Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP)

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Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) / Archives for research

Assistant Professor Gurbisz Awarded Maryland Sea Grant

Cassie Gurbisz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, recently received her second grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Maryland Sea Grant program (Federal Award Number NA18OAR4170070). The $71,023 grant will fund a two-year project titled: Effects of Oyster Aquaculture on Submersed Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) Habitat. Dr. Gurbisz is working with co-Principal Investigators Jeremy Testa and Dong Liang from UMCES Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

After decades of ambitious habitat restoration and species recovery attempts in the Chesapeake Bay, we are now seeing some signs of success including, most notably, the recovery of bay grasses, or “SAV”. Although populations of the native oyster—another iconic Chesapeake Bay species—are still at an all-time low, the Maryland oyster aquaculture industry is rapidly growing. SAV recovery and oyster aquaculture growth are both good-news stories because both are valued for their ability to provide habitat, process pollutants, and protect shorelines. Furthermore, aquaculture is an important source of income for thousands of Maryland residents.

The issue is that as these important living resources expand, they are increasingly coming into conflict because they both tend to occupy shallow water. Current regulations restrict aquaculture in areas that contain SAV under the assumption that aquaculture will impair SAV growth. This has created a burden for growers who are required to cease operations when SAV spreads into their lease area. However, it is unclear whether aquaculture actually harms SAV. Gurbisz and collaborators’ research aims to address this information gap by 1) analyzing existing spatial datasets to assess the extent of past conflict and predict where future conflicts are likely to arise and 2) conducting a field study to identify how aquaculture alters SAV habitat. The broad goal is to generate scientifically defensible information that can guide a reevaluation of policies that address SAV-aquaculture conflicts to maximize both continued SAV recovery and aquaculture expansion. SMCM student Victoria Lusk has already begun the spatial analysis, and Ellyse Sutliff and Lindsey Stevenson will help conduct the upcoming fieldwork. All three students are Environmental Studies majors.

Gurbisz is a coastal ecosystem ecologist who takes a holistic approach to studying the environment. Her research has been published in journals such as BioScience and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as recently featured in the Baltimore Sun.

Professor Crawford Awarded Whitman Fellowship Award

Karen Crawford, professor of biology, has recently been awarded a Whitman Fellowship from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). The award will be used to cover laboratory space and housing at MBL in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Crawford will use the award to continue her sabbatical research project investigating the use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to knockout specific gene functions in developing embryos.

The title of her proposal is: Beyond Proof of Concept – using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in Doryteuthis pealii embryos to determine: 1) the role of ADAR1 and ADAR2 RNA editing enzymes in development, morphology and behavior; and 2) the impact of Homeobox gene function on embryonic pattern and development.

In addition to the genes mentioned in her proposal title, she will attempt to knock in genes into the cephalopod genome for the first time.

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford Presents “CRISPR-Cas9 Genome Editing in the Cephalopod Doryteuthis (Loligo) pealeii” at the Annual Meeting for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford’s presentation was selected as an oral presentation in a complementary session in the 2020 SICB Symposium “Building Bridges from Genome to Phenome: Molecules, Methods and Models,” held January 3-7, in Austin Texas.

This presentation represents an important breakthrough for her research and impacts the work of many scientists studying the development, neurogenesis and evolutionary relationships of cephalopods, animals including: squid, octopus, cuttlefish and nautilus. It is an important “proof of concept” study demonstrating the first successful use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to employ genome editing in a cephalopod species. In this study, Crawford used the CRISPR-Cas9 system with specific RNA guides to the Tryptophan 2,3 dioxygenase enzyme (TDO) to specifically knock out the first step in the ommochrome pigment pathway in squid embryos. In English, this means that she successfully knocked out one gene to generate completely normal embryos lacking only reddish brown pigmentation. This work is in preparation for publication. Expanding the study of cephalopods to include predictable genome editing, the knocking out and knocking in of specific genes, opens an important door to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that drive normal development, neurogenesis, and behavior in cephalopods; a group of diverse and evolutionarily successful organisms that possess not only a camera like eye similar to our own along with the largest and most complex invertebrate brain on the planet, but also our imagination for their extraordinary life histories and complex cognitive behaviors.

While most of this work is performed at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Massachusetts, students working on their St. Mary’s Projects, often choose to explore fundamental questions of developmental biology of cephalopods by working with preserved embryos in the Crawford laboratory at SMCM. Last year, Sylvia Klein explored the role of Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) on two cephalopod species. As part of her SMP work, Sylvia was the first to observe the conservation of MAPK expression in the Pajama squid embryo, complementing studies Crawford had done with embryos of the long-finned squid, Doryteuthis pealii. Before graduate school, Sylvia, is expanding her experiences as a research assistant in the laboratory of Karen Echeverri at the MBL, where she is studying regeneration in both invertebrate and vertebrate species.

This work has most recently been supported by fellowships from the MBL to Crawford (2018, 2019), as well as a National Science Foundation – Enabling Discovery Through GEnomic Tools (EDGE) Grant to the MBL for which Crawford is a Principle Investigator. That grant supports the Cephalopod Strategic Initiative at the MBL.

Professor and Chair of Educational Studies Angela Johnson Awarded NSF Collaborative Research Grant

Angela C Johnson was recently awarded a $103,473 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in support of her project titled: Centering Women of Color in STEM: Data-Driven Opportunities for Inclusion. The two-year grant began September 2019, and will fund a continuation of Johnson’s collaborative research with Apriel Hodari of Eureka Scientific, Inc. to identify and share what helps women of color thrive in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

Johnson and Hodari have worked over the past two years with SMCM undergraduate students Rose Young ’20 and Elizabeth Mulvey ’20 to conduct and analyze interviews with faculty, staff, and students at SMCM and two United Kingdom institutions. The researchers compiled these fine-scale qualitative data from the interviews along with broad-scale quantitative data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) in collaboration with Eleanor Sayre, Associate Professor of Physics at Kansas State University. They then identified major themes to provide guidance for organizations committed to creating better, more inclusive, environments for women of color in physics, math, computer sciences and other typical STEM fields. Results thus far include surprising patterns about institutions where women of color study STEM fields, and have been shared at conferences in Washington DC and London, England. Results will also be shared at the winter meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in January 2020.

This recent award will allow the investigators to:

  • expand their dataset to additional STEM disciplines using data from IPEDS,
  • develop a public online portal for the final database and study user analytics to improve the portal’s utility,
  • identify institutions where higher than typical numbers or percentages of women of color graduate in each discipline and work with these institutions to serve as models or case studies for others, and
  • present research findings from the database and make STEM professionals aware of the portal.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1933383. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Receives Chesapeake Cultural Studies Grant

St. Mary’s College of Maryland has been awarded a $24,000 Chesapeake Material Cultural Studies Grant from The Conservation Fund.

The grant will advance the College’s work using archaeological artifacts to examine how Native American groups in the Chesapeake’s major river drainages responded to the region’s occupation by European settlers. SMCM Professor of Anthropology Julia A. King and Project Archaeologist/GIS Specialist Scott M. Strickland will compare artifact collections from 17th- and 18th-century Native sites in Maryland and Virginia to document post-Contact Indian lifeways and experiences. King and Strickland will be assisted by tribal consultants from the Pamunkey, Piscataway, and Rappahannock tribes.

The Conservation Fund—a national nonprofit dedicated to providing environmental solutions that make economic sense for communities—presented grants to SMCM and 10 other research, education and historical institutions and specialists to support the conservation, preservation and study of cultural artifacts from the Chesapeake region dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

“Funding from The Conservation Fund provides an excellent opportunity to understand how the Chesapeake region’s many Indian groups shaped the colonial encounter,” Scott Strickland noted. “Tribal participation in this project will provide an important but often missing Native perspective for interpreting early American history.”

Ranging from $15,000 to $25,000, the Chesapeake Material Cultural Studies Grants help further research and expand current knowledge of artifact collections from previously excavated archaeological sites at Jamestown, Martin’s Hundred, Carter’s Grove, Kingsmill and other locations in the Chesapeake region to better understand and interpret the colony’s first settlers and their response to the new environment and climate.

“American history is intrinsically connected to the land. In Virginia and especially in the Chesapeake region, our land can tell a variety of stories going back multiple centuries,” said Heather Richards, Virginia state director for The Conservation Fund. “While we at The Conservation Fund focus on protecting the places where history happens and conserving important natural resources, we depend on our peers in the archeological field to research and interpret how human lives intersected with these places. We are honored to support St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s ongoing work.”

A full list of the eleven Chesapeake Material Cultural Studies Grant recipients can be found here: http://bit.ly/ChesapeakeGrants.

Assistant Professor Shanen Sherrer and Colleagues Awarded St. Mary’s College’s First NSF MRI Grant

(L to R): Drs. Larsen, Bowers, Sherrer, Malisch, Mertz, and Laboratory Coordinator Hovland

St. Mary’s College of Maryland was awarded its first National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) grant using lead investigator Assistant Professor of Biochemistry Shanen Sherrer’s expertise on circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. Geoffrey M. Bowers, assistant professor of chemistry; Randolph K. Larsen, professor of chemistry; Jessica L. Malisch, assistant professor of physiology; and Pamela S. Mertz, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, are co-PIs, with assistance from Laboratory Coordinator Doug Hovland as senior staff and collaboration with Lindsay Jamieson, associate professor of computer science, on this project. The NSF grant provides funding for acquisition of a CD spectrometer and accompanying equipment for faculty research and student training opportunities. The $121,819 grant started October 1, 2019.

The acquired CD spectrometer will monitor rotational change in circular polarized light as it passes through a sample with chirality (molecules with non-superimposable bonds like a mirror image). Most biomolecules and metal-containing complexes have at least one chiral center and thus are favored for CD spectroscopic studies in biochemistry, biology, biophysics, inorganic chemistry, materials science and geochemistry. The CD spectrometer will be used by faculty and undergraduate researchers for probing macromolecular structures or changes to chemical properties under specific experimental conditions to yield information on structural composition, stability, changes and thermodynamics of targeted molecules. The CD spectrometer planned for purchase is a high performing model with a wide range of accessories for maximum flexibility in both research and teaching applications. The acquisition of a CD spectrometer by St. Mary’s College will significantly advance several critical research projects in the areas of biology, biochemistry, geochemistry, and environmental studies.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Gives Invited Plenary at Council on Undergraduate Research Transformations Project Yearly Meeting

The Council on Undergraduate Research Transformations Project (CUR-TP) held its third yearly meeting this past weekend, October 4-6, 2019, at which meeting participants continued their work on integrating undergraduate research experiences throughout the curriculum. Attending the meeting on behalf of St. Mary’s College of Maryland this year was director of the Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning (CITL), Samantha Elliot, and members of the two departments involved in the CUR-TP Project including Psychology: Aileen Bailey (co-lead), James Mantell (co-lead), Torry Dennis, Gina Fernandez and Chemistry/Biochemistry: Kelly Neiles (co-lead), Geoffrey Bowers, and Daniel Chase.

At this year’s meeting Bailey, Mantell, Neiles and Bowers gave an invited plenary in the session titled “So what are we learning: Research agenda of the CUR Transformations Project” which was well received by project leaders and participants. The team also continued its work in collaborating with the CUR-TP administration team and other institutional participants to further develop its undergraduate research curriculum. These fruitful discussions include plans to disseminate what the two departments have learned both on-campus, with help from CITL, and off-campus through national conference proceedings.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland is one of only 12 institutions selected by CUR for its Transformations Project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF-DUE award #1625354). Through this project, participants from institutions around the country have been engaged in novel research to understand the student, faculty, departmental, and disciplinary influences on the process of integrating and scaffolding undergraduate research experiences throughout the curriculum.

Villadsen Receives National Radio Astronomy Observatory Grant to Support Student Research

Jackie Villadsen, assistant professor of physics, has been awarded a $13,000 grant from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The funds will provide stipends, conference travel support, and access to astronomical datasets for students participating in research with Villadsen.

Their research will be tied to two sets of radio telescope observations, competitively awarded to Villadsen, on the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). These observations include a search for the radio signature of star-planet interaction, and a radio follow-up of close-in exoplanetary systems discovered during the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission.

St. Mary’s College and SolarCube LLC Research Partnership Wins Award for Innovation

Solar energy startup company SolarCube LLC has won a $100,000 technology product development grant through the Maryland Industrial Partnerships Program (MIPS). The funding will directly support the research and development work led by Troy Townsend, assistant professor of chemistry at St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM), who is the principle inventor for technology that uses nanomaterials to allow photovoltaic solar modules to be manufactured using an affordable, inkjet-like printing process.

MIPS, a program of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, supports research projects at University System of Maryland universities (plus Morgan State University and St. Mary’s College), to help Maryland companies develop technology-based products. MIPS funds are matched by participating companies to pay for the university research.

Solar Cube’s MIPS project is also supported by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Innovative Technology Fund, a partnership between DNR, the University of Maryland and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with the goal of accelerating Chesapeake Bay restoration through the development of new technologies. DNR provided funding to MIPS for the project.

Townsend developed the base technology at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in 2014 and has proven the process with a working nanocrystal prototype. In June 2018, SolarCube LLC and the Naval Research Laboratory signed the license agreement for the lab’s patented “spray deposition method for inorganic nanocrystal solar cells” technology. TechLink, the Department of Defense’s national partnership intermediary, assisted SolarCube with development of the required commercialization plan and patent license application.

“Of all the renewable energy options, solar is the only one with enough potential to exceed even our future global power demand,” Townsend said. “Solar power is a really nice financial benefit for homeowners. But not for everyone else. In order to make it more accessible, we need to drive the price way down and seamlessly integrate it into our everyday life.”

Townsend’s work on printed electronics involves undergraduate research at St. Mary’s College. Student Bradley Moore ’20, who works on printing the nanocrystal inks said, “If we do the layers correctly, it will make a solar panel that would be 40 times thinner than a human hair.” Moore injects inks made of semiconducting and metallic nanocrystals into cartridges to print out 2D patterns onto arbitrary substrates to build electronics.

Moore works with fellow student Megan Waters ’20, who is synthesizing the inks using air-free conditions. Waters, who has been synthesizing silver nanowires said, “Trying to figure out just the right concentrations and times of injection were definitely the most challenging and interesting parts of the synthesis.”

Townsend said, “Undergraduate research is our pride and joy here at St. Mary’s College. These projects would not be possible without our talented students. In the meantime, they are working on graduate level projects and publishing their work in journals and presenting at national conferences.” Townsend was also co-director of the 2019 St. Mary’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, which provided opportunities for students to work on mentored projects over the summer.

Townsend’s research group will continue to work with SolarCube LLC to develop printed solar cells. SolarCube LLC is located at the TechPort incubator in California, Maryland. Townsend plans to print a prototype solar module using the support of the MIPS award and work with SolarCube LLC on ways to adapt the lab-scale process into industrial-scale printing-press manufacturing.

Townsend said, “Just like the printing press revolutionized the written word, rapid roll-to-roll printing of electronics is the next step.”

For more information about the project, please visit TEDx Leornardtown video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivV1w2GFcmE&feature=youtu.be

Malisch Awarded American Association of University Women Fellowship

Jessica MalischThe American Association of University Women (AAUW) awarded its 2019–20 American Fellowship to Jessica Malisch, assistant professor of biology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. AAUW is one of the world’s leading supporters of graduate women’s education: Over the past 130 years, it has provided more than $115 million in fellowships, grants, and awards to 13,000 women from more than 145 countries.

“I am honored to be selected as an AAUW American Fellow,” said Malisch. “A major career goal of mine is to write a competitive proposal to the National Science Foundation. This fellowship will provide me the time and resources necessary to develop an excellent proposal.”

Malisch plans to use the fellowship to investigate the fitness consequences of the vertebrate stress response in white-crowned sparrows, to develop a new biochemical lab technique, and to apply for additional funding to maintain an active undergraduate driven research laboratory.

“The support of AAUW is giving me a major career boost that will help me accomplish my academic goals and my career aspirations,” said Malisch.

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