Success Stories

A $2.5M NIH grant will help University of ARKANSAS for Medical Sciences (UAMS) researchers continue studying blood clots after the team made a breakthrough discovery. The team, led by UAMS physiology and cell biology professor Dr. Brian Storrie, discovered that blood clots in puncture wounds form structures similar to skyscrapers. The finding upends the long-held belief that cells fill a puncture wound layer by layer to stop bleeding, known as the core and shell model. Storrie's team includes researchers from the University of KENTUCKY and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

An NIGMS Administrative Supplement for Major Equipment of $248K was awarded to SC TRIMH, COBRE located at Clemson University, for the acquisition of a 3D bioprinter to be used in the Advanced Fabrication and Testing (AFT) Research Core. This grant to Dr. Hai Xiao, Clemson S.L. Bell Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and AFT Core Director and Dr. Hai Yao, SC TRIMH COBRE Director and Clemson Ernest R. Norville Endowed Chair and Professor of Bioengineering, will enhance the research resources capacity to support the projects conducted in the program and network.

South Carolina Translational Research Improving Musculoskeletal Health (SC TRIMH), COBRE located at Clemson University, received a $749,000 supplement from NIH NIGMS to study “SARS-CoV2 sequencing surveillance for Upstate South Carolina.” This project is led by Dr. Delphine Dean, Clemson Ron and Jane Lindsay Family Innovation Professor of Bioengineering, and Dr. Hai Yao, SC TRIMH Director and Clemson Ernest R. Norville Endowed Chair and Professor of Bioengineering.

The University of Nevada, Reno's Team CERBERUS topped a stellar field of eight international robotics teams to win the DARPA Subterranean Challenge and $2 million in prize money.

The competition spanned three years and several locations with four competitions that tested the engineers’ abilities to develop a system of walking and flying robots equipped with multi-modal perception systems, navigation and mapping autonomy, and self-organized networked communications that enable robust and reliable navigation, exploration, mapping, and object search in complex, sensing-degraded, stringent, dynamic and rough underground settings.

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Boise State’s Quantum DNA (qDNA) Research Group received a Phase II renewal grant of $5M from DOE EPSCoR as part of a broader announcement of funded energy-related research projects.

Composed of five research teams that span multiple departments and colleges at Boise State, and involving almost 30 faculty, professional staff and students, the qDNA Research Group is pioneering the use of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as a programmable, self-assembling architecture that organizes light-absorbing dye molecules to achieve quantum entanglement.

Quantum entanglement occurs when the excited state of one molecule in the aggregate cannot be described independent of the excited state of another, and is due to a collective interaction between the molecules.

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Rivers and deltas can release significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. But until recently, climate modelers have had limited information on this process. A team of LSU scientists, in collaboration with Southern University, have accepted the challenge of analyzing this complex carbon export in the largest delta in the United States – the Mississippi River Delta.

To explore how carbon is exported from delta-dominated systems to the coastal ocean, LSU and Southern in partnership with the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium were awarded a $1.5M NASA EPSCoR grant and the Louisiana Board of Regents.

The LSU team is led by Associate Professor Zuo “George” Xue and comprises three additional faculty members from the College of the Coast & Environment: Professor Eurico D’Sa, Associate Professor Kanchan Maiti, and Associate Professor Victor Rivera-Monroy, along with several graduate students. They are tracking the carbon as it moves through the Mississippi River Delta and the Gulf of Mexico coast to see how it affects coastal water quality. In conjunction, the Southern University team — led by Zhu Hua Ning, a professor of forest ecophysiology and tree anatomy — is studying the terrestrial carbon export.

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Soybeans and other legumes interact with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria called rhizobia that are able to convert nitrogen in the air into a form the plant can use to grow and reproduce. Corn and other crops can’t, requiring nitrogen fertilizers to maximize growth and yield — problematic because overapplication or runoff can pollute soil and water.

Marc Libault, a University of Nebraska–Lincoln plant scientist, leads a multi-institution research team seeking to better understand how legumes strike up such a productive partnership with a group of bacteria called rhizobia, which convert atmospheric nitrogen to a chemical form that supports the host plant.

Libault, who is affiliated with Nebraska’s Center for Plant Science Innovation, is working with colleagues from Cornell University, the University of Michigan, Reed College and the National Center for Genome Resources. The work is funded by a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

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Announcing the winners of this year’s Alaska TREND (Technology Research and Development Center) Phase 0 grants. The $10,000 NSF EPSCoR-supported awards go to innovators and companies in the early stages of deploying technologies with a strong technical basis and competitive edge. This year’s winners are:

• MustRs LLC (Fairbanks, AK)
  Founded in 2021, MustRs LLC is an innovative robotics firm based in Alaska with a mission to empower caregivers and improve the lives of care recipients. The core focus of the company is the development and commercialization of robots for senior and disabled care. MustRs LLC targets the two problems in building and using service robots—safety and cost – through the incorporation of an anchorable robot that can perform multiple functions to support caregivers and recipients.
  
• MacKinnon Marine Technologies (MMT) (Anchorage, AK)
  MacKinnon Marine Technologies (MMT) established in 2011 is an Anchorage-based company that builds “AlumaPro” watercraft, consistently considered best-in-class for Search and Rescue, Law Enforcement, and special operations getting them where they need to go and home safely. The AlumaPro operates in diverse environments from Marinas (fire suppression, dewatering, vessel escort), swift and shallow water (rescue, enforcement, commercial), and floodwaters (hidden debris, and strong currents).
  
  Alaska TREND 0 funds will allow MMT to prepare a proposal for the US Navy, in order to make AlumaPro the first unmanned service watercraft of its kind. MMT is integrating emerging technologies into its operating systems with the help of other companies’ systems to offer an unmanned craft with proven AlumaPro capabilities.
  
• PKS Consulting, Inc. (Anchorage, AK)
  PKS Consulting Inc. is an Alaskan small business that specializes in the development of new companies that support the growth and diversity of Alaska’s economy. PKS Consulting Inc. recently received a Phase I SBIR from the EPA for the design of a mobile plastic ocean waste recycling solution. The goal of this project is to convert plastic collected from beach cleanups into recycled plastic lumber. The lumber will be produced and sold locally, providing both local jobs and a local product that is in high demand — construction materials.
  
• GRAYSTAR Pacific Seafood, Ltd. (Anchorage, AK)
  GRAYSTAR Pacific Seafood Ltd is an Alaska corporation, launched in 1985 by Stephen Grabacki. Steve is a Certified Fisheries Professional, with a Master of Science in Fisheries Biology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. GRAYSTAR develops Alaska’s ocean resources to improve human health and life.

SC INBRE is pleased to announce that a team of South Carolina biomedical researchers has received an NIH NIGMS collaboration award. This goal of this one-year funding opportunity is to encourage collaborations between IDeA programs investigators while providing students a broad continuum of research opportunities. The team of Dr. Austin Shull from Presbyterian College and Dr. Antonis Kourtidis from the Medical University of South Carolina were awarded approx. $120,000 for their project. Dr. Shull is a current recipient of an SC INBRE Developmental Research Project Program (DRP) award; Dr. Kourtidis is a member of CDLD [Center for Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Digestive and Liver Disease]. This is the third consecutive year NIH NIGMS has offered collaborative awards and the third consecutive team from South Carolina to have received one.

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North Dakota State University (NDSU) Department of Plant Sciences research scientist Filipe Matias is part of a multi-state research group that has been awarded a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant to study the use of unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) for genome to phenome agricultural production research.

The Agricultural Genome to Phenome Initiative (AG2PI) is a three-year grant with the goal of connecting interdisciplinary crop and livestock scientists who are researching the effects of genotype and environmental influences on important agricultural phenotypes. Short-term (six months to a year) seed grants to identify research needs and share opportunities are awarded each year of the grant in three rounds. The research team including Matias received a first-year seed grant titled “Empowering High-Throughput Phenotyping using Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles.”

Learn more about the grant at the AG2PI website