West Virginia University has been awarded nearly $2 million in grants this year for research initiatives from the West Virginia Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (WVEPSCoR).
University faculty members Julio F. Davalos, Arun Ross and Ever Barbero, all from the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, and Maura McLaughlin from the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, were recent recipients of 2007 Research Challenge Grants (RCG).
The awards will provide seed money for new research endeavors at WVU . Grants can be renewed for up to five years, providing researchers demonstrate they are making progress each year. Each grant is worth $1-2 million over the five-year period.
The four RCG awards provide significant opportunities for clusters of faculty at WVU to develop programs of excellence in science and technology that will be better positioned to compete for federal agency funding,said Curt Peterson, WVU associate vice president for research and economic development.The awards will help to further develop their intellectual property and innovative research into emerging new business opportunities important to economic development in West Virginia.
In addition, it is anticipated that some of these grants will provide a springboard for the research clusters to compete for national research centers supported by a federal agency over a sustained period of time,he noted.Thus, these awards are contributing to the growth of the research enterprise at WVU that is expected to increase prosperity in the state.
The research projects at WVU to be funded by the grants are:
Center for Astrophysics
McLaughlin and co-principal investigator Duncan Lorimer, both assistant professors in the Department of Physics, will receive $490,730 for the creation of a Center for Astrophysics at WVU . Much of their work will make use of world-class facilities, in particular the Green Bank Telescope, at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, W.Va.
The researchers currently study pulsars, exotic stars which have a wide range of applications from testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity to probing the interstellar medium of the galaxy.
Grant funds will be used to acquire new telescope hardware and greater computing power, as well as to hire additional personnel, including a senior research fellow and another astrophysics faculty member specializing in a different field of astrophysics.
We are very excited as it will really allow us to get the new Center for Astrophysics off the ground,McLaughlin said.This will greatly expand the breadth of the Department of Physics over the next few years.
She added,Our searches with the Green Bank Telescope should allow us to find new pulsars which offer unique and exciting physics applications. We hope to discover the first pulsars in other galaxies and the first pulsar and black hole binary system. This research will strengthen the physics program and attract talented graduate students to WVU through our partnership with the NRAO .
Center for Transportation Security and Infrastructure Innovations
A multidisciplinary and multi-university team of researchers, led by Davalos, WVU Benedum Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will use its WVEPSCoR grant of $500,000 for research aimed at enhancing and upgrading transportation infrastructure in the United States and making it more secure against potential terrorist attacks.
The research will also contribute to graduate education, technology transfer, workforce training and economic development in the state.
The grant will be used to help establish the Center for Transportation Security and Infrastructure Innovations, with participation by faculty from WVU and Marshall University, and support by several collaborating state and national industries, associations, agencies, national labs and centers.
Terrorist attacks worldwide have shown the devastating effects that conventional and improvised explosives and weapons can have on infrastructure facilities, such as checkpoints, bridges, dams, tunnels and others,Davalos said.There are no effective large-scale systems for protecting these types of facilities.
One of the first goals of the center will be to develop innovative and cost-effective protective panels for ballistic and blast threats against civilian and military facilities, using a prototype particle-filled, fiber-reinforced polymer sandwich innovation developed by the researchers and their industrial collaborators.
A second objective is to develop innovations that will assist in upgrading the nations aging transportation infrastructure through the use of advanced assessment methods and retrofit technologies, materials, sensor technologies and instrumentation, as well as new systems and smart structures.
In addition to Davalos, WVU faculty members involved in the project include, from Civil and Environmental Engineering: Karl Barth, associate professor; Chunfu Lin, research faculty; David Martinelli, professor and chair; and Indrajit Ray, research assistant professor. Others involved from WVU are Elemer Lang, associate professor of wood science; and Wu Zhang, research assistant professor from the Department of Chemical Engineering. Barbero, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is also involved in the project.
Marshall University faculty members working with the project are Richard Begley, associate director of the Nick J. Rahall Appalachian Transportation Institute, and Wael Zatar, associate professor of engineering.
The support from WVEPSCoR will assist us in bringing together researchers from different disciplines to carry out cutting-edge research that will address the worldwide pressing needs for infrastructure security and innovations,Davalos said.
Energy Materials Science and Engineering Program
Barbero received $499,840 for the establishment of an Energy Materials Science and Engineering Program at WVU .
Todays global energy challenges make this a critical area of investigation,Barbero said.Our aim is to develop improved materials to enhance the efficiency of energy generation and usage.
The research is very much a team effort, Barbero said, involving several faculty members with expertise in materials science, both from the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources and from the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.
Co-principal investigators on the grant include Darran Cairns, Xingbo Liu and Nick Wu, all assistant professors of mechanical and aerospace engineering; and Martina Bachlechner, assistant professor of physics. Many other faculty members are also involved.
The research group is developing energy efficient materials for everything from fuel cells to turbines, batteries, window coatings, insulation and more. The WVEPSCoR grant will enable WVU to hire additional faculty in this area and to build the research infrastructure needed to build a nationally recognized program in energy materials.
Our objective is to develop a self-sustaining research and graduate education program in energy materials and to work toward the establishment of a National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC),said Barbero.Industry support, intellectual property development and technology transfer activities will complement our efforts.
Information Fusion Networks for Intelligence and Security
As society becomes more complex and technology more sophisticated, governments, businesses and organizations are collecting more and more data from a variety of sources, with the aim of enhancing intelligence and security.
However, comprehensive systems have not been developed for storing, analyzing and using the massive amounts of data that are being collected from multiple sources.
A diverse set of WVU researchers, led by Ross, an assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, has received a WVEPSCoR grant for $470,000 to address this problem. National security is a key area of concern for this research effort.
In addition to Ross, WVU faculty members involved in this project are Donald Adjeroh and Elaine Eschen, both associate professors of computer science and electrical engineering; Edgar Fuller, assistant professor of mathematics; Cun-Quang Zang, associate professor of mathematics; Robert Duval, associate professor of political science; Jason Thomas, senior lecturer of political science; and Bonnie Morris, associate professor of accounting.
This WVEPSCoR funding will enable us to bring together experts from diverse disciplines to address the very real and challenging problem of processing intelligence information collected from a variety of sources, thereby accurately identifying potential threats to national security,Ross said.
Projects funded through the RCG program support the creation of research centers and foster economic development and work force advancement, said Jan Taylor, WVEPSCoR deputy director. All projects must be self-supporting at the end of the grant period.
For more information about WVEPSCoRs programs or its Vision 2015 strategic plan for growing the state’s research enterprise, call 304-558-4128 or visithttp://www.wvepscor.org.
For information about WVEPSCoR research at WVU , contact Peterson at 304-293-5913 or Curt.Peterson@mail.wvu.edu .