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Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) / Archives for Current Sponsored Research / Natural Sciences & Math

Professor Mertz Appointed to Steering Committee for NSF-funded BioMolViz

Professor of Biochemistry Pamela Mertz was recently appointed to the steering committee for BioMolViz, an NSF-funded project (RCN-UBE #1920270) that has been developing resources to improve the pedagogy of biomolecular visualization.  Goals of the project include promoting awareness about biomolecular visual literacy and providing all interested educators with learning goals, objectives, and assessment tools to target and evaluate visualization in their classroom.  Mertz has been working on the project since March and was recognized as a BioMolViz Fellow this past summer for “outstanding contributions to the project.”  She will join the steering committee in January.

More info about BioMolViz can be found online.

SMCM Physics Professor and Student Conducting Physics Research with NAS Pax River

Dr. Adler (left) and Mr. Marx

Charles (Chuck) Adler, Professor of Physics, and Evan Marx, SMCM undergraduate student, collaborated over the 2021 summer break with researchers from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWDAD) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River.

Dr. Adler and Mr. Marx worked on a project simulating how orbital angular momentum beams propagate through turbulent and scattering water.  These beams, also called “optical vortex beams”, carry a twist (orbital angular momentum), unlike standard laser beams.  The Navy is interested in understanding whether these beams are more effective than standard laser beams for various imaging and laser ranging technologies. This work is being done in partnership with the Advanced Lidar Systems Team (A-LiST) at NAWCAD, led by Dr. Linda Mullen, Alan Laux, and Dr. Brandon Cochenour.

Dr. Adler’s summer 2021 work was supported under the Office of Naval Research’s Summer Faculty Research Program (SFRP), and Mr. Marx who worked with the group as a summer student was funded by the Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP). Adler and Marx recently received additional funding from NAWCAD to continue their collaborative research in the 2021-22 academic year.

The Patuxent Partnership Physics Scholarship Awarded

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, in continued partnership with The Patuxent Partnership (TPP) – a local nonprofit organization that works with government, industry, and academia on initiatives in science and technology – has awarded the inaugural The Patuxent Partnership Physics Scholarship.

First-year student Caitlin Kubina, of Columbia, Maryland, has been selected to receive a $10,000 scholarship award for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Because of TPP’s investment, Kubina is better positioned to be among the more than 50 St. Mary’s College physics students to work with Navy scientists as part of her college experience. Kubina could even convert her physics experiences into a related field within the Navy upon graduation as more than 40 St. Mary’s College physics students have accomplished in recent years.

The Patuxent Partnership Physics Scholarship is the latest of many ways TPP has worked in strong collaboration with St. Mary’s College, its students and faculty over the years.

In 2012, TPP invested $1 million to grow and expand the College’s physics offerings, including applied physics, of particular value to the Navy and STEM careers.

“We are extremely grateful to The Patuxent Partnership for its generous and continued investments in our students,” said St. Mary’s College of Maryland President Tuajuanda C. Jordan. “Each year more and more St. Mary’s College students are making invaluable STEM connections with our community and TPP plays a tremendous role in those connections which support our Honors College Promise and our mission. I truly value the relationship the College has with TPP and look forward to it building even more momentum in the future,” Jordan said.

St. Mary’s College students benefit greatly from the College’s close proximity to NAS Patuxent River — headquarters for Naval Aviation — and other facilities in the region.

The College maintains educational partnership agreements with Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head (NSWCIHEODTD) and TPP. Through these relationships, St. Mary’s College students enjoy many opportunities, including internships, scholarships and careers. Opportunities are particularly abundant for students majoring in physics, chemistry, computer science and psychology. Examples include:

Physics

  • St. Mary’s College faculty work with Navy scientists and St. Mary’s College students on developing new types of sensors for navigation, imaging, and submarine detection including cutting edge research in quantum sensing.
  • In recent years, 30 physics students have done their St. Mary’s Project (SMP) — an eight-credit senior research project — with NAWCAD labs.
  • Over 50 physics students have done internships (summertime and academic year) at Navy facilities, with more than 40 converting their St. Mary’s College physics experience into jobs as engineers, physicists, and program managers with the Navy and its contractors.

Chemistry

  • St. Mary’s College faculty work with Navy scientists and St. Mary’s College students on developing new types of functional coatings and electronics like sensors and printable solid-state devices.
  • Over the past five years, 17 St. Mary’s College students have completed their St. Mary’s Research Projects on Navy related technologies. At least four chemistry students have accepted internships at Navy federal laboratories, seven students have co-authored Navy supported publications or patents, and six have been hired after graduation.
  • For students interested in applied materials careers, the chemistry and physics departments also support the materials science program on campus.

Computer Science 

  • St. Mary’s College faculty Navy projects include augmented reality and data science.
  • In the past five years, eight students have been hired directly by the Navy after graduation; one or two students a year in the Navy’s Pathways internship program; and one ongoing SMP with a Navy lab.
  • The Navy is heavily recruiting students with degrees in computer science.

Psychology

  • St. Mary’s College faculty and students work with Navy scientists on human factors in aviation research including attention, performance, and decision making.
  • A number of psychology graduates have transitioned their psychology degrees to employment at NAWCAD in positions such as engineering psychologists, contract specialists, analysts, recruiting managers, and financial managers.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through 2024-2025. St. Mary’s College, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,600 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.

St. Mary’s College Chemistry and Biochemistry Professors Among Authors of ACS Symposium Series Book

To address the national need of professional skills training for chemists and biochemists, seven faculty members of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry authored seven chapters for a recently released American Chemical Society (ACS) Symposium Series book, “Integrating Professional Skills into Undergraduate Chemistry Curricula.”

Contributors from St. Mary’s College of Maryland included Assistant Professor Geoffrey Bowers, Adjunct Professor Ruth Bowers, Assistant Professor Daniel Chase, Professor Andrew Koch, Professor Pamela Mertz, Associate Professor Kelly Neiles, and Assistant Professor Shanen Sherrer.

The department’s complete professional skills curriculum—which spans the first year, first semester course all the way through upper level courses—is described in five chapters of the book, for which Neiles and Mertz—along with Justin Fair of Indiana University of Pennsylvania—served as editors. Authors from nine institutions besides St. Mary’s College contributed chapters.

The book defines professional skills as “non-technical skills needed to be an effective chemist/biochemist including, but not limited to, career skills (job searching, resume writing, networking, and having a professional mindset), scientific thinking (critical thinking, problem solving, and big picture thinking), scientific identity development, learning skills (self-regulated learning, initiative, study strategies, etc.), communication skills, and interpersonal skills such as teamwork, collaboration, and leadership development.”

The professional skills curriculum written by the St. Mary’s College co-authors was developed by all chemistry and biochemistry department members as part of the Council of Undergraduate Research (CUR) Transformations Project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF-DUE 1625354). Programs involved in the CUR Transformations Project are revising four-year undergraduate curricula in biology, chemistry, physics, and psychology to integrate high-quality undergraduate research experiences.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland is one of only 12 institutions selected by CUR for its Transformations Project, a four-year project now in its final year. A team of several faculty and staff members at St. Mary’s College is participating. Mertz and Neiles lead the chemistry and biochemistry team, while Aileen Bailey, professor of psychology,  leads the psychology team.

Neiles and Mertz said that while the CUR project is focused mainly on undergraduate research, the College’s move toward its Learning through Experiential and Applied Discovery (LEAD) initiative laid the foundation for the chemistry and biochemistry department to take a closer look at using methods from the CUR project to incorporate program specific professional skills into its curriculum.

“I think those two coupled together, the CUR Transformations Project and what was happening on the campus, is how we ended up here, to be honest,” Mertz said.

Neiles said she and colleagues began presenting what their department was doing to incorporate these skills into their programs and noticed colleagues and students from other institutions taking an interest. “That’s when I knew we had something,” she said.

The recently published book was developed from a symposium planned for the 2020 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia that would address each of the chapters as a talk; however, it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The value of the content was such that the ACS continued with the book project.  Neiles said the symposium will run virtually at the upcoming spring ACS meeting.

The book is timely as the ACS Committee on Professional Training is working on new guidelines for professional skills and competencies and the book could help guide programs at other institutions on how to incorporate this training into their curricula.

Neiles and Mertz explained that it is notable that the vast majority of the writing, review process, and editing happened during the pandemic.

“To say we are all proud is an understatement,” Neiles said.

Challenges brought on by the pandemic served to test the contributors’ own professional skills as they worked to meet deadlines while adjusting to professional and personal changes brought on by COVID-19.

Neiles and Mertz said the co-authors and editors were very supportive of each other during the entire process and were determined to have the project completed by year’s end.

“I found that being able to support each other by accepting where the other person was on any given day ended up being incredibly important. There were days where co-authors just couldn’t do any writing due to family, COVID, and just life complications. Nobody got frustrated with each other. We just picked up the baton on days we could and let others pick it up on the days we couldn’t,” Neiles said.

Reflecting on her own experiences with a challenging spring semester and personal life, Mertz said she was extremely happy to see this book being published in 2020, as the accomplishment was a much needed “shining light” on a very difficult year.

For more information on ACS or the ACS Symposium Series book, “Integrating Professional Skills into Undergraduate Chemistry Curricula,” go to acs.org.

Assistant Professor Brownlee Awarded Collaborative Research Grant from NSF

Assistant Professor of Biology Emily Brownlee was recently awarded a $21,840 grant from the National Science Foundation for her project titled: Collaborative Research FSML: PhytoChop: An estuarine phytoplankton observatory (Award Number: 2022966). The two-year award began August 1, and will help fund Brownlee’s collaborative research with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES- Horn Point Laboratory).

With this grant, the researchers will establish the PhytoChop Coastal Observatory, an advanced autonomous instrument array designed to monitor the composition and photosynthetic activity of the phytoplankton community, together with water column nutrient and optical properties. The PhytoChop Coastal Observatory will be housed at Horn Point Laboratory’s research pier situated on the Choptank River, a tidal sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay.

Brownlee will be responsible for setting up and analyzing instrumentation data, and will help curate and expand the imaging library. Furthermore, Brownlee will coordinate with her collaborators at UMCES to synthesize results from the integration of Imaging FlowCytobot data with other PhytoChop instrumentation.

I’m excited to be a part of founding one of the first observatories to combine high-resolution plankton imaging and plankton health measurements at very small timescales. Along with measuring environmental parameters, this can provide unprecedented insight into how phytoplankton, such as those contributing to harmful algal blooms, are responding to long-term environmental and climate change. To have such an observatory on the Chesapeake Bay is a long-time dream of mine and I look forward to integrating observatory data into my courses and supplying St. Mary’s Project students with a lot of data in years to come!

 

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Receives Scientific Equipment Grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation

St. Mary’s College of Maryland announces a SEP Phase XV Scientific Equipment grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to support, improve and broaden the access and impact of undergraduate science education at the College.

This grant will supply the equipment to establish two new laboratory spaces on campus, a fabrication laboratory and an imaging center, as well as the acquisition of observational astronomy and chemical imaging equipment that will support and expand current curricular and research offerings to both science and non-science majors.

Engaging students through experiential learning is a major component of the College’s new Learning through Experiential and Applied Discovery (LEAD) initiative. Through LEAD, faculty work across disciplines to blend together a thoughtful and purposeful academic experience for students with hands-on learning opportunities intertwined with credit-bearing professional skill development courses.

“We are grateful to the Sherman Fairchild Foundation for investing in St. Mary’s College of Maryland as we continue to work toward integrating practical and professional skills for students through our LEAD initiative promoting success beyond college,” said President Tuajuanda C. Jordan.

Scientific equipment like that provided through the grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation also enables the College to recruit and retain more talented high school students to the College by increasing and diversifying undergraduate research and hands-on learning opportunities for both science and non-science majors.

The St. Mary’s College of Maryland Foundation is a private, nonprofit organization that supports the College through sound fiscal management of a growing endowment portfolio. It is governed by a board of directors that gives its expertise and time in service to the College without compensation.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the National Public Honors College, is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through 2024-2025. St. Mary’s College is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,600 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.

Professors Grossman and Johnson Awarded Grant to Recruit Future Physics Teachers

Professor of Physics Josh Grossman

Professor of Physics Josh Grossman and Professor of Educational Studies Angela Johnson were recently awarded a $24,749 grant from the American Physical Society to participate in the APS project titled: PhysTEC: Building a Solution to the National Physics Teacher Shortage. The grant is pass-through funding originating from a large grant with the National Science Foundation (Award Number: 1707990). The two-year award began July 1 and will help expand preparation of physics teachers at SMCM by pairing formalization of the Physics Teacher Education Program with recruitment activities and more high-quality early teaching experiences.

Angela Johnson headshot

Professor of Educational Studies Angela Johnson

The physics program at SMCM has achieved high-profile successes in several areas of student education. The College’s Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program and its alumni have likewise received accolades. Still, the two programs have not yet realized their potential for preparing more physics teachers.

United States school districts consistently list physics as a discipline with a considerable shortage of high school teachers. With this funding, Grossman and Johnson will work with the SMCM physics and educational studies departments to formalize a Physics Teacher Education Program, informed by standards  presented in the American Physical Society’s Physics Teacher Education Program Analysis. Grossman, Johnson and collaborators will recruit high school students matriculating to SMCM, along with current SMCM undergraduate students to the new program. In addition to visiting high schools, STEM festivals, and similar events to reach high school students and more explicitly including the Physics Teacher Education Program and teaching careers in the physics career curriculum, Grossman and Johnson will formalize classroom assistantships into a Learning Assistant program and increase pay for these early teaching experiences to make them more attractive.

Grossman commented, “With this project, we’re expanding opportunities for students, helping them see the advantages of a career teaching physics, and making the path to that career more attractive.”

Assistant Professor Gurbisz Awarded Grant from the Ferry Cove Project

Cassie Gurbisz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, has received a grant for $19,073 from the Ferry Cove Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding the Chesapeake Bay oyster aquaculture industry. Partnering with Dr. Jeremy Testa from University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Dr. Gurbisz will collect measurements in the waterways around Tilghman Island, MD to quantify the effects of a new oyster hatchery on the local coastal environment.

The hatchery, to be located on an 80-acre farm with several hundred feet of shoreline, will include a floating oyster conditioning area and a 400-foot oyster reef breakwater. Measurements in and around the conditioning area, which includes floating oyster cages to be installed atop beds of submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV), provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the ways in which oyster aquaculture interacts with SAV. This has recently become a hot topic as both SAV abundance and aquaculture leases expand and therefore compete for space in shallow regions of the Chesapeake Bay. Data collected prior to and after the construction of the oyster breakwater and the adjacent marsh will generate information about the ways in which this increasingly popular but understudied shoreline defense structure modifies physical and ecological processes at the land-water interface. While each of these objectives is valuable individually, together they will constitute a unique case study of how the coastal environment responds to multiple human uses from a holistic, integrated perspective.

The goal of the current project is to collect baseline environmental data before hatchery construction begins. Over the next several years, Gurbisz and Testa hope to continue the project to collect post-construction data and make more detailed measurements. This project complements Gurbisz and Testa’s ongoing work funded by Maryland Sea Grant to study the effects of bottom cage oyster aquaculture on SAV. Ultimately, their goal is to provide scientifically sound information to guide regional environmental policy and management decisions related to SAV-oyster aquaculture interactions.

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered”

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford’s milestone study on achieving the first gene knockout in a cephalopod using the squid Doryteuthis pealeii was featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Crawford, who was the Whitman Scientist this summer on a team at Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is first author of the study reported in the July 30 issue of Current Biology. The NPR story is available online.

Assistant Professor Daniel Chase Receives Grant from American Chemical Society

Daniel (Dan) Chase, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was recently awarded a three-year, $70,000 grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. The project begins September 1, 2020 and is titled: Synthesis and Catalytic Exploration of Transition Metal Aza-Dipyrromethene Chelates. The approved budget includes stipends for Chase and two SMCM undergraduate students per year, along with laboratory supplies, and travel to attend local and national chemistry conferences.

Chase’s research avenues involve the synthesis of organic and inorganic molecules to explore applications that are advantageous to industry such as the development of transition metal catalysts that can be used in selective oxidation reactions. Chase has already had success in synthesizing several molecule variants and with this funding will continue working with iron and manganese complexes that he hopes will help increase industrial process efficiencies and reduce waste.

Chase regularly works with undergraduates in his lab, as he appreciates the simultaneous progress of challenging students intellectually to grow as scientists while actively contributing together to the scientific community.

Acknowledgment is gratefully made to the donors of The American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for support of this research.