N.C. A&T researchers go airborne to study the unexplored complexities of winter air pollution

N.C. A&T researchers on the wintertime pollution study, left to right: Dr. Marc Fiddler, Steven G. Blanco Garcia, and Jaime Green

Members of the N.C. A&T Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Group are working with researchers from 14 other institutions this winter to investigate the little-known dynamics of wintertime air pollution.

The project is the Wintertime INvestigation of Transport, Emissions, and Reactivity (WINTER) campaign in the Mid-Atlantic Region. It will provide detailed, aircraft-based measurements to explore how chemical processes in the atmosphere vary by season.

Pollution occurs throughout the year, but the chemistry that determines the impact of pollution in the winter has been largely unexplored. Most research has focused on warmer seasons.

In winter, for example, short-lived pollutants like sulfur dioxide dissipate more slowly, so they affect wider areas downwind from the source of the pollution. Sulfur dioxide can cause respiratory problems and can turn into acid rain.

“Levels of oxidant pollution, such as ozone, are smaller in the winter due to decreased sunlight and emissions from plants,” said Dr. Marc Fiddler, an A&T research chemist working on the project.  “These conditions produce a different and much more uncertain picture of what happens to sulfur dioxide in the winter.”

Energy & Environmental Systems weekly seminars

This spring, the Department of Energy and Environmental Systems will hold weekly seminars conducted by its doctoral students. All seminars will be held on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to noon. The location will vary between Fort IRC Room 410 and Gibbs 307.

The first seminar is this Thursday, Jan. 29, in Gibbs 307.

The seminars will cover a broad range of disciplines and topics, including carbon sequestration modeling, smart grid systems, sustainability in higher education, natural products’ immunotherapy effects on cancer, and topics relating to the NSF CREST Bioenergy Center and NSF Engineering Research Center for Revolutionizing Metallic Biomaterials.

Dates and topics for the entire series follow the jump.

NSF official here Monday to speak to researchers

NSF official Sylvia James

Dr. Sylvia James, Director for the National Science Foundation’s Human Resource Development Division (HRD), will speak at an open forum on Monday, October 6, 10-11:30 a.m. in the General Classroom Building, Room 218.

Dr. James will focus on HRD’s strategies on broadening the participation of underrepresented students through institutional transformations within higher education.

As chief administrator, she has oversight over HRD, which is in the Directorate of Education and Human Resource (EHR). She manages the LS-AMP, HBCU-UP, CREST, AGEP, and ADVANCE programs, among others. EHR’s mission is to achieve excellence in U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics education at all levels.

Welcome back! Here’s a summer news recap: Hypoallergenic peanuts, EPICS, NC TraCS & more

To all who were gone over the summer, welcome back. Here’s a rundown of the top research-related news at A&T since May:

• Advisory for travelers who have been to West Africa, August 15

• New catalog of Piedmont Triad’s aerospace assets
  features N.C. A&T and JSNN research capabilities, August 13

• Save the date — An EPICS Workshop at N.C. A&T:
  Engineering Projects in Community Service, August 5

• Translational and clinical sciences researchers:
  Hold Wednesday Oct. 1 for NC TraCS open house, July 25

• Latest trend seen in comments from NSF reviewers:
  Give more specifics on how mentoring is assessed, June 24

• Aggieland is part of a #nationofmakers, June 18

• Eco-Core: N.C. A&T composite material for the Navy
  provides a productive use for problematic coal ash, June 18

• Hypoallergenic peanuts developed by N.C. A&T
  licensed for use in food products, immunotherapy, June 10

• NIH seeks input on racial disparities in R01 grants, June 6

• A&T researcher’s work on COPD among ag workers
  wins support from NC TraCS program for scholars, May 19

• A&T and UNC-CH researchers launch investigation
  into triple-negative breast cancer’s link to viral RNA, May 6

Faculty members, department chairs, and deans: We want to write about your research, scholarly and creative activity!  Let us know about it; click here for email.

After spending a year with the NSF, Dr. Goins offers a few words from the front lines on grant proposals

UPDATE (August 26): Registration has reached capacity and is now closed.

WHAT: A grant proposal development event, “NSF Funding Opportunities: A Few Words from the Front Lines – Highly Competitive Proposals and the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education.”

PRESENTER: Dr. Gregory Goins, Associate Professor of Biology. He just returned from a one-year appointment at NSF as the division’s program director.

WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday, September 10, noon to 1:30 p.m., Fort IRC, Room 410.

DETAILS: This workshop will focus on the latest news, programs and funding from NSF’s Division of Undergraduate Education with special focus on the new Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, which replaced the former TUES, WIDER and STEP programs.

REGISTRATION: Registration has reached capacity and is now closed.

Latest trend seen in comments from NSF reviewers: Give more specifics on how mentoring is assessed

Principal investigators, take note: Your next NSF proposal may need considerably more detail on mentoring than you’ve provided before.

Blogger Female Science Professor spotted the trend in proposals recently rejected by NSF. From Inside Higher Ed:

“Female Science Professor wrote that it’s no longer ‘enough to have a record of success advising grad students, undergrads, and postdocs in research — you have to understand and explain your advising techniques and you have to have a plan for assessing and improving.’

“She said that even data related to student degrees, publications, conference publications and employment upon graduation weren’t ‘sufficient’ for some reviewers.

“ ‘They want something different,’ she said. ‘Apparently, unless you change something, you are not improving and therefore are not being transformative, or something.’”

Consider yourself warned. The whole piece is here. The original item from the very interesting Female Science Professor blog is here.

Clean-energy developer Adewuyi, other faculty honored with 2014 Research Excellence Awards

A nationally recognized pioneer in clean-energy development has been named Senior Researcher of the Year at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

Over a career of more than 25 years, Dr. Yusuf “Debo” Adewuyi has skillfully fused chemical engineering and environmental science to explore new dimensions of energy production, including the use of nanoscale materials and sound-wave technology for pollution control.

Dr. Adewuyi is one of five individual researchers and one research team selected this year for N.C. A&T’s highest research honor, the Research Excellence Awards. In addition to Dr. Adewuyi, the honorees are:

• Dr. Justin Zhan, Department of Computer Science, Outstanding Junior Researcher;
• Dr. Stephanie Kelly, Department of Business Education, and Dr. Lifeng Zhang, Department of Nanoengineering at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, co-winners of the Rookie of the Year award;
• Dr. Salil Desai, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Intellectual Property Award; and
• The NSF CREST Bioenergy Center, Interdisciplinary Team Award.

They were chosen from a field consisting of faculty members selected as researchers of the year by their colleges and schools. The winners and nominees will be honored Friday April 11 at the annual Celebration of Faculty Excellence.

Details on the winners follow the jump.

Econ students to get a new kind of help with math

Dr. Scott Simkins, director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at N.C. A&T

For any student who has struggled with getting the math to come out right in economics courses, help is on the way from N.C. A&T.

Dr. Scott Simkins, director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at N.C. A&T, has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $247,901 to develop online tools that students can use to improve their math skills in economics courses.

The project, “The Math You Need, When You Need It: Modular Student Resources to Promote Successful Integration of Quantitative Concepts in Introductory Economics Courses,” is led by Simkins, with co-investigators Dr. Mark H. Maier of Glendale Community College, Glendale, California, and Dr. Jeffrey Sarbaum of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

This NSF grant is the fourth in a series that Dr. Simkins has been awarded since 2000, totaling more than $1 million.  Simkins and Maier have collaborated on each of the projects, which focus on the development, implementation, and sharing of innovations in economics.  Much of their work has focused on adapting teaching innovations originally developed in other disciplines for use in introductory economics courses. 

N.C. A&T researchers generating headlines

This week’s two major announcements are producing positive news coverage for research at N.C. A&T.

News 14 Carolina covered  the announcement of the Engineering Research Center collaborating with InCube Labs to commercialize its metallic biomaterials technology.

Click on the photo to go to the News 14 Carolina report

The Business Journal was all over that story as well.

“Scientists at N.C. A&T and ERC partners such as the University of Pittsburgh and University of Cincinnati are developing new materials, primarily magnesium alloys, designed to adapt to the human body and grow after implantation without having to be refitted, and then later safely absorbed into the bloodstream without ill effects. That could change the way that children born with birth defects, injured soldiers and others with major bone damage are treated.

“There are myriad possible uses for such materials, and the job of InCube Labs will be to identify which have the best potential to be translated into practical products quickly. InCube was founded by Mir Imran, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has founded more than 20 life-science companies and holds more than 200 patents.”

And the editorial page of The News & Observer in Raleigh published an editorial, “Huge grant spotlights how universities benefit state’s economy,” about the $54.6 million clinical and translational science project to be conducted by UNC-CH, A&T, and RTI International, and a similar award to Duke. They hope the awards send a message to North Carolina’s governor:

“Let’s hope those Republican legislators and Gov. Pat McCrory, who have made an issue of how universities should focus on training people for jobs instead of educating them in, say, arts and literature, take note of what’s going on here. Universities do train people for the workforce, but they’re also about ideas, about opening minds, about exploring new horizons.”

Engineering Research Center gains key collaborator for commercializing its revolutionary technology

Mir Imran, right, InCube Labs founder and CEO, tours one of the Engineering Research Center labs at N.C. A&T

The NSF Engineering Center for Revolutionizing Metallic Biomaterials is introducing a significant new collaborator today.  Executives of InCube Labs of San Jose are at N.C. A&T  to sign an agreement to work together on bringing the ERC’s technology to the medical marketplace.

InCube takes basic biomedical technology and develops medical applications that physicians can use to improve patient outcomes. InCube has spun off more than 20 companies that produce implantable devices, drug delivery combinations, and interventional devices and use novel biomaterials. That background positions it well for implementing the ERC’s novel magnesium alloys and other technology for implantable, bioresorbable medical devices.

Significance of the agreement

Dr. Leon Esterowitz of the National Science Foundation says InCube’s commercialization expertise addresses a critical gap in the way biomedical technology is developed today. Dr. Esterowitz is the NSF program director working with the ERC.

“Translating knowledge from biomedical science into clinical applications has been compared to crossing a ‘valley of death’ because of the many issues that separate the scientist at the research bench from the M.D. at the bedside,” Esterowitz says.

“Forty years ago basic and clinical research were linked in institutions such as NIH. Medical research was largely done by physician-scientists who also treated patients. That changed with the explosion of molecular biology in the 1970s. Clinical and basic research started to separate, and biomedical research departments emerged as a new discipline.