationships between chemical alteration and the sequence-level decay of collagen, which will in turn be used to elucidate preservation mechanisms which can promote the long-term stability of proteins over geologic timescales. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: Thin films of metal oxides such as ferrous oxide and titania have long been studied for their various unique physical properties, such as magnetism and superconductivity. It is only in the past few years, however, that research in oxides comprised of metallic elements lower in the periodic table has gained prominence. Oxides composed of these metals exhibit unusual properties when they conduct electricity making them strong candidates for use in quantum computation technologies. This project focuses on the synthesis of oxide thin films comprised of elements in the fourth and fifth rows of the periodic table. Researchers are studying the unusual behavior derived from materials comprised of two different elements made with atomically sharp interfaces using a technique called molecular beam epitaxy. By alternating layers of each material in a sandwich structure to produce repeating interfaces, the research focuses on making a material that exhibits the properties of the interface many times over. Through two outreach programs, exposure to science in rural and underserved areas of Alabama is broadened to groups that are not introduced to science in their daily lives. The investigator teaches annual seminars in Alabama prisons through the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project about the applications of physics and materials science to new technologies, offering non-traditional students scientific enrichment and education during their rehabilitation that is not otherwise available. The researchers also lead the annual Gameday Physics outreach event to perform science demonstrations and introduce physics research to a broad and diverse audience at highly-attended football games on the Auburn University campus. TECHNICAL DETAILS: Complex oxides comprised of 4d and 5d transition metals exhibit significantly higher spin-orbit coupling than those comprised of 3d elements. These materials have been predicted to exhibit high temperature superconductivity and other emergent topological phenomena when formed in epitaxial thin film heterostructures and superlattices. These properties make 4d and 5d materials promising for use as materials to enable topological quantum computation. In this project, systematic studies of synthesis of several candidate 4d and 5d complex oxides via hybrid molecular beam epitaxy are performed. Using this novel approach, a metal-organic precursor replaces the traditional elemental source for the transition metal, enabling easier synthesis and producing higher quality materials. Exploration of emergent interfacial phenomena includes high-temperature superconductivity, ferroelectricity, and topological electronic states. By synthesizing superlattice films comprised of repeating interfaces, the research focuses on the development of materials that exhibit interfacial phenomena in a bulk film. This project provides educational experiences for undergraduate students to learn about materials characterization through machine learning analysis of diffraction and spectroscopy data. Computational codes to analyze such data are shared for the research community to advance real-time analysis of film synthesis. Graduate student researchers gain experience in materials synthesis and characterization in the lab and at user facilities around the world. Such experiences help prepare students for careers in materials research in the integrated circuit and electronic device industry. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

Industrial turbines that burn natural gas currently generate about 40 percent of all electricity and nearly 15 percent of all CO2 in the US. A transition from natural gas to clean hydrogen could significantly reduce CO2 production. While gas turbine manufacturers anticipate 100 percent hydrogen utilization in the future, current industrial turbines operate closer to 50 percent hydrogen by volume. One of the main obstacles slowing the transition to hydrogen is flame flashback, a phenomenon wherein the flame proceeds upstream of the combustor with catastrophic consequences. When flashback happens near the wall of a combustor, it is called boundary layer flashback. The addition of hydrogen as a fuel significantly increases the likelihood of such boundary layer flashback phenomena. The goals of this project are to better understand the physical and chemical mechanisms responsible for flashback and to develop general, accurate and affordable models capable of predicting its occurrence. The project also aims to provide rural communities affected by hydrogen projects with a source of information on the impact of the fuel on their lives and to encourage students to participate in STEM starting from high school and continuing through their undergraduate careers. The goal of this project is to enable a new modeling paradigm for boundary layer flashback of turbulent lean hydrogen flames that allows for general, accurate, and affordable prediction of its occurrence. The primary hypothesis guiding this work is that there is a fundamental relationship between the onset of boundary layer flashback in turbulent premixed lean hydrogen flames and strained premixed flames at the extinction limit, and that this relationship can be leveraged to develop and extend a new class of boundary layer flashback models. As part of this project, direct numerical simulations of boundary layer flashback will be performed to understand the fundamental physical relationship between flashback and extinction limit flames. Insights from these simulations will be used to build engineering models capable of predicting the onset of flashback in a wide range of practical combustors. Finally, wall models will be developed to capture boundary layer flashback in computational fluid dynamics simulations even without fully resolving the flow at the wall. The models developed as part of this project will ultimately aid in the design of next generation low-to-no carbon combustors capable of enabling carbon-free power. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

This project is jointly funded by the CBET Electrochemical Systems Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The goal of the project is to develop a new rechargeable battery based on an Aluminium (Al)-CO2 electrochemical cell. The project will address several challenges generally associated with metal-CO2 batteries, including the reversible formation and decomposition of solid discharge products. It will focus on the use of additives in the electrolyte to mitigate these challenges. The new battery will serve two important purposes by storing electrical energy and simultaneously capturing gaseous CO2 and converting it into solid minerals. The project will support an educational program about metal-CO2 batteries for students at all academic levels. The project will expand educational outreach at the University of New Mexico by providing hands-on energy and sustainability demonstrations for rural elementary K-12 schools. The goal is to stimulate interest in STEM and help develop a future science and engineering workforce. Leveraging a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach that includes material science, electrochemistry, engineering, and systems integration, this project is designed to address critical scientific challenges in the development of metal-gas battery technology. The research focuses on understanding the reversible formation and decomposition of solid discharge products within Al-CO2 batteries. Objectives include deciphering the intricate electrochemical redox reactions occurring within these batteries, delineating the pathways of CO2 reduction and evolution during discharge and charge cycles, and understanding the complex interfacial properties between the gas, electrode, and electrolyte that influence the battery’s overall stability and rechargeability. Employing a combination of electrochemical techniques, theoretical analyses, and microscopic and spectroscopic characterizations, the project will provide insights into the impacts of redox mediators and the dynamic gas-liquid-solid triple interphases on the battery’s functionality. This comprehensive analysis is expected to lead to the development of high-performance, cost-effective metal-CO2 batteries that will enhance grid storage applications and provide a viable solution for carbon capture. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH

Background and Significance: In primary partnership with the Office of Geriatrics and Extended Care (GEC), Geriatrics and Extended care-focused Network to Enhance Research Across The Enterprise (GENERATE) has three priority areas in which it will support advancement: (1) Home care workforce and family caregivers, (2) Quality and access to facility-based long-term care, and (3) Aging in place. GENERATE is grounded in a learning health system conceptual framework and has the following three goals. Goal 1: Data Infrastructure. Support integration of caregiving, long-term care, and aging data by characterizing relevant data, measures, and sources; determining needs; and identifying priority areas to improve future research and policy. Goal 2: Evidence Curation. Characterize and curate current evidence from existing work related to caregiving, long-term care, and aging to identify research opportunities/gaps, engage marginalized groups, and support information exchange to move research findings into practice. Goal 3: Veteran Impact. Rapidly move caregiving, long-term care, and aging research into policy and practice through mentorship, response to ORD and legislative needs, and pilot grants. GENERATE is responsive to the VA national priority of greater choice for Veterans and addresses an ORD- wide priority to increase the real-world significance of VA research by developing products partners can immediately disseminate to the field. The impact of GENERATE’s activities will be to enable Veterans and families to have greater access to high quality home and long-term services to meet their needs as they age. Strategic Plan: Goal 1 activities will help understand current availability and use of data to drive better care for older Veterans and their caregivers, identify data and measurement gaps and opportunities for collaboration and further research, support operational partners’ data needs, and increase communication across shareholders to support enterprise-wide use. Goal 2 will help understand the landscape of current research on caregiving, long-term care, and aging to identify and support opportunities for research to move the needle forward. We will create structures and processes for information exchange to help move findings into practice. We will also engage traditionally marginalized groups, so nothing about them is done without them. Goal 3 activities will develop a mentorship program to connect senior and early career researchers. We will also create a rapid response team to help our partners respond to legislative and other requests. And we will actively solicit funds to support a potential pilot program to enable research to rapidly address known needs. Innovation: GENERATE forges unprecedented collaboration in caregiving/long-term care/aging, spanning across traditional research and operations silos to jointly move the needle forward on improving Veteran impacts. It uses a community-engaged approach to support novel and meaningful participation of marginalized populations whose perspectives are central to the caregiving, long-term care, and aging fields. Coordination, Collaboration, and Partnerships: The primary partner is GEC. GENERATE works with the HSR broad portfolio and will also partner with the Caregiver Support Program and, among others, the Offices of Care Management and Social Work, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, and Primary Care, and Rural Health. GENERATE also collaborates with multiple existing groups, including but not limited to the Geriatrics Learning Health System QUERI, the Elizabeth Dole Center of Excellence for Veteran and Caregiver Research, and the Age-Friendly SOTA meeting committee, all of which also have investigators on GENERATE. Management Plan: GENERATE’s MPI team, led by Dr. Hartmann (Bedford) as Contact PI, also comprises Drs. Hastings (Durham), Hung (Bronx), and Mills (Providence). Investigators outside the MPIs’ facilities are as follows: Dr. Jacobs (Palo Alto), Dr. Leykum (San Antonio), Dr. Madrigal (Boston), and Dr. True (New Orleans).

NIAID - National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading single-agent cause of infectious mortality worldwide, including among people with HIV (PWH). TB survivors also continue to experience sequelae including post-TB lung disease (PTLD) and higher mortality. It remains uncertain, however, how much of these post-TB sequelae reflect TB itself versus underlying pre-TB risk factors and lung disease. For example, if a substantial burden of PTLD reflects pre-existing lung damage due to smoking – itself a risk factor for TB – then preventing TB may have minimal effect on this burden, and we should prioritize efforts to augment smoking cessation (including among people at risk for TB). By contrast, if PTLD development instead reflects lung damage incurred while TB diagnosis was delayed (e.g., because people who smoke may delay seeking care for a cough), then efforts to detect TB more rapidly – or prevent TB in the first place – are even more essential. Such questions can only be answered by evaluating lung function and respiratory symptoms both before and after people develop TB. Performing such a study is challenging, however, because typically no more than 1 in 500 people develop TB each year. Thus, a large population must be followed after an initial lung function evaluation to obtain a sufficient sample size for analysis. This proposal leverages a unique opportunity to create such a prospective cohort, as 9,000 people from a district in rural southwestern Uganda (Rakai district) are already being recruited into a cohort study involving lung function testing. These participants can be followed for TB and paired with an additional 20,000 people from an ongoing decades-long community-based cohort study in the same area (the Rakai Community Cohort Study) to create a novel prospective population-based cohort for evaluating pre-TB and post-TB lung function in an HIV-endemic African setting. In Specific Aim 1, we will characterize trajectories of lung function before and after the development of TB disease, including among key subgroups (e.g., PWH). This aim will enable us to infer the fraction of post-TB lung function deficits that are attributable to TB itself versus reflective of underlying lung vulnerability. In Specific Aim 2, we will identify pre-TB characteristics and biomarkers that are associated with a higher burden of future PTLD – both through higher risk of developing TB and higher risk of experiencing PTLD if TB develops. This aim will enhance our understanding of PTLD pathophysiology and identify key subpopulations that might benefit from interventions to prevent TB or mitigate its consequences. In Specific Aim 3, we will use population modeling techniques to project the likely long-term impacts of different interventions on the population burden of post-TB illness. These results will enable policymakers to better prioritize those interventions most likely to have the greatest impact when delivered to specific key populations. In summary, the proposed study will make use of a novel “window of opportunity” to better understand lung function in TB survivors – before they develop TB in the first place. This understanding will facilitate a more effective response to averting and/or mitigating the tremendous burden of post-TB illness worldwide.

NCIPC - National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

Project Summary Interpersonal community violence (ICV; e.g., assaults, homicides, violence between groups, and threats/use of weapons) is a public health crisis among American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) peoples including youth in the U.S. Lakota youth who reside on the rural and impoverished Pine Ridge Reservation (PRR) are no exception. Despite research documenting contextual (e.g., structural racism, colonization and multiple historical traumas), risk (e.g., alcohol and drug use), and protective (e.g., cultural identity) factors for ICV among AI/AN youth, we know little about how to prevent ICV among AI/AN youth. A potentially promising approach to prevent ICV in tribal communities is crime prevention through environmental design CPTED. CPTED integrates physical (e.g., lighting) and, more recently social (e.g., community engagement) strategies to prevent crime, including ICV. Busy Streets Theory (BST) is a conceptualization of CPTED focused on local community engagement that fosters community ownership and allows for tailoring physical changes to community interests and culture, and creating positive social capital. BST aligns strongly with Lakota cultural teachings. In response to CDC RFA- CE-25-021 (Objectives 1, 2, and 3), the purpose of the current study is to examine how a place-based, community-led, and culturally CPTED activities may prevent and reduce ICV on the PRR. Using community- based participatory action research (CBPAR), we will develop (Aim 1) the CPTED project, preliminary entitled The Wancantognaka Project (The Generosity Project; TGP). In addition to culturally grounded CPTED projects (e.g., community gardens with traditional Lakota methods and foods, building inipis (sweat lodges) for ceremony), TGP will include program sessions for youth (ages 13 to 19) taught by Lakota adults, including Elders. Further, using the RE-AIM framework, we will collect implementation and community acceptance and perceived impact data and document costs (Aim 2). We will also assess youth outcomes (Aim 3) via surveys (baseline, immediate post, and 6- and 12- month follow-ups) that assess risk (e.g., 7 C’s of positive youth development, cultural identity, social support) and protective (e.g., alcohol and drug use, violent behaviors) factors. Finally, using police incident data, we will assess the impact of CPTED on rates of community violence (Aim 4). For Aims 3 and 4, we will utilize a longitudinal quasi-experimental design in which the community on the PRR implementing CPTED will be compared on youth (ages 13 to 19; N=320; 160 per community) and community outcomes (crime rates 48 bi-weekly intervals pre TGP and 24 bi-weekly intervals post TGP) to another community on the PRR (similar in terms of demographics and crime rates) not receiving CPTED. The proposed study is highly aligned with the Healthy People 2030 priority area of injury and violence prevention as well as the NCIPC’s goal to conduct rigorous research to expand and advance an understanding of approaches to prevent ICV and to eliminate racial inequities in risk for ICV.

NCIPC - National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

Falls are a serious problem among older adults, resulting in approximately 3.6 million emergency room visits and 1.1 million hospitalizations among persons ages 65 and older in 2022. Falls may pose even more significant risks to assisted living facility (ALF) residents. As compared to community-dwelling seniors, seniors in ALFs residents are older, have more chronic health conditions, and often have trouble with mobility, mental health, memory, and activities of daily living. Implementing the CDC’s Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries (STEADI) Initiative within ALFs has the potential to reduce falls and costs in these settings; however, until now, the feasibility and effectiveness of STEADI fall prevention in ALFs have not been sufficiently studied. We propose a plan to experimentally implement STEADI in eight ALFs and measure its feasibility, implementation fidelity, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness through three aims: 1. Develop an experimentally designed Study Protocol, Implementation Plan, and Evaluation plan, and obtain IRB Approval. 2. Implement with fidelity all components of STEADI screening, assessment, intervention, and follow-up in recruited ALFs and collect study data on implementation feasibility, assessments, use of STEADI recommended preventive services, all falls, injurious falls, and implementation costs. 3. Analyze and evaluate study data to understand implementation quality and fidelity, its impact on fall outcomes, and its costs and cost-effectiveness, and stratify these analyses to account for important subpopulations such as those with memory and dementia needs and those from rural areas Implementing and experimentally evaluating STEADI fall prevention in ALFs is vital for public health improvement, yet it is challenging. Our proposal accounts for challenges through our study design, partner selection, and data capture. We propose a design to maximize the study’s power and increase implementation feasibility. We have partnered with an ALF organization that provides state-of-the-art EHR, MAR, and fall incident systems to track fall events (non-injurious and injurious), STEADI-recommended preventive services, comorbidities, medications, and medication adjustments. We additionally provide a plan to analyze additional Medicare claims data to increase the number of clusters measured and to help detect significant differences in medically treated falls. When successful, this study has the potential to contribute substantial evidence about the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and return on investment of STEADI fall prevention in ALFs.

NCIPC - National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

Fentanyl and xylazine pose new life-threatening risks to people who use drugs (PWUD), particularly in rural areas such as northern New England. In New Hampshire and Maine, 91% and 78% of overdose deaths in 2023, respectively, were attributed to fentanyl. In Maine, nearly one in ten overdose deaths involved xylazine, placing it among the states most impacted by xylazine-adulterated fentanyl. Despite the threat posed by fentanyl and xylazine, PWUD in New Hampshire and Maine have little to no access to drug checking services to inform drug-related decision-making and thus potentially reduce overdose. In Maine, our existing Project DHARMA (Distribution of Harm Reduction Access in Rural Maine Areas) team, which includes syringe service programs (SSPs), has catalyzed the passage of legislation that has made drug checking services available. However, SSPs are understaffed and the impacts of drug checking services in a rural state like Maine remain unknown. Therefore, we propose a difference-in-differences (DID) study to develop, implement, and evaluate an enhanced drug checking navigator (DCN) community-based intervention to prevent overdoses. We will compare differences in overdose prevalence in Maine, where the DCN intervention will be implemented by SSPs, to New Hampshire, where the intervention will not be implemented. We theorize that improving access to community-based drug checking programs will improve PWUD’s knowledge about their drugs, leading to a change in drug use behaviors, and ultimately cause a reduction in overdoses. Our study includes three aims. In Aim 1, we will conduct focus groups and co-design workshops with PWUD and SSP staff to ensure the DCN intervention meets the needs of PWUD and to develop the implementation strategy with tailoring, as needed, for each SSP. In Aim 2, the SSPs will implement the DCN intervention across seven Maine counties while our study team rigorously evaluates its effect on county overdose prevalence using a difference-in-differences design with six counties in New Hampshire serving as the comparison arm. The primary outcome of interest will be the annual nonfatal and fatal overdose prevalence at county-level. We will also examine several secondary outcomes that we theorize the DCN intervention may impact such as improvements in safer drug- use behaviors, linkage to health care, linkage to other SSP harm reduction services, and temporal changes in the drug supply. Finally, in Aim 3, we will use mixed methods to examine the implementation of the DCN intervention in order to understand what worked and what did not work with the approach. We will examine process outcomes such as acceptability, appropriateness, feasibility, fidelity, implementation cost, penetration, and sustainability. If we demonstrate its effectiveness, this DCN community-based intervention model could provide critical information on developing similar community-based interventions in other settings, such as in New Hampshire or other rural areas.

Washington State Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB)

This funding program provides loans and grants to rural communities for public infrastructure to enable future business development. Jurisdictions in rural counties and rural communities may apply for the Prospective Development program if an economic feasibility study demonstrates that private business development is likely to occur as a result of the public improvements. Additional requirements include: Evidence from an economic feasibility study that the project will lead to the creation of a significant number of permanent jobs or generate significant private capital investment; and Applicants must also demonstrate the need for CERB assistance and that no other timely source of funds is available at a reasonably similar rate to the current CERB rate.

NIH

Significance to VA: Each year, hundreds of thousands of Veterans are hospitalized for new presentations and acute exacerbations of complex chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurologic, and substance use disorders. For each of these conditions, there are medications with strong evidence for improving clinical outcomes when taken long-term. Use of evidence-based, long-term medications following hospitalization is often deficient, with disparities observed in prescribing by race, ethnicity, rurality, and socioeconomic status. To date, no studies have systematically assessed the quality and equity of evidence-based prescribing at hospital discharge, a critical time to initiate guideline-recommended care. The objectives of this proposal are to detect and understand determinants of quality and equity of prescribing for hospitalized Veterans and to identify evidence-based strategies to improve prescribing. This research has been developed in partnership with the National Hospital Medicine Program, Office of Health Equity, and Center for Medication Safety and aligns with HSR priorities to apply Learning Health Systems foundational methods to achieve the VA Quintuple Aims of improving outcomes and ensuring equity. Innovation and Impact: The proposal is innovative in three ways. First, this research moves beyond disease- specific silos to examine evidence-based prescribing as a cross-cutting concept for hospitalized Veterans. Second, this research evaluates prescribing quality with an explicit health equity lens and employing a novel pharmacoequity framework. Third, it will use a complementary set of rigorous health services research methods to understand the underlying mechanisms for gaps in the quality and equity of prescribing and develop strategies with stakeholders to close gaps. This proposal will provide hospital-specific metrics to frontline clinicians and administrators to guide quality improvement efforts to advance inpatient prescribing quality and equity. Specific Aims: Aim 1: To examine the association of sociodemographic factors with receipt of evidence-based medications at hospital discharge. Aim 2: To determine mechanisms by which Veterans do not receive evidence- based medications at hospital discharge. Aim 3: To identify stakeholder perceptions of hospital prescribing performance and barriers to and facilitators of discharge prescribing quality and equity. Methodology: Aim 1 will be a retrospective cohort study using electronic health record data from the VA Corporate Data Warehouse to assess national and hospital-level rates of evidence-based medication use for Veterans hospitalized from 2022 and 2024 for five common complex chronic conditions: alcohol use disorder, atrial fibrillation, cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart failure. Aim 2 will be a chart review study of a sample of 1,000 Veterans identified in Aim 1 as not receiving evidence-based medications at hospital discharge, oversampling for sociodemographic groups with the largest disparities in care. Aim 3 will be a qualitative study of 75 semi-structured interviews with inpatient clinicians and VA hospital leaders to identify barriers to and facilitators of equitable, high-quality discharge prescribing, recruiting from VA hospitals that are high and low performing (by quality and equity metrics) based upon Aim 1 results. Path to Translation/Implementation: This project will yield critical evidence to guide research and quality improvement efforts to equitably improve care delivery for hospitalized Veterans. The sum impact of this proposal will be the foundational data needed to initiate a Learning Health System Translation-to-Policy Learning Cycle to urgently transform current prescribing practices and test the implementation of data-informed strategies to improve hospital discharge prescribing quality and equity. Findings from all aims will be synthesized and reviewed with Operations partners, Veterans, and a longitudinal Expert Stakeholder Panel of frontline hospital- based clinicians to inform the co-design of implementation strategies to increase prescribing of evidence-based therapies for hospitalized Veterans that will be studied in future QUERI and Merit proposals.

NSF

The objective of this NSF Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) Stage 2 project is to explore and demonstrate an alternative model of rail transit development that revitalizes underutilized—or “legacy”—rail through partnerships. Rail transit in the United States faces several challenges that drive up costs and delay implementation: technical complexity requiring expensive signaling and inspection systems, complex regulatory hurdles, rigid funding structures that limit financial innovation, and reliance on costly feasibility studies to justify demand. These barriers reinforce high-cost, consultant-driven development models that discourage scalable, community-responsive transit. Rather than relying on billion-dollar rail projects, the project team asks: What if transit could start small, grow with demand, and be shaped by the people it serves? The project centers on how legacy rail can overcome barriers that inflate revitalization costs by combining modular rail technology, onboard sensing for safety and maintenance, new regulatory pathways, and grassroots planning. To achieve this, it brings together a partnership of eight organizations, led by Carnegie Mellon University, Pop-Up Metro, and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. Through this partnership, the project deploys and operates a full-scale metro along 1.61 miles of legacy rail along Philadelphia’s Delaware River. The demonstration showcases a scalable, cost-effective transit model, with replication in other communities supported through workshops for municipal leaders and transit agencies interested in revitalizing rail infrastructure. The outcome includes a public-facing blueprint outlining regulatory, technical, and financial strategies for replication, and a dedicated Pop-Up Metro division to guide implementation across the country’s thousands of miles of legacy rail. This project advances knowledge through an empirically rigorous, interdisciplinary approach to transform underutilized infrastructure into viable transit systems by combining engineering innovation, public engagement, and regulatory adaptation. It examines four key questions with significant knowledge contributions: (1) how onboard defect detection technology improves maintenance strategies and reduces costs; (2) how modular train units impact financial sustainability compared to fixed-infrastructure systems; (3) what regulatory pathways enable effective and scalable legacy rail reactivation; and (4) how grassroots engagement can replace traditional feasibility studies to inform needs, demand, and rail service justification. The research methodology combines rigorous technical validation, quantitative economic analysis, regulatory blueprint development, and mixed-methods community engagement analysis. A new paradigm is established for implementing transit by combining technical innovation with civic participation, creating empirically validated frameworks that can be applied across diverse urban and rural settings while deepening the fundamental understanding of infrastructure management. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

FIC - John E. Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences

This is an application for the K43 Emerging Global Leader Award for Alex Kayongo, MD-PhD. Dr. Kayongo has shown great promise as a young investigator in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) investigating the airway microbiome-host immune crosstalk in HIV-associated COPD. He proposes to gain advanced training in implementing high-quality multi-omics COPD studies in LMIC settings, which require additional training and mentorship. His career goal is to become an independent investigator and expert in the airway microbiome and mucosal immunology of COPD in HIV. This award will provide Dr. Kayongo with the support and training to accomplish this goal. He has assembled an experienced mentorship team, i.e., Dr. William Checkley (USA-based Primary Mentor, Professor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University) and Dr. Moses Lutaakome Joloba (LMIC-based Primary Mentor, Professor of Molecular Biology, Makerere University). The team will have key collaborators: Dr. Sofia Forslund (Charite University, Professor of Applied Microbiology) and Dr. Miriam Moffatt (Imperial College London, Professor of Respiratory Genetics). Dr Kayongo proposes to accomplish advanced training in multi-omics analysis. COPD is an increasingly important comorbidity among people living with HIV (PLWH), including in the United States, where aging HIV populations face a rising burden of chronic lung disease despite effective antiretroviral therapy (ART). Despite viral suppression, it’s not fully known what drives chronic lung inflammation in this population. Lung dysbiosis, reported to persist following ART initiation, could be a potential driver of chronic inflammation. Despite reported links between COPD-specific bacterial taxa and immune dysregulation, there is limited understanding of the breadth of such cellular immune responses. The fundamental question of how airway CD4+T cells integrate microbiome stimuli remains unanswered. This proposal aims to characterise in vitro CD4+T-cell clonotypic library specific to airway microbiome signatures associated with COPD among HIV-infected individuals in a rural Ugandan cohort, a unique setting with a high prevalence of HIV-associated COPD, enabling access to patient populations, environmental exposures, and microbiome diversity not readily available in the United States. These conditions provide a scientifically necessary setting to capture a broader and more representative spectrum of microbiome-immune interactions, including chronic exposures and co-factors that shape airway immunity. Using this library as a reference, we will characterise ex vivo the microbiome-specific clonotypic landscape of broncho-alveolar lavage (BAL)-derived CD4+T cells obtained from a cross-sectional cohort of individuals stratified by HIV and COPD in rural Uganda. From a pool of these BAL-derived microbiome-specific clonotypes, we will uncover unique clonotypes driving inflammation, referred to as “T-cell inflammotypes”. To validate these identified inflammotypes, we will determine clonotypic variations in a sub-cohort of individuals from stable COPD disease to exacerbation. The knowledge generated from this work has direct relevance to American health. HIV-associated COPD is a growing clinical challenge in the United States, particularly among aging populations and underserved communities. By defining antigen-specific T cell responses to airway microbiota, this study will uncover conserved mechanisms of immune-mediated lung inflammation that are translatable across populations. These findings will inform development of targeted immunomodulatory and microbiome-based therapies to prevent or treat COPD in PLWH and the general population in the United States. This work advances NIH’s mission by integrating scientific opportunity with a clear pathway to improving understanding, prevention, and treatment of chronic lung disease in Americans.

NSF

This project will advance practice in informal science education with a scalable and adaptable model for community-based, co-design of a future STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) Center. With a collaborative approach, the project aims to ensure that the design of the Center prioritizes fostering skills, knowledge, and interests that align with projected economic growth areas, which is needed to cultivate a well-equipped future STEM workforce. Kidzeum, Loyola University Chicago, and Northwestern University will forge partnerships with regional stakeholders: rural and urban schools, nonprofits serving children, and local STEM professionals from healthcare, agriculture, and skilled trades. These partnerships will intentionally involve community members who will contribute directly to the design of the STEAM Center, its exhibits and activities. Project research will support the development of a new model for engaging small, rural communities that surround an urban core in a manner that fosters a connected learning ecosystem. The methodology guiding this partnership is centered on collaboration and co-design, directly involving community organizations from the very beginning through all stages of partnership development and planning. To gather data directly from the community, the partnership will conduct a series of surveys, focus groups, and use techniques such as asset mapping and Photovoice, to identify strengths across the community and link these strengths to the design of the STEAM Center. The project model will be shared widely with the field through publications and conference presentations. This Partnership project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIA - National Institute on Aging

Half of all persons who develop clinical dementia become symptomatic after age 85 years, whereas most studies of dementia have focused on younger patients in their 70s. Compared to dementia beginning at a younger age, dementia in the oldest-old has a more heterogeneous, multifactorial etiology. Although, Alzheimer disease remains important there are greater contributions from vascular brain injury, systemic disease and dysfunction that indirectly affects the brain, and recently described, poorly understood brain pathologies. Vascular and lifestyle risk factors may contribute differently to risk of dementia in the oldest-old. Conversely, it is also important to learn what resilience factors permit persons to remain alive and cognitively normal as nonagenerians. Studies that enroll persons aged 85+, often lack information from when these individuals were middle-aged. Longitudinal cohort studies that enrolled participants between ages 45 and 70 years and followed them past age 80 years, till they died or developed dementia, would be ideal study samples, but each such cohort usually has only a small number of participants surviving beyond age 80. One solution is to combine data across multiple longitudinal studies with harmonizable protocols. The Cross-Cohort Collaboration Consortium (CCC) was established in 2018, as an offshoot of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium. The Neurology working group within the CCC (led by MPIs Seshadri, Ikram, Dufouil, Debette, Satizabal) brought together 8 cohorts (RF1 AG059421) to study late life dementia. We now request a renewal of this grant to expand and continue the collaboration. We will add 5 new cohorts reaching 13 cohorts, to study 102,285 participants, 37,803 with brain MRI, and add a new MPI in Suchy-Dicey who will bring her experience working with AD in American Indians. We propose the following aims. Aim 1: To relate various risk factors, systemic illness and MRI markers in midlife (ages 45 to 70) to (a) the risk of late life dementia, and (b) the probability of reaching age 85 (+/- 5) years, alive and dementia free (‘wellderly’). Aim 2: To assess (a) the impact of multimorbidity examining how persons with two or more chronic conditions differ in life-expectancy and dementia risk and (b) to combine various risk and resilience factors, multimorbidity and MRI measures using artificial intelligence and machine learning to create parsimonious models that predict late-onset dementia and wellderly status. Aim 3: To examine the biological pathways underlying the observed associations using pathway analyses and structural equation modeling to explore the mediating role of plasma proteins. The proteins we study will include known biomarkers of amyloid, tau and neurodegeneration (Aβ40 Aβ42, p-tau181/217, NfL, GFAP) in 37,824 individuals, as well as an array of 3000+ plasma proteins in 38,067 persons (new assays on Olink Explore 3072 + available data) so we can identify previously unsuspected biology using Mendelian randomization methods to examine causality. Aim 4: We will investigate any effect modification by sex-, age-, race-, ethnicity-, urban or rural residence, menopause, APOE genotype on findings from Aims 1-3. We hope to uncover putative drug targets to reduce risk of late life dementia.

NSF

This project aims to build an inclusive research ecosystem to serve as a cornerstone of the Vermont economy. Project goals are to establish administrative support to build and sustain a diverse, integrated science and technology (S&T) research ecosystem in southern Vermont. Additionally, the project seeks to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in S&T research and employment. Through the project's responsiveness to the S&T needs of Vermont, the jurisdiction has potential to increase its S&T research and employment; have a strongly educated S&T population; position the community to understand various aspects of S&T research and its role in the community; and increase participation of underrepresented groups in S&T research including neurodivergent, first-generation, low-income, and multilingual students. The project will build S&T research capacity through training, increasing research opportunities, and creating new S&T jobs. It will contribute to expanding the S&T workforce locally and nationally. The Science and Technology Research Initiative for the Vermont Economy (STRIVE) is a collaboration between Landmark College (lead institution), Bennington College, and the Community College of Vermont. STRIVE will examine how an equitable research infrastructure can catalyze the civic value of science in undergraduate education and rural economies. The project will invest in achieving a holistic, jurisdiction-wide research ecosystem attuned to the needs of Vermont while monitoring the impact they have on STEM participation at an institutional, community, and jurisdictional wide level. Investments will broaden participation in S&T driven research and economic development, and bridge longstanding S&T research divides in the state. STRIVE will invest in the following research administrative infrastructure: Research Administrators, Research Scholars, and improvements to a research farm; experiential learning opportunities; S&T research grants; professional development; and outreach activities. STRIVE will engage S&T research entities within and outside of the education system. This will lead to community-responsive partnerships that will leverage STRIVE’s investments to secure funding for S&T research expansion in Vermont. This project is supported by the EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program: EPSCoR Collaborations for Optimizing Research Ecosystems (E-CORE). E-CORE supports jurisdictions in strengthening their jurisdiction-wide research ecosystems through fostering interconnected networks, building research infrastructure, and growing research capacity and competitiveness aligned with jurisdictional priorities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.