Inside Research & Funding Opportunities
05/13/2020, 11:45:02 AM
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Inside Research
News, Events and Resources for the UH Research Community
 
Latest News Upcoming Events Announcements Recent Grant Awards Featured Funding Ops
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Answers About Reopening Research

The reopening of the UH campus for research continues to progress without major challenges. More than 1,250 individuals have been approved to return to campus.

Last week, DOR held a special Faculty Café session on COVID-19 funding opportunities from federal agencies, foundations and corporations. If you missed the event, visit our COVID-19 Funding Opportunities page for new funding opportunities or register for the next session on Friday, May 22.

Read more from VP Elnashai's May 12 letter to the research community

Campus News

UH Researcher Joined International Group of Physicists and Engineers to Design FDA-Approved, Open-Source Ventilator

As the spread of COVID-19 sparked a global search for ventilators to help critically ill patients, an international collaboration of particle physicists and engineers pivoted to design a mechanical ventilator made from readily available components.

The ventilator, approved late last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use with COVID-19 patients, came together in about six weeks, driven by members of the Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration. Andrew Renshaw, assistant professor of physics at the University of Houston and a member of the collaboration, now is working to ensure quality assurance of the controlling software and to connect the effort with U.S. manufacturers.

 

Multitasking in the Workplace Can Lead to Negative Emotions

From writing papers to answering emails, it’s common for office workers to juggle multiple tasks at once. But those constant interruptions can actually create sadness and fear and eventually, a tense working environment, according to a new study aimed at understanding what shapes the emotional culture of a workplace.

“Not only do people experience stress with multitasking, but their faces may also express unpleasant emotions and that can have negative consequences for the entire office culture,” said study senior author Ioannis Pavlidis, director of the Computational Physiology Laboratory at the University of Houston.

UH Researcher Developing New Device to Treat Babies with Blood Disorders

With severe blood disorders, such as leukemia, doctors often rely on leukapheresis, a procedure in which large machines extract whole blood from patients to separate white blood cells from the rest of the blood, which is then returned back to the patient. This procedure is generally used to urgently reduce a dangerously elevated white blood cell count, or to collect various white blood cell subsets for therapeutic purposes. 

“Although well-tolerated by most adults and older children, leukapheresis in young children, weighing less than about 22 pounds, is technically challenging and clinically risky,” said biomedical engineering professor Sergey Shevkoplyas who has been awarded $1.6 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop pediatric-sized technology.

Staying Sane: Mental Health Research in the Time of COVID-19

Researchers across every discipline are redirecting their work in order to study COVID-19. The well-being of our global community depends on it. While some are exploring vaccines for the respiratory illness (according to the Guardian, 78 strains of the vaccine are currently in the works), others are saying that researching mental health issues around the pandemic is an equally important undertaking. 

Upcoming Events

Online: VPR Virtual Office Hours
Friday, May 15
2 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
Accept the Zoom invite in the VPR Virtual Office Hours channel on the Research & Innovation Teams site

Online: Applications of Data Science in Genetics
Thursday, May 14
11 a.m.-noon
Register

Online: Identifying Grant Opportunities for Postdoctoral Fellows
Tuesday, May 19
Noon-1 p.m.
Register

Online: Reopening Human Subjects Research at UH
Tuesday, May 19
1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
Register

Online: COVID-19 Related Funding Opportunities for Research
Friday, May 22
1 p.m.-2 p.m.
Register

Announcements

Join us for a special session on IRB-related issues surrounding the reopening of research on campus

Tuesday, May 19
1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m. (CST)
Hosted via Zoom

In-person research with human subjects remains significantly limited during this first phase of re-opening research at UH. For those procedures that are allowed, specific precautions are required to limit the spread of COVID-19, as defined on the DOR Reopening Research page. In this session, those requirements will be presented, and then the floor will be opened for an informal Q&A session.

This 50-in-5 session is part of the Division of Research’s University Research Explained Series, developed to support faculty in a variety of research and innovation efforts. This event is hosted in partnership with the UH Faculty Engagement and Development office.

The meeting will be held in Zoom. An email will be sent out from Eventbrite with the Zoom link 24 hours, 2 hours and 2 minutes before the event.

If you have any questions, email Sarah Hill or Lindsay Lewis.

REGISTER

View past announcements on the Division of Research website.

Recent Grant Awards

HIGHLY-DENSE ISOLATED POWER ELECTRONICS FOR RADIO-FREQUENCY AND ELECTRONIC WARFARE APPLICATIONS (HIPER)

PI/Department: Harish Krishnamoorthy, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Co-PI: Kaushik Rajashekara
Sponsor: Tagore Technology, Inc. 
Amount: $2,500,000

HOUSTON-LOUIS STOKES ALLIANCE FOR MINORITY PARTICIPATION: SENIOR ALLIANCE (LSAMP)

PI/Department: Donna Pattison, Biology & Biochemistry
Co-PI: Catherine Horn
Sponsor: Texas Southern University / National Science Foundation
Amount: $949,995

TRANSDIAGNOSTIC COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY FOR SMOKERS WITH ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

PI/Department: Matthew Gallagher, Psychology
Co-PI: Michael Zvolensky
Sponsor: Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas
Amount: $890,502

 

Recent Patents

NANOPOROUS GOLD NANOPARTICLES AS HIGH-PAYLOAD MOLECULAR CARGOS, PHOTOTHERMAL/PHOTODYNAMIC THERAPEUTIC AGENTS, AND ULTRAHIGH SURFACE-TO-VOLUME PLASMONIC SENSORS

Inventors: Wei-Chuan Shih
Date Issued: May 26, 2020
Patent Number: 10,661,347

Featured Funding Opportunities

Health Science, Engineering & Technology Social Sciences, Art & Humanities Education
Image Health

Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health
Title: Participant Engagement and Cancer Genome Sequencing (PE-CGS): Research Centers (U2C Clinical Trial Optional)
LOI Deadline: 09/30/2020
Application Deadline: 10/30/2020

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is associated with the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshotâ„  Initiative that is intended to accelerate cancer research. Specifically, this FOA falls under a scientific priority designated by the Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) as Recommendation "A" - Establish a Network for Direct Patient Engagement.

Title: Mucosal Immunology Studies Team (MIST) (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
LOI Deadline: 09/09/2020
Application Deadline: 10/09/2020

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to solicit applications from institutions to participate in a cooperative research group, the Mucosal Immunology Studies Team (MIST).

Funding Agency: Food and Drug Administration
Title: Integrated Pathogen Reduction Technologies for whole blood and blood components for transfusion (R01) Clinical Trial Not Allowed
Application Deadline: 05/26/2020

The purpose of this Request for Application (RFA) is to support the Center of Biologics Evaluation and Research in identifying pathogen inactivation technology that could be applied to whole blood at the point of collection or just after, followed by separation of that blood into components (red blood cells, platelets, and plasma), potentially reducing or eliminating donor deferral and/or testing requirements.

Funding Agency: Pfizer, Inc.
Title: 2020 Growth Hormone Research
Application Deadline: 05/28/2020

Pfizer Global Medical Grants (GMG) supports the global healthcare community’s independent initiatives (e.g., research, quality improvement or education) to improve patient outcomes in areas of unmet medical need that are aligned with Pfizer’s medical and/or scientific strategies.

Funding Agency: Department of Defense (DOD-Dept. of the Army)
Title: DOD Neurotoxin Exposure Treatment Parkinson’s, Early Investigator Research Award
Pre-Application Deadline: 08/18/2020
Application Deadline: 09/16/2020

The NETP Program EIRA supports neurotoxin exposure and treatment-related Parkinson’s disease research opportunities for investigators in the early stages of their careers, under the guidance of a designated Mentor(s).

Funding Agency: Department of Defense (DOD-Dept. of the Army)
Title: DOD Prostate Cancer, Early Investigator Research Award
Pre-Application Deadline: 06/04/2020
Application Deadline: 06/18/2020

Within this context, the PCRP is interested in supporting research that addresses specific gaps in prostate cancer research and clinical care, with an emphasis on investing in research that will benefit patients diagnosed with lethal prostate cancer or improve quality of life for men diagnosed with this disease.

Funding Agency: Department of Defense (DOD-Air Force)
Title: Airman Readiness Medical Research
White Paper Deadline: Rolling

This medical research objective is dual natured: (1) ensure medical availability of Airmen by analyzing attributes (sensory, behavioral, physiologic) and operational environments (chemical, physical, psychological, biological, radiological stressors) to drive optimal performance of Airmen engaged in high-demand, high-impact mission tasks (2) investigate how the flight environment affects the process of life, the ability to maintain homeostasis, and the risk for injury or secondary insult, seeking to ameliorate these stressors to optimize Airman health and performance.

Funding Agency: Lung Cancer Research Foundation
Title: 2020 LCRF Research Grant on Disparities in Lung Cancer
Application Deadline: 05/29/2020

We encourage applications on a wide variety of disparities-related topics including but not limited to the following: • Gender disparities in lung cancer burden • Causes and risk factors for lung cancer among never smokers • Influence of social and biological risk factors on lung cancer outcomes, access to and use of care, and quality of care • Genetic and gene-environment interactions • Interactions and contributions of multiple factors (e.g. smoking, genetics, environment, societal factors) to disparities in lung cancer outcomes • Contribution of healthcare access and quality to disparities in outcomes • Disparities related to other factors such as geography, socioeconomic status, and age.

Image Science, Engineering, & Technology

Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Title: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)
Application Deadline: 06/08-22/2020

Medium projects may request a total budget ranging from $500,001 to $1,200,000 for a period of up to 3 years. They are well suited to multi-disciplinary projects that accomplish clear goals requiring integrated perspectives spanning the disciplines.

Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Title: Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers Program (IUCRC)
Pre-Application Deadline: 07/07/2020
Application Deadline: 09/08/2020

The IUCRC program catalyzes breakthrough pre-competitive research by enabling close and sustained engagement between industry innovators, world-class academic teams, and government agencies. IUCRCs help industry partners and government agencies connect directly and efficiently with university researchers to achieve three primary objectives: 1) Conduct high-impact research to meet shared and critical industrial needs in companies of all sizes; 2) Enhance U.S. global leadership in driving innovative technology development, and 3) Identify, mentor and develop a diverse, highly skilled science and engineering workforce.

Funding Agency: Department of Energy (DOE)
Title: Research, Development and Training in Isotope Production
Application Deadline: 06/15/2020

The DOE Isotope Program (DOE IP), managed by SC’s Nuclear Physics (NP) program, hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for Research and Development (R&D) on novel methods to produce or improve production of radioactive or enriched stable isotopes needed for a wide variety of research and applications. This announcement is administered under the NP Isotope Development & Production for Research.

Funding Agency: Department of Energy
Title: Energy Storage for Fossil Power Generation
White Paper Deadline: 06/16/2020
Application Deadline: 08/13/2020

This program will conduct research and development to advance energy storage technologies and integrate them with fossil assets to reduce barriers to wide-spread deployment.

Funding Agency: Department of Defense (DOD-Dept. of the Army)
Title: FY20 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the Department of Navy (DoN) Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM), Education and Workforce Program administered by the Office of Naval Research (ONR)
White Paper Deadline: 06/12/2020
Application Deadline: 08/28/2020

ONR seeks a broad range of applications for augmenting existing or developing innovative solutions that directly maintain, or cultivate a diverse, world-class STEM workforce in order to maintain the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ technological superiority.

Funding Agency: Department of Defense (DOD-DARPA)
Title: Cooperative Secure Learning (CSL)
Application Deadline: 06/22/2020

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is issuing an Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) Opportunity, inviting submissions of innovative basic research concepts in the technical domain of human language technology, cognitive science, and language acquisition.

Funding Agency: Department of Defense (DOD-DARPA)
Title: Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) Opportunity: Techniques for Machine Vision Disruption
Application Deadline: 05/14/2020

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is issuing a new Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) Opportunity entitled Techniques for Machine Vision Disruption (TMVD), which invites submissions of innovative basic or applied research concepts in the technical domain of disrupting machine vision systems without detailed knowledge of their internal architecture or how they were trained.

Funding Agency: Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium
Title: Wearable Diagnostic for Detection of COVID-19 Infection
White Paper Deadline: 05/13/2020

The goal of this RPP is to develop a wearable diagnostic capability for the pre-/very early symptomatic detection of COVID-19 infection.

Funding Agency: Transportation Security Administration
Title: Transportation Security Innovative Concepts
White Paper Deadline: Rolling

To this end, the TSA seeks development across broad strategic areas with potential for advancement and improvement of TSA security operations, technologies, processes, human-factors, and capabilities. 

Funding Agency: Environmental Protection Agency
Title: Early Career: Assessment Tools for Biotechnology Products
Application Deadline: 07/15/2020

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is seeking applications proposing research to support the development of improved science-based human health and environmental risk assessments of new biotechnology products, including those developed through synthetic biology, genome editing, and metabolic engineering.

Social Science, Arts and Humanities

Funding Agency: AccessLex Institute
Title: Bar Success Research Grant Program
LOI Deadline: 05/31/2020

Examples of study focus include: effective predictors of bar success; bar exam test design and/or efficacy; and successful study methodologies.

Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Title: Perception, Action & Cognition (PAC)
Application Deadline: 08/01/2020

The PAC program funds theoretically motivated research on a wide-range of topic areas related to typical human behavior with particular focus on perceptual, motor, and cognitive processes and their interactions.

Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Title: Linguistics
Application Deadline: 07/15/2020

The Linguistics Program supports basic science in the domain of human language, encompassing investigations of the grammatical properties of individual human languages, and of natural language in general. Research areas include syntax, semantics, morphology, phonetics, and phonology.

Funding Agency: National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Title: NEA Grants for Arts Projects 2, FY2021
Application Deadline: 07/09/2020

Through project-based funding, we support public engagement with, and access to, various forms of excellent art across the nation, the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, learning in the arts at all stages of life, and the integration of the arts into the fabric of community life.

Funding Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Title: Summer Stipends
Limited Submission Internal Deadline: 07/01/2020
Application Deadline: 09/23/2020

Please submit a 1-page summary to CLASS by 07/01/2020.

The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.

Education

Funding Agency: Department of Education
Title: Institute of Education Sciences (IES): Research Grants Focused on Systematic Replication
Application Deadline: 08/20/2020

In awarding these grants, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) intends to provide national leadership in expanding knowledge and understanding of (1) developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants and toddlers with or at risk for a disability, (2) education outcomes for all learners from early childhood education through postsecondary and adult education, and (3) employment and wage outcomes when relevant (such as for those engaged in career and technical, postsecondary, or adult education). 

Funding Agency: Department of Education
Title: Education Research and Development
Application Deadline: 08/20/2020

In awarding these grants, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) intends to provide national leadership in expanding knowledge and understanding of (1) developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants and toddlers with or at risk for a disability, (2) education outcomes for all learners from early childhood education through postsecondary and adult education, and (3) employment and wage outcomes when relevant (such as for those engaged in career and technical, postsecondary, or adult education). 

Funding Agency: Department of Education
Title: Education Research
Application Deadline: 08/20/2020

In awarding these grants, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) intends to provide national leadership in expanding knowledge and understanding of (1) developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants and toddlers with or at risk for a disability, (2) education outcomes for all learners from early childhood education through postsecondary and adult education, and (3) employment and wage outcomes when relevant (such as for those engaged in career and technical, postsecondary, or adult education).  

Funding Agency: Department of Education
Title: Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences
Application Deadline: 08/20/2020

In awarding these grants, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) intends to provide national leadership in expanding knowledge and understanding of (1) developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants and toddlers with or at risk for a disability, (2) education outcomes for all learners from early childhood education through postsecondary and adult education, and (3) employment and wage outcomes when relevant (such as for those engaged in career and technical, postsecondary, or adult education).  

Funding Agency: Department of Education
Title: Research Grants Focused on NAEP Process Data for Learners with Disabilities
Application Deadline: 08/20/2020

In awarding these grants, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) intends to provide national leadership in expanding knowledge and understanding of (1) developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants and toddlers with or at risk for a disability, (2) education outcomes for all learners from early childhood education through postsecondary and adult education, and (3) employment and wage outcomes when relevant (such as for those engaged in career and technical, postsecondary, or adult education).  

Funding Agency: Department of Education
Title: Special Education Research
Application Deadline: 08/20/2020

In awarding these grants, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) intends to provide national leadership in expanding knowledge and understanding of (1) developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants and toddlers with or at risk for a disability, (2) education outcomes for all learners from early childhood education through postsecondary and adult education, and (3) employment and wage outcomes when relevant (such as for those engaged in career and technical, postsecondary, or adult education).  

Funding Agency: Department of Education
Title: Research Training Programs in Special Education
Application Deadline: 08/20/2020

In awarding these grants, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) intends to provide national leadership in expanding knowledge and understanding of (1) developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants and toddlers with or at risk for a disability, (2) education outcomes for all learners from early childhood education through postsecondary and adult education, and (3) employment and wage outcomes when relevant (such as for those engaged in career and technical, postsecondary, or adult education).  

For more information about available grants, visit our Pivot system or Grants.gov.

Lindsay Lewis | University of Houston Division of Research
lrlewis@uh.edu | uh.edu/research | 713-743-0951

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