Science research roundup: July and August 2020

Researchers in Arts & Sciences recently received awards from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Gary Patti, the Michael and Tana Powell Professor of Chemistry, has received grants totaling $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research on metabolic pathways and their connection with diseases like COVID-19. Staff scientists Dhanalakshmi Anbukumar and Miriam Sindelar, working with Patti in the Department of Chemistry, are spearheading the project titled “Leveraging a Metabolomics Resource for Model Organisms to Understand COVID-19 Pathogenesis.” Read more.

Patti also won $237,814 from the NIH in support of object-oriented data analysis for untargeted metabolomics.

Bradley Jolliff, Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, has been awarded the 2020 Eugene Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal by NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). Named after American geologist Eugene Shoemaker, one of the founders of planetary science, the award recognizes Jolliff’s significant contributions to planetary science throughout his career. Read more.

Kevin Moeller, professor of chemistry, recently received a $1,191,124 grant from the National Science Foundation. The award supports Moeller’s work with the collaborative Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry.

Erik Henriksen, assistant professor of physics, has been awarded an $849,582 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation for research on cyclotron resonance spectroscopy of interacting fermions. During the five-year term of the award, Henriksen’s group will explore many-particle physics in graphene and other atomically thin materials. Read more.

Sophia Hayes, professor of chemistry, won a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support research titled “Optically Pumped NMR Enhancements Enable Studies of Semiconductor Interfaces.”

Haijun Liu, research scientist in the Department of Chemistry, received a $450,000 award from the U.S. Department of Energy to support study of the molecular mechanism of action of the cyanobacterial orange carotenoid protein.

John-Stephen Taylor, professor of chemistry, was awarded $450,000 by the National Science Foundation for a project titled “DNA Photoproducts as Intrinsic Probes of Non-B DNA Conformations.”

Li Yang, professor of physics, won $421,080 from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research in support of a project titled “Nonlinear Infrared Light-Matter Interactions of Topological Quantum Materials.”

Jonathan Barnes, assistant professor of chemistry, was selected as one of 15 Young Investigators this year by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (ACS PMSE). The selection recognizes Barnes’ excellence in polymer research and marks him as an emerging leader in the field. Read more.

Saori Pastore, assistant professor of physics, won $399,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science to support “Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations of Lepton-Nucleus Interactions.” Read more.

Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, research associate professor of physics, was awarded $283,335 from NASA for a project titled “Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy of Laboratory Space Weathered Physics.”

Bronwen Konecky, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, won $197,100 from the National Science Foundation for collaborative research on neotropical climate and environmental change over 400ka of glacial-interglacial cycles from Lake Petén Itzá.

Douglas Wiens, Robert S. Brooking Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, won a $195,246 grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project titled “Variation of Incoming Plate Hydration and Faulting Along the Alaska Subduction Zone.”

Victoria May, executive director of the Institute for School Partnership, was awarded $40,000 by the Express Scripts Foundation to support the institute’s STEMpact program and related education initiatives.

Laura Escobar Vega, assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, won $15,400 from the National Science Foundation for a research school on geometric methods in combinatorics.

Elizabeth Mueller, a graduate student in Petra Levin’s lab in the Department of Biology, won the Nat L. Sternberg Thesis Prize. The award recognizes outstanding PhD work in the field of bacterial molecular biology.

Did we miss something? Contact Shawn Ballard, communications specialist in Arts & Sciences.