Success Stories

The Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC) announced that it has named Jennifer Fowler as the new director of the Arkansas National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). She will replace Steve Stanley, who recently retired from the position.

Fowler currently serves as the director of Education, Outreach, and Diversity for EPSCoR where she implemented a variety of programs and activities to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In this role, she was elected to a national council for her profession by the national EPSCoR community and served as an at-large member before being elected chair.

Aquagga, Inc., an EPSCoR-supported UAF spin-out company recently won first place in the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Innovative Ways to Destroy PFAS Challenge.” The team won $40,000 and the opportunity to further develop a process that combines high temperatures, high pressure and oxygen to dispose of PFAS-contaminated-waste. Aquagga received startup funding from EPSCoR via the Alaska Technology R&D Center.

This challenge is focused on identifying ways to destroy PFAS in concentrated aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) because of its high concentration of PFAS and widespread use to fight fires. The challenge sought detailed plans for non-thermal technologies that showed the potential to destroy at least 99 percent of PFAS in unused AFFF – without creating harmful byproducts and using temperatures significantly lower than temperatures required for incineration.

The first place and two second place challenge winners will now have the opportunity to submit their winning design concepts to DoD’s SERDP/ESTCP programs for further testing.

An adjuvant developed with funding from the National Institutes of Health has contributed to the success of the highly efficacious COVAXIN COVID-19 vaccine, which roughly 25 million people have received to date in India and elsewhere. Adjuvants are substances formulated as part of a vaccine to boost immune responses and enhance a vaccine’s effectiveness. COVAXIN was developed and is manufactured in India, which is currently suffering a devastating health crisis due to COVID-19.

The adjuvant used in COVAXIN, Alhydroxiquim-II, was discovered and tested in the laboratory by the biotech company ViroVax LLC of Lawrence, Kansas with support exclusively from the NIAID Adjuvant Development Program. The adjuvant comprises a small molecule attached in a unique way to Alhydrogel, a substance frequently called alum that is the most commonly used adjuvant in vaccines for people. Alhydroxiquim-II travels to lymph nodes, where the small molecule detaches from alum and activates two cellular receptors. These receptors, TLR7 and TLR8, play a vital role in the immune response to viruses. Alhydroxiquim-II is the first adjuvant in an authorized vaccine against an infectious disease to activate TLR7 and TLR8. In addition, the alum in Alhydroxiquim-II stimulates the immune system to search for an invading pathogen.

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Puerto Rico INBRE Principal Investigator Dr. José Rodríguez-Medina has been elected as the new South-Eastern INBRE National Association of IDeA Principal Investigators (NAIPI) National Committee Member.

NAIPI aims to protect and promote the IDeA programs. It fosters interactions, promotes resource sharing, enhances the national visibility of the INBREs, COBREs, and CTRs, develops consensus on priorities, identifies and disseminates best practices, identifies opportunities and develops strategies.

Nebraska gains five-year, $20 million funding from NSF

EQUATE project will conduct quantum materials research and outreach

On May 24, a new research collaboration was announced for Nebraska. With National Science Foundation (NSF) funding starting June 1 for five years totaling $20 million, the Emergent Quantum Materials and Technologies (“EQUATE”) group will study quantum properties of materials—potentially advancing technology, medical applications, national security, and more.

The EQUATE project is funded though NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and will involve more than 20 scientists—including physicists, chemists, and engineers—at six Nebraska colleges and universities: University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Creighton University, Nebraska Indian Community College, and Little Priest Tribal College.

Read more about the new EQUATE award

Dr. Jennifer Honeycutt has returned to Maine as an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Bowdoin College and is a newly-funded INBRE investigator. As an undergraduate student at Colby College, she began her research career in the neuroscience lab of former INBRE Project Leader Melissa Glenn, PhD.

The first in her family to attend college, Dr. Honeycutt graduated from Colby in 2010 and subsequently earned her PhD in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Connecticut.

Read more about Dr. Honeycutt

Research partially funded by the MDI Biological Laboratory IDeA COBRE Comparative Biology of Tissue Repair, Regeneration, and Aging was featured as the cover of Developmental Dynamics.

The axolotl: a classical and robust model of tissue regeneration. From: Gene and transgenics nomenclature for the laboratory axolotl, Ambystoma mexicanum; Sergej Nowoshilow, Ji-Feng Fei, S. Randal Voss, Elly M. Tanaka, Prayag Murawala; (Photo credit: IMP-IMBA Graphics Department)

ABSTRACT: The laboratory axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is widely used in biological research. Recent advancements in genetic and molecular toolkits are greatly accelerating the work using axolotl, especially in the area of tissue regeneration. At this juncture, there is a critical need to establish gene and transgenic nomenclature to ensure uniformity in axolotl research. Here, we propose guidelines for genetic nomenclature when working with the axolotl.

Read the research article

July 1, 2020 marked the first day of a five-year statewide collaborative research project, “Data Analytics that are Robust and Trusted: From Smart Curation to Socially Aware Decision Making” (DART). This project will investigate key aspects of three barriers to practical application and acceptance of modern data analytics. Those three barriers are the management of big data, the security or privacy of big data, and interpretability of the models used to understand big data.

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR) at $20M and included a $4M cash match from the State. The goal of the NSF EPSCoR program is to build research infrastructure and competitiveness among states that receive a small overall percentage of NSF grants. EPSCoR was created in 1979 at NSF and expanded over the following years to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Arkansas has successfully competed for NSF EPSCoR Track-1 grants for decades. These grants have purchased major equipment and instruments (like a 3d printer that prints at nanoscale), dramatically improved the state’s cyberinfrastructure, and supported hundreds of scientific researchers who in turn have published hundreds of scientific papers and secured millions more in research funding.

Visit DART website

Researchers with the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) have developed a disinfectant spray that can last for up to 50 touches before it needs to be reapplied.

The long-lasting spray was created using plant-based nanotechnology and contains a green dye that, when it fades, will show another application is needed.

“If it’s green, it’s clean,” said John Moore, a UA doctoral student in chemical engineering and part of the team researching the spray. Moore is also CEO of Fayetteville-based Nanocellutions, established in April by the team, including Jamie Hestekin, Peter Crooks and Soma Shekar Dachavaram. Hestekin is a professor of chemical engineering at the UA, and Crooks and Dachavaram are with UAMS.

Work that led to the development of the spray started in 2015 as part of a $20 million National Science Foundation Track 1 project led by Min Zou, mechanical engineering professor, and Steve Stanley of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.

Read the full story from TB&P here.

Due to efforts of the U.S. Virgin Islands' community and partnerships between fishermen and scientists, we are beginning to see that the Nassau grouper, currently listed as commercially extinct, is coming back from the brink. Dr. Rick Nemeth (UVI researcher), Dan Mele (Masters in Marine and Environmental Science student at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI)), the National Science Foundation (NSF), VI-EPSCoR, and UVI Center for Marine and Environmental Studies helped make this mini-documentary about conservation efforts regarding the Nassau grouper possible!

Read more about USVI EPSCoR’s Nassau Grouper Project here.