Stimulus Funds at Duke
In February of 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), resulting in the investment of $15 billion in activities that promote job growth and retention and scientific advancement. For cumulative dollar totals and complete number to date of ARRA awards to Duke, please visit the Duke Economic Stimulus Webpage.
Selected highlights of ARRA funds awarded to Duke researchers are listed below:
Project: "Gut Sense" of Adolescents and People with Anorexia Nervosa
Funding Source: NIH
Award Amount: 2 years, $992,651
Website: Nancy L. Zucker
Dr. Nancy L. Zucker, assistant professor of psychology and psychiatry, is conducting a study to examine where exactly in the nervous system interoception - the ability to feel one's inner workings, or "gut sense" - is wired and how it may differ from one person to the next. Specifically, Zucker will be studying biomarkers like estrogen levels and DNA expression patterns to see if they can account for interoception differences in those who suffer from anorexia nervosa and those who don't.
Project: African-Americans and Environmental Cancers: Sharing Histories to Build Trust
Funding Source: NIH, NIEHS
Award Amount: 2 years, $983,2404
Website: Marie Liynn Miranda
African Americans have the highest overall cancer death rate and shortest survival of any racial and ethnic group in the United States, with disparities especially accentuated in the American South. Marie Lynn Miranda, an associate professor of environmental sciences and policy, is using this ARRA Award to advance a partnership between her geospatial medicine research group and the Sisters Network, a community outreach organization, to survey at-risk populations, and identify and address environmental contributors to cancer health disparities among high-risk African American families.
Project: The Immune System and Fetal Brain Development
Funding Source: NIH, Institute for Mental Health
Award Amount: 2 years, $889,200
Website: Staci D. Bilbo
Staci Bilbo, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience who joined the Duke faculty two years ago, is doubling the size of her lab by adding two technicians and a post-doctoral fellow. A two-year ARRA award will expand her work on how bacterial infections in pregnant females can affect the brain development and long-term cognitive abilities of their babies.
Project: Living Tissue Patches for the Heart
Funding Source: NIH, Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
Award Amount: 1 year, $133,600
Website: Bursac Lab
Nenad Bursac, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, has stimulus funding to continue an existing project on growing living cell patches for heart tissue damaged by heart attacks. With the award, he is hiring a new post-doctoral fellow from Harvard and a year of supplies for that person.
Project: Light's Effects on Plant Development
Funding Source: NSF
Award Amount: 1 year, $150,000
Website: Meng Chen
Meng Chen, an assistant professor of biology who joined the Duke faculty in January 2008, has won his first federal funding through the ARRA program and will be expanding his research on the development of light-harvesting structures in the cells of developing plants. Biofuels may be improved by this work. Stimulus funds will allow Chen to hire two post-doctoral fellows, greatly expanding his lab's capacity. Read more on a project that grew out of this funding here.
Project: Technique To Understand Drug-Protein Interactions
Funding Source: NSF
Award Amount: 3 years, $390,000
Website: Michael Fitzgerald
Michael Fitzgerald, an associate professor of chemistry, is adding 1-1/2 graduate students, instrumentation and supplies to a new laboratory focused on how drugs work, at the protein level. This is an outgrowth of previous work funded though a 2001 Presidential Early Career Award.
Project: A Light-Switch Made of Light
Funding Source: NSF
Award Amount: 3 years, $480,000
Website: Daniel Gauthier
Daniel Gauthier, professor and chair of physics, is adding two graduate students to a research project that uses the interaction of laser beams and gas atoms to fashion a switch for light-based communications and computing.
Project: Optimal Markets for Tickets and Advertising
Funding Source: NSF
Award Amount: 3 years, $259,000
Website: Andrew Sweeting
Andrew Sweeting, an assistant professor of economics, is expanding his research on the mechanisms of pricing and selling "perishable goods" like airline tickets and radio advertising that become worthless if they stay on the shelves past their due date. Understanding these dynamics in more than a theoretical sense may help firms sell their products more efficiently. The funding will support one graduate student and some research-related travel.
Project: Imaging of Pre-Cancerous Cells in the Colon
Funding Source: NIH, Cancer Institute
Award Amount: 2 years, $633,697
Website: Adam Wax
Adam Wax, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke, is expanding his work on using light to sense pre-cancerous cells. In previous studies, a fiber-optic probe has been used to note cellular changes in the esophagus; now the research will examine the colon. The funding allows him to retain three people in his lab and do some proof-of-concept work to win further funding.
Project: Light Emitting Diodes of Zinc Oxide
Funding Source: NSF
Award Amount: 3 years, $350,000
Website: Jungsang Kim
Jungsang Kim, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, will share a graduate student with his collaborator, chemistry professor Jie Liu, and purchase needed supplies in an effort to develop a new light emitting diode made of zinc oxide nanostructures.
Project 1: Boosting Enrollment in Computational Biology Graduate Training
Funding Source: NIH
Award Amount: 1 year, $180,716
Website: Bruce Donald
Bruce Donald, professor of computer science, will be able to double the number of new students -- from four to eight -- and also provide more travel money and equipment for a Ph.D. training program in computational biology and bioinformatics.
Project 2: Improving Drug Design
Funding Source: NIH
Award Amount: 2 years, $200,000
Computer Science Professor Bruce Donald will team up with Pei Zhou, an associate professor of biochemistry, to develop methods that combine Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and software to improve protein analysis leading to drug design. This grant will allow the hiring three graduate students and the purchase of equipment, plus time on an NMR machine.
Project: Importance of Deep and Shallow Roots for Water Uptake
Funding Source: NSF
Award Amount: 3 years, $317,000
Website: Robert Jackson
Robert Jackson, a professor of global environmental change and biology, will hire a postdoctoral researcher and buy additional field equipment to extend his long term assessment of how woody plants take up diminishing underground water supplies in parts of an extensive Texas cave system.
Project: Developing "Trustworthy" Cloud Computing
Funding Source: NSF
Award Amount: 4 years, $626,638
Website: Jeffrey Chase
Computer science professor Jeffrey Chase and two graduate students will work on technologies to protect collaborative software programs from being vulnerable to corruption or information theft when they are run on "clouds" of computers owned by an outside provider.
Project: Pollution-Proof Fish
Funding Source: NIH
Award Amount: 2 years, $193,936
Website: Richard Di Giulio
Richard Di Giulio, professor of environmental toxicology, will hire a postdoctoral investigator to study why juvenile fish living in a polluted part of eastern Virginia's Elizabeth River do not suffer the expected cardiovascular damage from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chemicals regulated by the federal Superfund program. A second grant is bridge funding to support a proposed Center on Environmental Health, Policy and Disease Vulnerability.
Project 1: Inhibiting Amphetamine and Cocaine 'Memories'
Funding Source: NIH
Award Amount: 2 years, $390,000
Website: The Hong Group
Assistant chemistry professor Jiyong Hong will be able to support three graduate students to continue looking for the most effective molecules that can block the action of PKCz, an enzyme that previous research suggests helps the brain form pleasurable memories of methamphetamine or cocaine use.
Project 2: Exploring the Potential of a Natural Cancer Drug
Funding Source: NIH
Award Amount: 2 years, $353,070
Jiyong Hong, an assistant professor of chemistry, will be able to fund one graduate student and one post-doctoral investigator to investigate the biological activity of largazole, a molecule from marine algae that has promise as an anti-cancer agent.