USM College of Arts and Sciences Grants Awarded to Faculty, Students
Tue, 12/14/2021 - 04:13pm | By: Ivonne Kawas
The University of 51逗奶 Mississippi (USM) College of Arts and Sciences has awarded a total of $35k in grants to faculty and students to support research, scholarship and creative activities.
To contribute to the scholarly mission of the University, the funds provided aim to propel faculty and graduate students forward in their academic endeavors. The Research Seed Grants and Creative and Scholarly Activity Awards help faculty to prepare projects, as well as research proposals that will be possibly funded by external agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Travel Awards bestowed to both faculty and graduate students, provide financial support, so they can attend major national or international conferences.
鈥淲e had over 60 applications submitted, which is the largest round of applications we have had since the program began in 2019,鈥� said Dr. Janet Donaldson, associate dean for research and graduate education in the College of Arts and Sciences. 鈥淭his initiative increases the visibility of 51逗奶 Miss research and creative activities. It allows faculty and students to build rapport with professionals from around the world, as they travel to present as experts in their fields and engage in essential networking opportunities.鈥�
Research Seed Grant recipients include:
Dr. Leslie Acton
Assistant Professor, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Title: Preliminary Understanding of Regional Ocean and Coastal Governance in the Gulf of Mexico
Research Activity: Collect preliminary data investigating how coastal and ocean policies and governance systems engage with the complex and cumulative impacts of environmental disasters and change in northern Gulf Coast communities.
Dr. Patrick Biber
Associate Professor, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Title: Seasonal and Annual Dynamics in Seagrass Beds of the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve
Research Activity: Conduct surveys of seagrass distribution and condition in the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve to better understand and predict seagrass status and trends in coastal areas.
Dr. Zachary Darnell
Associate Professor, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Title: Using Passive Acoustics to Quantify a Regional Biodiversity Hotspot
Research Activity: Use passive acoustic techniques to characterize and quantify biodiversity at multiple trophic levels within a regional biodiversity hotspot, the seagrass beds of the Chandeleur Islands, La.
Dr. Huiquing Zhu
Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Title: Electromyometrial Imaging Model (EMMI)
Research Activity: To obtain a more accurate results of uterine electrical activation patterns, a better EMMI model needs to be developed, while a more suitable numerical method is also required for successfully capturing multi-scale information of the torso inhomogeneity. In this research, Dr. Zhu鈥檚 team will first generalize the existing EMMI model to a complex torso volume conductor, and then propose a novel numerical method, i.e., the multiscale radial basis functions generated finite difference method (RBF-FD), for solving such a partial differential equation system that dominates inverse problem of the EMMI model.
Creative and Scholarly Activity Award recipients include:
Dr. Davin Wallace
Associate Professor, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Title: Reconstructing Intense Hurricane Impacts in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) using the Geologic Record
Creative or Scholarly Activity: Previously published paleo hurricane sites have focused on the northern and eastern GoM, so there is a notable gap along the central Texas coast. Adding investigations from this key area will allow his team to compare long-term intense hurricane impact trends across the entire GoM, elucidating both variability and response to past climatic change, thereby providing important data upon which to better predict future scenarios.
Dr. Shane Wood
Assistant Professor, School of Humanities
Title: Rhet/Comp Digital Sound Collection
Creative or Scholarly Activity: This project aims to build a digital clearinghouse 鈥揜het/Comp Digital Sound Collection鈥搕hat provides a multimodal experience for teachers, researchers, and students to use. The purpose of the Rhet/Comp Digital Sound Collection is to create audio-texts, books, passage readings, and pedagogical reflections that will serve as a resource for the larger writing studies community including teachers, students, and researchers.
Faculty Travel Award recipients include:
Dr. Diana Bernstein
Assistant Professor, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Annual Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii
Chairing Session: OC18 Marine Climate Extremes: PART 2 Regional Downscaling & Climate Projections
Session: This session will feature presentations on modeling and observational efforts that advance the understanding of regional downscaling of scale climate variability and change, and their impact on the frequency and persistence of extreme events in a coastal setting.
Dr. Joshua Bernstein
Assistant Professor, School of Humanities
Conference: The Association of Writers & Writing Programs Annual Conference in Philadelphia, Pa.
Chairing Panel: The Revolution Will Be Serialized: Literary Journals and Political Movements
Session: 鈥淭he literary history of the thirties,鈥� George Orwell warned in 1940, 鈥渟eems to justify the opinion that a writer does well to keep out of politics.鈥� Yet 80 years later, most literary journals, like most presses and institutions, have felt the need to confront political realities, including assaults on democracy, police brutality, sexual abuse, and more. Are there risks in embracing these aims? What is the effect on the art they produce? Can journals remain relevant without becoming dogmatic?
Dr. Laura Gulledge
Assistant Professor, School of Criminal Justice, Forensic Science, and Security
Conference: American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting in Chicago, Il.
Title: Three Big Steps: Creating a Repository for Juvenile Arrest Data in Mississippi
Research: This research, co-authored with Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Dr. Charles Scheer, examines the capacity in the state of Mississippi to collect and share cross-jurisdictional data regarding juvenile arrests. A recent Bureau of Justice Statistics grant awarded to Drs. Scheer and Gulledge will focus on the process by which Mississippi鈥檚 juvenile justice system can progress towards statewide implementation of a juvenile data repository.
Dr. James Lambers
Professor, School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Conference: 12th IMACS International Conference on Nonlinear Evolution Equations and Wave Phenomena: Computation and Theory in Athens, Ga.
Title: Krylov Subspace Spectral Methods for Problems in Acoustics
Research: This talk provides an overview of ongoing work with the Acoustics Branch of the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory at NASA Stennis Space Center. This work includes (1) the use of techniques for approximating bilinear and quadratic forms involving matrix functions to measure the sensitivity of simulation results, (2) the application of Krylov Subspace Spectral (KSS) Methods to the parabolic equation for acoustic pressure in oceans, and (3) KSS methods for wave propagation problems in the atmosphere, featuring dusty gases and shock waves.
Dr. Kristina Mojica
Assistant Professor, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Annual Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii
Title: Accumulation of Phytoplankton Biomass Regulated by the Balance Between Division and Loss
Research: For nearly a century, phytoplankton spring blooms have largely been explained in the context of abiotic factors regulating cellular division rates (e.g., mixed-layer light levels). However, the accumulation of new phytoplankton biomass represents a mismatch between phytoplankton division and mortality rates. The balance between division and loss, therefore, has important implications for marine food webs and biogeochemical cycles.
Title: Pulsing the Biological Pump in the Oligotrophic GoM: A Model for Atmospheric Carbon Capture through the Oceanic Reclamation of Nutrients
Research: This research hypothesizes a novel nutrient-pulse mechanism for increasing the efficiency of the natural marine biological pump and tests it using an analytical model of a theoretical experiment performed in the GoM.
Dr. Charlie Scheer
Associate Professor, School of Criminal Justice, Forensic Science, and Security
Conference:
Title: The Police Retention and Career Perceptions Study
Research: A multi-site national study of police officer perceptions of their careers, turnover intention, and workplace climate conducted by Dr. Scheer and Dr. Michael Rossler from Illinois State University. Of the eight participating sites visited, Portland, Ore. Police Bureau offered additional focus due to the impact of city-wide civil disturbances throughout 2020 which had a deep impact upon the city鈥檚 police officers and political infrastructure. A separate report from the Police Retention and Career Perceptions Study technical report will be forthcoming which focuses on results from the Portland survey.
Dr. Don Yee
Professor, School of Biological, Environmental, and Earth Sciences
Conference: The 88th Annual meeting of the America Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville, Fl.
Title: Army of Darkness: Quantifying Global Mosquito-pathogen Interactions
Research: Mosquito species relevant to human health have not been fully quantified, posing challenges in understanding how resilient mosquito vector-pathogen networks are to targeted eradication of known vectors. Dr. Yee, for the first time, will show how many vectors are implicated in causing human disease. In addition, a network analysis will reveal broad associations among clusters of pathogens and mosquito species. Finally, this approach will allow for a determination of the robustness of mosquito-pathogen associations, the results of which have strong implications for management and control of important vectors.
Katherine Gaffney
Instructor, School of Humanities
Conference: Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, Tenn.
Creative Activity: Gaffney鈥檚 new book of poetry seeks to investigate mothers in war spaces using her own family and other historical artifacts. Her family was part of the Dutch resistance, and yet her grandmother didn鈥檛 join the resistance until she became a mother鈥攖he book is interested in investigating the inherent tension between nurturing and defiance, safety and risk.
Graduate Student Travel Award recipients include:
Student Group Award, School of Communication including: Tawfiq Abdullah, Nazanin Bani Amerian, Reham Bohamad, Kevin Bryant, Daleana Phillips, and Aleesha Smith.
Conference: The NCA 107th Annual Convention in Seattle, Wash.
Title: The Fear Element of Political Campaigning: A Study of a Presidential Election
Brandy Armstrong, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Annual Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii
Title: Modeling the Influence of Freshwater Sources on the Mississippi Sound and Bight During the 2019 Bonnet Carr茅 Spillway Opening
Jaylen Davis, School of Polymer Science and Engineering
Conference: The American Chemical Society National Merton and Exposition 2022
Title: Investigation of Benzoxazine Vitrimers Based on Dynamic Transesterification Exchange
Austin Draper, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: 51逗奶 Division of the American Fisheries Society meeting in Charleston, S.C.
Title: The Habitat Usage Patterns of Gulf Sturgeon in the Mississippi
Austin Hannon, School of Music
Conference: Florida Music Educators Association Conference in Tallahassee, Fl.
Title: Factors Contributing to How Secondary LGBTQ+ Music Educators Navigate their Sexual Orientation in 51逗奶 K-12 Settings
Harpreet Kaur, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Annual Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii
Title: The Occurrence of Tidal Hybrid Kelvin Edge Waves in the Global Ocean
Ann McPhail, School of Music
Conference: The NATS 51逗奶 Region Conference
Creative Activity: Students will be auditioning by presenting both classical and music theatre songs in front of panel of judges.
Rachel Mugge, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Annual Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii
Title: Microbial Ecology of Built Seafloor Habitats
Thanapol Phousat, School of Music
Conference: The Southeast Regional Tuba-Euphonium Conference at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Ga.
Creative Activity: Artist Euphonium Solo Music Competition
Zachary Lane, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) Conference in Phoenix, Az.
Title: Physiological Condition, and Not Competitive Ability, is the Key Difference Between Mating and Non-Mating Male Fiddler Crabs Leptuca Pugilator in a Florida Population
Kacey Lange, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Annual Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii
Title: Characterizing Marine Microbes using Nanolive Measurements of Refractive Index
Jhinuk Saha, School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Conference: Biophysical Society Annual Meeting 2022 in San Francisco, Ca.
Title: Effects of Vesicular Membrane Composition On Amyloid-Beta Oligomerization
Katherine Santiago, School of Criminal Justice
Conference: The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Annual Conference in Las Vegas, Nev.
Title: Cops on Campus: Higher Education for Law Enforcement Officers
Oledeji Siyanbola, School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Conference: The Annual Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii
Title: High Frequency Boundary Forcing of Regional Simulations of the US West Coast
Danielle Watson, School of Music
Conference: The NATS 51逗奶 Region Conference
Title: Students will be auditioning by presenting both classical and music theatre songs in front of panel of judges.