The award recognized McDonald’s recent research, but in many ways, it has been years in the making.

For nearly two decades, McDonald has led community-engaged research with people with developmental disabilities and advocated for the responsible inclusion of adults with intellectual disability in research. When she started, there weren’t many other researchers who were involved in that kind of work.

“I am thrilled to say that has changed drastically. Today, there are several of us doing this work, learning together how to infuse disability rights into science,” McDonald says. “Receiving this award from AAIDD is another sign of the groundswell of interest in this area, the recognition of its importance, and new opportunities to further grow and enhance this work.”

Katherine McDonald (center) received the 2023 Research Award in June from the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD).

McDonald was one of two recipients of the Research Award, which AAIDD Executive Director and CEO Margaret Nygren says “recognizes (McDonald’s) formulations and investigations that have contributed significantly to the body of scientific knowledge in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities.” George State University Professor of Psychology Rose Sevcik also received a Research Award.

McDonald and other awardees were honored at the June 5-7 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Katie’s selection for this year’s Research Award from AAIDD is very fitting,” says , Professor and Chair of the at Falk College. “It recognizes her lengthy track record of interest and accomplishment in the field of intellectual disability.

“The Department of Public Health is very proud that one of our own is being honored with this nationally recognized award,” Narine adds. “Katie’s research is among the many areas in our department– infectious disease epidemiology, health communication, and health disparities, to name a few–that have attracted significant external grant funding.”

Founded in 1876, is the oldest professional association concerned with intellectual and developmental disabilities. McDonald says professional organizations such as AAIDD play a pivotal role in recognizing and responding to changing social circumstances.

“When professional associations are on the right side of history and proactive in the appropriate uptake of new ideas, they can change research policy and practice by, for example, influencing expectations for the methods and focus of research and how new empirical insights are shared in and outside of the scientific community,” McDonald says. “It is great to see AAIDD leaders consciously pursuing initiatives in line with disability rights and encouraging to see the many ways my fellow award winners are doing the same.”

McDonald was honored for research such as this year’s this year study entitled “?”��published in Disability and Health Journal. The co-authors were Ariel Schwartz from MGH Institute of Health Professions and Maya Sabatello from Columbia University, and the work was funded by the Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) Grant Program at Syracuse University. The CUSE grant and McDonald’s ongoing research led to from the to enhance inclusion of adults with intellectual disability in biomedical research.

Katherine McDonald

McDonald discusses that research in more detail in this Q&A. Here, McDonald addresses the evolution of the disability rights movement and how that has dovetailed with her research:

“The disability rights movement has been afoot for decades; each success has led to new areas to push into to further advance disability rights. In my scholarship, I leverage progress and ideas from this anti-ableist social movement to transform how we conduct science. My focus is two-fold.

“First, as we pursue new questions of social importance, we need to re-examine ideas about sources of legitimate knowledge and make room in the scientific process for insights derived from lived experience. My scholarship involves community engagement—research done in partnership with people with disability. Community-engaged research allows us to pursue scientific questions of priority to people with disabilities, integrate their insights and concerns alongside empirical evidence, and pursue more socially just scientific research.

“Second, we increasingly position disability as a social factor and understand people with disabilities as a health disparities population. Generating scientifically derived knowledge inclusive of, and relevant to, people with disabilities is necessary for achieving health equity, yet too often people with disabilities are left out of research studies. My work seeks to challenge this decades-long practice and instead foster responsible inclusion of people with disabilities.

“More specifically, I build from key principles of disability rights that emphasize inclusion, the presumption of competence, and the right to make decisions for oneself, including those that might entail risk.”

McDonald’s research adds to a long history of noteworthy contributions that Syracuse University has made to AAIDD and highlights how University faculty have worked with self-advocacy groups, policymakers, schools, and social service organizations to promote disability rights. The hope now, McDonald says, is to continue building from this heritage and add new elements to this collective work.

“When I started in this area I would sometimes say ‘yeah, I do research about research’ and people’s eyes would glaze over with confusion and disinterest,” McDonald says. “Now, when I say I do community-engaged research and research to understand and address ethical, legal, and social issues in research with adults with intellectual disability, I see new understanding of its value and excitement about its potential. I so appreciate that my colleagues understand and understand the relevance of my work.”

Project ENGAGE is recruiting adults with intellectual disability as research participants. To learn more, call 1-800-295-2187 or email engageinpmr@syr.edu.

Those workshops provided Grant, now an assistant professor in the in the , with a realization of how the writing process can improve mental and physical health.

“Amazing things happened,” Grant says. “The women started coming to the sessions every week reporting better health outcomes. They felt better, had greater mental clarity and experienced better connectivity to their families and to each other. Witnessing their transformation flabbergasted me.”

Assistant Professor Lenny Grant

CUSE Grant Expansion

More recently Grant hosted a series of virtual writing workshops for Syracuse-area social workers to test if expressive writing—writing to convey a person’s thoughts and feelings about difficult events and issues—could help social workers boost their own mental and physical resilience.

The pilot Resilience Writing Project showed promise, so he applied for and received funds to expand the program online. He and his research team started work this summer using a for $22,000.

Learning whether the writing style provides a useful intervention to help social workers and mental health professionals build emotional and physical resilience is important, Grant says. Those professionals can experience “compassion fatigue”—secondary traumatic psychological stress—as a residual impact of their work helping others overcome trauma.

“Every day, social workers help people who are having the worst days of their lives. They provide invaluable support to our community members in hospitals, human services agencies, private practice and other settings. As they do their jobs, they are exposed to the traumas and catastrophic experiences of those they help. While busy caring for others, social workers sometimes don’t have the time to care for themselves or there’s limited infrastructure in place to help them do that,” he says.

Increased Need

The last few years of high stress, including the COVID-19 pandemic, has created a crisis in the mental health care professions and threatens to undermine an already overwhelmed mental health infrastructure, Grant says.

Tracey Marchese, professor of practice

Co-investigator , professor of practice in the School of Social Work in the and an expert in trauma practice and education as well as a 30-year mental health practitioner, agrees. “This is an unprecedented time,” Marchese says. “What we’ve seen, particularly since COVID, is that in the process of trying to help their clients, clinical mental health practitioners are at the same time experiencing the same concerns and anxieties as their clients.”

Recruiting Participants

Through the summer, work was done to develop scripts, videotape instructions, create a website and put data collection and evaluation tools in place. Participants are now being recruited. The team wants to enroll 100 licensed or provisionally licensed professionals working in mental health counseling, psychology, marriage and family therapy, and social workers. The pool includes Syracuse University partner agencies and professionals from an area encompassing the North Country, to Rochester, to Utica, to Northeast Pennsylvania—areas all experiencing heightened needs for mental health workers.

Six Short Exercises

To engage in the program, participants go to the website, watch a short video, view a sample piece of writing and then are prompted to complete the exercise. The series of six exercises use expressive writing techniques that encourage deep engagement with the traumatic issue and related emotions. Writers are asked to create a narrative of a traumatic experience, reframe the narrative in the third person, develop an imaginary dialogue, write a letter of gratitude, devise a mindfulness poem and outline a future retrospective.

The program is self-paced and accessible online anytime. Modules are condensed to take no more than 20 minutes each. The idea is that harried mental health workers will be more willing to engage with expressive writing if sessions are offered in short form on a virtual platform that they can access at their convenience.

Xiafei Wang, assistant professor

Also a co-investigator on the project is , assistant professor in the , a mixed-methods researcher and educator in program evaluation whose expertise is evaluation design and data analysis with a specialty in trauma and behavioral health.

Wang will assess the written material and its linguistics using qualitative content analyses and quantitative data analysis based on repeated-measure design. The combination of methods will show the usefulness��of the results of the study in regard to the healing power of writing, Wang says. The team may also do some in-person interviews to gain detail about the participant experience.

Why Does It Help?

What is it about the expressive writing form that seems to help people? “We have theories about the mechanisms behind the health benefits of expressive writing, but we are still seeking concrete answers,” Grant says. He has a hypothesis, though: People who experience traumas or catastrophic events can feel those things don’t make sense because they become overwhelmed emotionally and physically.

Meanwhile, the writing process is slow and linear, requiring a person to slow down, look in their mind’s eye and create a narrative about the experience, he says. “I think it’s in that process that the healing happens. Traumatic events often leave us with a whirlwind of unresolved emotions, images and thoughts. The expressive writing process helps us to examine those feelings and memories closely. Through writing, we can take something that didn’t make sense before and make meaning of it.”

Marchese says that if preliminary research shows the program is helpful it could be broadened to all mental health professionals in all disciplines and put into use industrywide. “If this program starts mental health practitioners in positive self-care practices, and we find ways to get people really invested in their own mental health and building their resilience so they can be better for the people they serve, that would be fantastic,” she says.

Just as that long-ago widows writing workshop produced positive results, Grant is hopeful the virtual resilience platform will be a gift to the mental health care community who are necessarily in high demand.��“That demand has consequences mental health professionals may not be processing because while they are processing other people’s issues,” Grant says. “They sometimes don’t get the chance to take care of themselves. This is an invitation to do that and it’s something they can do from the comfort of their office in their own time and at their own pace.”

Bulman, a faculty member in the department of in the , teaches courses on Latin American theater and literature. She will travel to Argentina, Peru and Spain in the spring to research the community-based artistic form (“micro theater”), which was founded in Madrid in 2009. In those places, she plans to learn from the actors, directors, playwrights and support personnel who create and stage the Microteatro, short plays that are centered on one theme and are part of a transnational theater network.

This group of venues now active in Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru and Miami presents theatrical works of 15 minutes for audiences of 15 spectators conducted in multiple theater spaces of less than 15-by-15 square meters. The rooms are grouped together with an added, central space for a bar/restaurant and socializing. The plays are presented multiple times each evening for rotating audiences. They focus on topics of local concern, social justice or human experience presented from diverse perspectives. On an evening out, spectators typically attend a number of the 15-minute performances.

Microteatro’s uniqueness is based in three structural elements: performances are all centered on the same theme, which rotates monthly; they take place in one space and they address challenging topics in ways that are approachable and non-threatening to promote critical reflection.

Bulman believes this short form of theater is appealing because people enjoy gathering together and socializing for a relaxing night out and they value live theater. However, as people’s attention spans become shorter, they recognize that the traditional two-hour theatrical performance doesn’t permit much time for socializing or for discussion. In contrast, Microteatro’s tight performance quarters provide interactions that are up close and personal and the central social space fosters dialogue and opportunities for discussion and reflection on the performances’ themes and impact.

Short and Dynamic

“Each 15-minute play is a complete artistic event,” Bulman says. “You’re in the middle of it; there’s no hiding and it’s lively and intense. It’s a dynamic situation where spectators come in, get up and move from space to space, from performance to performance, so it’s very high energy. The level of intimacy and the level of positive discomfort that can come from these performances makes you acutely aware of the themes and their social impacts. The comfortable, entertainment-oriented pre- and post-performance settings help attendees critically reflect upon, discuss and move toward action on important community matters.”

Aside from the shows offering citizens a way to explore various perspectives of different social issues, they importantly also provide an ongoing income stream for members of the artistic community, Bulman says. Microteatro programming means regular work for the playwrights, actors, producers, stagehands and restaurant and entertainment support workers behind each run of performances.

Gail Bulman’s interest in the theater form Microteatro began with her CUSE Grant and hosting of “PICS” (Performing Identities Across Cultures) performances.

An Immersive Study

Bulman’s interest in the budding Microteatro concept goes back several years. She says that while many other Latin American and world theater scholars have published findings on the artistic and social relevance, performance techniques, impact and spectator engagement of traditional full-length theater, no one has yet analyzed the artistic, social and economic infrastructure and impact of the burgeoning Microteatro movement. The form’s capacity to reflect and inspire action on social injustices remains underexamined as well, she says.

That’s the area of inquiry Bulman will address. She plans to immerse in the many Microteatro configurations underway in the three countries and speak to as many of those involved as she can to assess their artistic, community, cultural and economic impact. She intends to look at the form for its significance as a global arts model, its delivery format as a means of strengthening local community connections and communication and its viability as an economic engine for the arts and theater professions. She also wants to examine how the artistic collaboration works alongside independent and state-run theaters that produce full-length theater. Following her Fulbright research semester, she plans to write a book on her findings.��Her previous books include “Staging Words, Performing Worlds: Intertextuality and Nation in Contemporary Latin American Theater” and “Feeling the Gaze: Image and Affect in Contemporary Argentine and Chilean Performance.”

College of Arts and Sciences Interim Dean Lois Agnew says Bulman’s Fulbright award is richly deserved. “This is a wonderful example of the type of innovative and relevant research that Professor Bulman, like many other Arts and Sciences faculty, undertake globally in order to bring fresh developments and approaches back to campus for the benefit of our students.”

��Fall Workshops

Bulman is also scheduling campus events this fall to connect her scholarship to her students and to the University community. She has invited Microteatro’s founder, , to campus from Madrid to conduct student workshops on developing and presenting microtheater performances. Alcantud will give campus presentations on Oct. 24 and 25.

Her initial research into the topic began as a funded for three years for the . “” is one of five research strands in Language Matters. In 2020, she worked with students to develop scripts for a theater festival. In , students created videos of their scripted presentations. This past spring, Bulman hosted a series of performances on the Shaw Quad and 11 student and faculty performances in collaboration with other regional colleges.

��

An academic gathering to discuss all things tea from a range of research perspectives and practice viewpoints did the same recently as people from all walks of life and from 50 countries attended a virtual conference co-organized by Associate Professor . She coordinated “,” with Professor Richard Coulton, of Queen Mary University of London, and Professor Jordan Goodman, of University College London, in collaboration with Isabelle Charmantier and Padmaparna Ghosh at London’s�� . For three days in June, presenters from academia, agriculture, industry and museums addressed the natural, cultural and social histories of tea between the mid-17th and mid-19th centuries.

Ray is a professor of art history who hails from a family of tea planters in India. The idea for an all-encompassing conference on tea emerged in 2018 when she undertook a Caird Short-Term Research Fellowship at the Royal Museums Greenwich to examine the maritime history of tea trade between China and India. After her introduction to Professors Coulton and Goodman, ideas about hosting a gathering to discuss the significance of tea worldwide in all its facets began to swirl in many directions.

“All of a sudden, like a tea bush, my own research arm was growing these different tentacles and I pulled them back into the tea conference,” Ray says. “It has been a real pleasure co-organizing the conference because of the widening circle of tea itself and being able to see it through different yet overlapping lenses.”

The conference enabled Ray to present some of her research about wildlife on tea plantations. She was awarded a Syracuse University Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence in 2020 and is writing a book on the art, aesthetics and science of tea in colonial and modern India.

Romita Ray

Other presenters spoke about tea through the prisms of natural history, scientific inquiry, trade and consumption, technology and innovation, material culture, maritime travel, and revolution and war. The combination provided new contexts about tea for people from diverse academic disciplines and created connections for those who had both “the lived knowledge of tea planting as well as the academic knowledge of tea,” Ray says.

A Global Commodity

While many may not realize it, tea’s rise to pre-eminence as perhaps the first modern globalized commodity resulted from more than just the commercial efforts of tea merchants, according to the professor. That also occurred because an extensive cultural framework of knowledge and practice existed around tea production, trading and consumption generated by people in China, Britain, Europe and India. As she notes, “Tea has been a very contested product. It has instigated multiple human stories because of human ambition or desire—and that story is enormous.”

Team Item Collections

The conference was financially supported by the , the world’s oldest society devoted to the history of science, as well as Syracuse University, Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Syracuse University alumnus Todd B. Rubin ’04, who heads the company The Republic of Tea.

It had been postponed for two years due to COVID when the organizers decided to move the conference online. That expanded the scope of the audience and the ability to add different types of presentations. As a result, a unique aspect was that curators of tea-related items from nine institutions in India, Taiwan, the United States and the United Kingdom could visually showcase their collections to interested viewers throughout the world.

Consequently, videos about botany, porcelain and garden histories, and global trade and shipping were interspersed with informational presentations. The range of topics generated new ways of thinking about the material histories of tea, Ray says. Panel presentations with curators, tea planters and the chairperson of the Tea Research Association of India concluded each day’s proceedings.

Alumni Attendance

Two Syracuse University alumni involved in the conference offered appreciation for what it achieved.

Alumnus says he is thrilled to have supported the event because continuing education and giving back are among his personal core values. “Tea is steeped in rich history and has limitless impacts on so many different cultures,” Rubin says. “I am proud that so many individuals worldwide had the opportuniTEA for learning about the history and culture of tea.”

’80, a biology major while at Syracuse who is now one of the world’s leading historians on British history and a faculty member at University College London, agrees. “The conference showcased all that is best in 21st-century academic research collaboration, seamlessly weaving together new perspectives from history, literary studies and material culture on the one hand, with museology, scientific research and agrarian practice on the other.��The happy product of this collaborative project was a cornucopia, not a cacophony. Illuminating new ways of thinking about the multiple worlds tea both inhabited and shapes will inform research and teaching around the world for the next decade.”

“The conference provided a wonderful opportunity to explore tea through many different perspectives,” Ray says. “It was a tremendous learning experience, not just about the multifaceted plant product we know as tea, but equally so about how to bring people together from academia, museums, archives, tea research institutes, the tea industry and the wider public in a series of interdisciplinary conversations about a well-known leafy commodity. And it was especially exciting to bring alive the histories of a plant commodity that has long preoccupied scientists.”

The professor says she is grateful to the , Rubin and Rosalie Stevens, of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications (who close-captioned the videos) for their support of the event. The Linnean Society is airing conference presentations on its .

Now, Ray hopes that her extensive research, her connections to tea interests throughout the world and her forthcoming book help create an understanding that tea is so much more than just a tasty, popular beverage, she says. “The history of tea is not separate from us; it’s a history that continues to this day. It sits in your cup of tea every day.”

Walk into the Office of Supportive Services (OSS)—which houses two opportunity programs:����and��—and you’ll see a sound lab featuring recording studios with the latest audio editing and mixing technology.

Students make their own music and learn how to express themselves in The SENSES Project’s sound lab.

Several stories up, on the third floor of Steele Hall, there’s a state-of-the-art podcasting suite featuring six microphones, six headsets and a mixing board, perfect for hosting guests for the assortment of podcasts produced during the academic year.

This space is about much more than just recording spaces and a podcast room. It is a safe space. A diversity and inclusion project that serves as a creative outlet while supporting these students’ mental and emotional well-being.

The Studying an Environment that Nurtures Self-Exploration in Students (SENSES) Project allows University HEOP and SSS students an opportunity to create hip hop and electronic music, make their own beats and host their own podcasts in a collaborative environment.

HEOP and SSS are part of the , and while participating in the SENSES Project, students can feel free to be who they are, to express how they’re feeling, and to participate in meaningful dialogue about current events.

Rolando Custodio

“I started using the spaces as an escape to learn to express myself, because there aren’t that many spaces on campus or a lot of people that you could really be real with. Thanks to the SENSES Project, I was able to start writing my own songs, producing my own music and hosting a podcast. It’s all thanks to Amy. She’s the heart of this entire program, and I know there’s lots of students that are impacted positively by this program,” says Rolando Custodio, a finance and information management technology major who recently released his own extended play (EP) record under the artist name “Young Roley.”

Focus on Mental Health

The idea started when Amy Horan Messersmith, associate director of SSS, attended a free webinar, “Music, Wellbeing and Mental Health,” on Dec. 7, 2020. A dynamic duo of educators from Texas State University, Raphael Travis and Ray Cordero, explained how Texas State’s TRIO students became more confident, learned to express themselves and saw their mental health improve thanks to an on-campus recording studio.

The SENSES Project

Messersmith brought the idea to OSS Director Craig Tucker, outlining her vision for what would become the SENSES Project—utilizing a recording studio to help students learn about community building and self-expression while enhancing their educations—and Tucker and HEOP associate director Marieke Davis immediately saw the value.

Messersmith, Tucker and Davis collaborated with David Knapp, assistant professor of music education in the Setnor School of Music with a dual appointment in the School of Education, and Joanna Spitzner, associate professor of studio arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts on a Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) Grant.

Their proposal received nearly $24,000 in CUSE Grant funding, and in the summer of 2021, the SENSES Project launched.

Amy Horan Messersmith

“Our students use this space to work on their mental and emotional well-being, and it’s an opportunity for students to get to know one another in a different way than your usual classroom setting. We’ve found many students, especially those from marginalized populations, can come and feel like people will see them for who they are. We have a creative community where students connect with each other in a particularly meaningful way, because when you create something, you’re sharing an aspect of who you are,” says Messersmith.

Emphasizing the Process, Not the Product

In the recording studios and sound lab, students are granted the freedom to experiment with their projects, play around, try different sounds and make mistakes.

Nick Piato is working toward a master’s degree in music education in the School of Education, and he is also the sound lab coordinator. As Piato assists each student with their project, instead of emphasizing producing a perfect track or song, Piato is quick to stress the process mindset over the product mindset.

Nick Piato

“If you come in here with the goal of making a perfect masterpiece album, we’ll work with you to get you there. But really it’s about the process of creating something, learning from your mistakes and growing from those mistakes. We really stress the importance of getting better every time, which I think are lessons that can be applied to every aspect of life,” says Piato.

When the SENSES Project opened in the Fall 2021 semester, Hannah Gonzalez started off creating electronic music. Soon, she developed a theme song and music transitions for a podcast and learned to play the guitar, something Gonzalez admits was on her bucket list.

“Amy and Nick are my SSS parents. This place is really cool, and I come in because I really love the community. I don’t come from a musical background and I started off with very minimal knowledge. But Nick taught me to play the guitar and I can play the G chord and I’m very proud of that. I’m also working on starting a podcast this summer,” says Gonzalez, a junior English major in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Growing up in New York City, Edwich “Eddie” Etienne never thought he’d set foot in a recording studio due to the cost of renting the space, but when his HEOP counselor, Chris Davis, told him about the SENSES Project, his curiosity was piqued.

Edwich “Eddie” Etienne

After only two trips to the recording studio, Etienne, a first-year student in the College of Arts and Sciences, was hooked. Working with Piato, Etienne is producing rhythm and blues tracks that incorporate melodic rap. Besides creating his own music, Etienne’s time in the studio has helped him develop more confidence, and he says he’s grown more comfortable with who he is.

“I’m really blessed to have this opportunity to create music and make my own sound. I may be in the studio writing music, but I’m really a quiet person. The fact that I’m able to create music, it’s like my voice is being heard. This is really an outlet and a great escape for me,” Etienne says.

Visit and listen to on SoundCloud.

The (CUSE grants) program is dedicated to growing the Universitywide research enterprise, enhancing interdisciplinary collaborations and increasing both extramural funding and high-quality faculty scholarly output as well as boosting the University’s national and global research reputation.

A total of $510,000 was awarded to this year’s selections. The 31 projects funded this year include the following:

• Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grants: 16 projects; awards are capped at $30,000 per grant.
• Good to Great Grants: Four projects; grants are capped at $30,000 per grant.
• Interdisciplinary Seminar Grants: Four projects; grants are capped at $10,000 each.
• Seed Grants: 17 projects; grants are capped at $5,000 each.

The full list of recipients can be found on the .

Grants Jumpstart External Funding

“CUSE grants fund faculty to conduct early inquiry to establish further value and credibility for more comprehensive studies that can be funded by external resources,” says , vice chancellor, provost and chief academic officer. “CUSE Grants support the important initial proving-ground and inquiry phase, allowing researchers to test early thinking with the goal of expanding their research.”

That objective of the awards is aptly illustrated by a pair of research faculty whose CUSE grant work helped them earn subsequent National Science Foundation (NSF) project funding. , professor in the , an assistant professor in the and subsequent success in securing four more years of research activity supported by a .��Salekin, as principal investigator of the subsequent NSF grant, and Bergen-Cico are conducting extensive examination on recovery from opioid use disorder through the development of wearable physiological sensing technologies. These NSF-funded technologies will help identify predictors of craving and relapse risk while teaching participants to use mindfulness-based practices to manage cravings and reduce stress and relapse responses.

, interim vice president for research, says, “Importantly, faculty from all degree-granting schools and colleges in the University are represented in the funded projects this year as either principal investigators or co-principal investigators. It is also significant that almost half of the awarded principal investigators are assistant professors, reflecting the program’s goal of supporting the research agendas of junior faculty members.”

CUSE grants fund research and scholarly projects in a variety of disciplines and span applied sciences, social sciences, physical and life sciences, engineering, liberal arts, humanities, professional schools and creative arts. A new priority research area was added in 2022 recognizing the University’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility for projects that support, catalyze or promote research and scholarship on those issues and having societal impact.

One of those projects awarded was the inter-school and interdisciplinary grant proposal, “Toward Social Justice Informatics: Transdisciplinary Approaches, Research Frameworks and Critical Pedagogies for Emerging Information Professionals in a Datafied World.” Its principal investigator is ��assistant professor in the School of Information Studies. Co-principal investigators are , assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Studies, whose discipline is civil and environmental engineering; and iSchool assistant professors and , whose fields are library information science.

The CUSE grant application and merit review process emulate practices of leading external sponsors. Each year, Syracuse University faculty serve as volunteer peer reviewers of submitted applications. This year, the program benefited from 44 peer reviewers vetting awards across 11 University units and 43 departments, centers and institutes.

Participation in the peer review process can be as rewarding as applying to the intramural grant program, according to Raina. He cites feedback from one volunteer reviewer who indicated how the experience provided “a great way to gain an introduction to colleagues in different units across campus and the innovative and inspiring work they are doing.”

For more information on the program, the application process or to express interest in serving as a future peer reviewer, visit the .

Kelly Chandler-Olcott (left) and Ben Dotger

The School of Education is a pioneer and international leader in the use of experiential, immersive methods of professional development for educators and other professionals, especially the use of live-actor simulations, otherwise known as clinical simulations.

A new book, published by Harvard Education Press, gathers case studies, analysis and research that illustrate exactly why clinical simulations have emerged as one of the most powerful tools for the professional preparation and continuing education of teachers, counselors and school leaders.

Edited by Professor Ben Dotger, director of the , and School of Education Interim Dean Kelly Chandler-Olcott, “” features chapters by current and former Syracuse University faculty on the use of simulations in mathematics and science education, physical education, educational leadership, counseling and inclusive education.

The editors and chapter authors will sign copies of the book at a on March 31 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Jacquet Education Commons in Huntington Hall.

“Clinical simulations are derived from medical education’s use of standardized patients, actors trained to approximate various health concerns,” says Dotger. “By presenting original case studies, we explain how simulations provide a similar, safe shared-learning environment for educators that closely approximates authentic problems of practice. In fact, simulations have emerged as a signature pedagogy across education preparation at Syracuse University, and other institutions have taken note. Representatives from MIT, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University and elsewhere have visited Syracuse to understand this method.”

“The theory that clinical simulations rests upon is that powerful learning takes place when engaging in realistic, immersive situations,” says Chandler-Olcott. “By walking through our examples, readers will learn how simulations offer experiential learning opportunities that center on meaningful problems and contexts, emphasizing knowledge and skills that transfer from pre-service preparation to in-service practice.”

“My co-authored chapter explores the use of clinical simulations for disability, difference and inclusive education across several School of Education programs,” says Christine Ashby, director of the School of Education’s . “I see tremendous potential for simulations to address anti-racism, equity and inclusion. In addition to creating opportunities for our students to engage with these topics, sharing data across our programs creates a space to hold our school accountable to the principles and values we espouse.”

Reviewing the book, Elizabeth Dutro, professor of education at the University of Colorado-Boulder, writes, “Dotger and Chandler-Olcott invite readers into the fascinating world of clinical simulations. With commitments to K-12 students at its heart, this volume provides richly contextualized, research-grounded and inventive illustrations of how teacher and counselor educators can draw on simulations to enrich their pedagogies and programs.”

First applied to educator preparation at Syracuse University in 2007, the development of the University’s clinical simulation programs has received external funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Institute for Education Sciences, National Science Foundation and Spencer Foundation.

In recent years School of Education faculty have expanded the use of clinical simulations beyond teachers, counselors and school leaders. Most notably, a collaboration with the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families received a 2019 Syracuse University CUSE Grant. VET-SIMS have helped to navigate the unique challenges of adjusting to campus life. Other applications in development include live-actor simulations that focus on anti-racism and disability and inclusion topics.

“Clinical simulations are dynamic and engaging. There is no option to sit quietly at the back of class,” says Dotger. “At the same time, they are welcoming, allowing professionals to bring together what they’ve been taught and put it into action in an environment that challenges them but that also allows for mistakes.”

Maria Brown

The movement to incorporate restorative solutions to elder abuse has been gaining momentum in recent years. Advocates and service providers who work with older adults, and professionals and students in related fields, were invited to attend the “Syracuse, New York’s ‘Long Game’ for Adopting Restorative Approaches to Elder Abuse” webinar Jan. 26.

In this webinar, Maria Brown, assistant research professor at Syracuse University in both the����School of Social Work and the university’s��, and Mary Helen McNeal, professor in the����and director of its Elder and Health Law Clinic, discussed their qualitative and academic research. They shared highlights from their Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) grant-funded international symposium in elder abuse and restorative justice.

A and a are now available from the , which sponsored the webinar.

The discussion also included Brown and McNeal’s work with local Syracuse-area service providers����and the��, exploring the potential of restorative practices to intervene in elder-abuse situations, including the current “eCORE Project,” which offers community building and conflict resolution circles to seniors in����in Syracuse.

Helen McNeal

The Jan. 26 webinar is part of the “Exploring Restorative Approaches to Elder Justice” webinar series intended to build awareness about restorative options for older adults and to promote safe, just, equitable and sustainable practices, communities and institutions. To register for the other webinars, visit CEJC’s .

Opioid use disorder is one of the leading public health problems in the United States. Dessa Bergen-Cico has spent her career working to combat addiction and find solutions that work.

“Trauma, stress and addiction are all related. To have sustainable recovery from addiction, we have to help people understand what they are feeling, what contributes to their stress and learn healthy ways of regulating emotions,” she says.

Dessa Bergen-Cico

is a professor in the department of public health at Falk College. There, she coordinates the addiction studies program. She is also a faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program.

The rate and cost of relapse for people in recovery is high, with a large risk of fatal overdose. Opioids create physical dependency and change people’s brains in terms of how they process reward and motivation, self-regulation and how people react to stress. Even years after discontinuing drug use, stress and anxiety can trigger the urge to use opioids and other drugs.

Research has found that mindfulness-based strategies can prevent relapse and foster sustainable recovery. “We are trying to demonstrate how and why it works. Our preliminary research, which was funded by two CUSE (Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence)��grants, measured changes in neural correlates associated with stress addiction and trauma,” says Bergen-Cico. “We found significant changes with a relatively short period of practice for key areas of the brain related to attention, working memory and emotional regulation.” Neural correlates are brain activity that corresponds with specific regions of the brain and are associated with similar brain functions.

Asif Salekin

“The findings from both CUSE grants helped pinpoint how and why mindfulness can help change the stress reactions that can lead to the development of an addiction as well as increased risk of relapse. We used fNIRS (functional near infrared spectroscopy) sensors to measure areas of the brain that regulate the ‘stop’ and ‘go’ signals that contribute to addiction. Using data from the fNIRS sensors, we were able to identify patterns of change in regions of the brain associated with the stress response. The data from the fNIRS sensors enabled us to measure significant changes in the mindfulness intervention study participants that were present before changes in self report measures,” says Bergen-Cico.

Bergen-Cico is working with , assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computer science and a larger team at Syracuse University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to validate whether they can reliably predict the stress response in a larger group of participants. “By comparing results across three cohorts and interventions, we’re hoping to determine if making participants aware of the physiological stress response can cue them to interrupt the stress cycle using mindfulness and other cognitive behavioral techniques,” says Bergen-Cico. “The National Science Foundation award will fund this stage of the research.” The grant itself was awarded to Prof. Salekin, who serves as the principal investigator.

“In partnership with Professor Asif Salekin in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and his ongoing NSF-supported research, Professor Bergen-Cico’s investigation in addiction recovery demonstrates both the need for research in areas such as addiction, trauma and mindfulness, as well as the vast potential impact research has to inform policy and practice and improve our broader health as a population” says Falk College Dean Diane Lyden Murphy. “In addition, our faculty integrate new research and theory into the classroom, preparing students for successful careers as allied health workers, social service managers, policymakers and advocates.”

“Our ultimate hope is that we can provide a sustainable recovery tool that gives people insight into their own physiological and psychological reactivity to stress and life outside of a structured rehabilitation setting,” Bergen-Cico says. “We know that applying these techniques consistently, over time can help sustain people’s abstinence. If we can create a wearable or in-home monitoring device that predictably detects the stress responses that lead to cravings and then cues the use of cognitive and mindfulness techniques, it could be an important tool for sustainable recovery from addiction.”

CUSE grants, managed by the Office of Research, are intended to grow the research enterprise, enhance interdisciplinary collaborations and increase both extramural funding and high-quality scholarly output by Syracuse University faculty. The program was launched in 2017 as part of the $100 million Invest Syracuse initiative to enhance academic excellence. For the 2022 CUSE Grant Program, the total award amount will be $500,000, as the University’s research operations undergo a thorough review, including an analysis of the impact of the first four years of the CUSE Grant Program on advancing the University’s strategic priorities for research and scholarship.

For the 2022 funding cycle, the CUSE Program will continue to focus on enhancing the University’s reputation and leveraging extramural funding, scholarship, creative work and prestigious awards, utilizing the previously established four main grant types: 1) Seed Grants; 2) Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grants; 3) Good to Great Grants and 4) Interdisciplinary Seminar Grants. However, there are changes from the 2021 program.

The 2022 cycle introduces a priority area for proposals related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA), and discontinues the COVID-relief mechanism introduced in 2021. There are also changes to the requirements for Principal Investigators and proposal documents. With a few exceptions, there must be a one-year gap between CUSE award cycles for a given principal investigator. The 2022 cycle also makes changes to conflict-of-interest certification and acknowledgement of intellectual property policies. Full details can be found in the on the Office of Research website. A list of is also available to assist applicants. All proposals must be submitted through the University’s .

The CUSE grant program supports faculty research in all disciplines, including basic, translational and applied sciences; social sciences; physical and life sciences; engineering; liberal arts and humanities; and professional studies, as well as creative and other scholarly activities. Priority is given to strategic interdisciplinary initiatives at the University and disciplinary research areas with great potential for extramural funding and institutional recognition.

Faculty are strongly encouraged to attend one of two information sessions in January:

• : Wednesday, Jan. 19, 10-11:30 a.m.
• : Wednesday, Jan. 26, 10-11:30 a.m.

The CUSE grant program is made possible through the dedicated service of our peer reviewers. Faculty who are not submitting for this round of CUSE grants and are interested in serving as CUSE grant reviewer, please contact Stuart Taub.

Kenny Fries, Perel and Quintan Ana Wikswo

Three queer Jewish disabled writers and artists each discuss their work on Aktion T4, a prime crucible of disability history, during a Zoom virtual event on Monday, Oct. 18, from 3-4:15 p.m. ET. Aktion T4 was a eugenics project in Nazi Germany that targeted��people with mental and physical disabilities.

The speakers are Kenny Fries, Perel and Quintan Ana Wikswo. The event will be moderated by Julia Watts Belser.

The panelists will explore the following themes and question:

• How to��avoid a sentimental or aesthetic depiction
• How to avoid reinscribing trauma
• Because Aktion T4 has no survivors, how do writers and artists become “vicarious witnesses,” which memory studies scholar Susanne C. Knittel describes as not “an act of speaking for and thus appropriating the memory and story of someone else but rather an attempt to bridge the silence through narrative means”?

.

Julia Watts Belser

This event is free and open to the public. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation, live captioning and image descriptions will be provided.

Requests for other accommodations can be made by Monday, Oct. 11, by completing the accommodations request field in the Zoom registration form.

Questions about this event can be directed to oipo@syr.edu.

This event is sponsored by the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach (OIPO) at the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University through the Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) Grant Program, with additional support from Atrocity Studies and the Practices of Social Justice; College of Visual and Performing Arts; Department of History; Department of Religion; Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition; Disability Studies; Hendricks Chapel; Jewish Studies; LGBTQ Studies; LGBTQ Resource Center; and Syracuse Hillel.

Mushroom growing huts in the Akagera region of Rwanda. (Photo courtesy of General Architecture Collaborative)

Porcini, portobello and cremini … you’ve probably heard of these types of mushrooms, but how about mycelium? Literally translated as “more than one,” mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus consisting of a network of interwoven thin, white filaments. When compared to a plant, mycelium is the root structure, and the mushroom is the flower.

With the right nutrients present, fungal mycelium can grow in a wide range of simple organic materials including cardboard, sawdust and some forms of agricultural waste. When treated, the network of fibrous threads transforms into a foam or wood-like composite material that is lightweight and biodegradable, making mycelium-based materials a promising new architectural paradigm.

Over the past two years, School of Architecture assistant professor Nina Sharifi and Daekwon Park, associate professor and undergraduate chair at the school, have been investigating innovations at the scales of systems, construction methodologies and whole building design. With Sharifi’s research into low-carbon building technologies and Park’s expertise in architectural materials and fabrication, the two observed that the unique properties of fungal mycelium—a low-energy, low-carbon footprint bio-based material—had potential applicability in many fields.

“Attributes of working with mycelium include its sustainable material life cycle—as it is grown, not harvested; its ability to take the shape of any formwork; and its strength while remaining lightweight, among other properties that may be of interest to multiple scientific applications,” says Sharifi.

In 2020, through the support of the Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) Grant Program and the Syracuse Center of Excellence (CoE) Faculty Fellows Program, Sharifi and Park formed the collaborative Mycelium Research Group (MRG), with experts in materials science, biology and engineering, to conduct interdisciplinary mycelium-based research across a range of exploratory applications, including architecture.

Building on Sharifi’s prior research in low-carbon architectural systems, her lab has been working on the development of modular prototypes, testing and material hybridization with a focus on the design and integration of mycelium into low-carbon buildings.

Abstracted Rwandan patterns are integrated into interior partition modules along with waste plastic, while frames are constructed of materials that will be locally available on-site.

Upon hearing about Sharifi’s mycelium research, School of Architecture associate professor Yutaka Sho approached her about developing mycelium building elements for production and use in Rwanda—a context in which Sho and her colleagues at the nonprofit architectural design firm, General Architecture Collaborative (GAC), have been working for twelve years—where multiple building types including housing, restaurants and schools, in both urban and rural areas, were in various design phases.

“Nina told me she has been working with mycelium and we were both excited,” says Sho. “I was happy to find someone who was committed to developing sustainable and affordable building material, and she was psyched that I had actual projects in Rwanda that we could apply the research, with real sites, needs and constraints.”

By measures of sustainability, energy savings and constructability, the mycelium hybrid building systems that Sharifi’s lab had been researching seemed a good fit for the unique challenges inherent to Rwanda, a country with few paved roads and limited local building materials such as concrete, wood or steel. What the country has abundantly, however, are earth and people power, both of which GAC has been trying to promote in their architectural research and practice.

“The process of constructing modules was designed to approximate packing earthen bricks into molds, which could be done by most people; the mycelium hybrids were lightweight; and the material could be produced locally or on-site in growth chambers,” says Sharifi.

Through their research, Sharifi and Sho have begun to develop two lines of inquiry for mycelium-based construction materials in Rwanda: one for the service (urban) industry and one for the agricultural (rural) industry. The former use of the products is to apply them in offices and restaurants as ceiling panels and partitions since the ones currently used in Rwanda are low quality, imported and have a high carbon footprint. The latter use is in farming communities where the mycelium blocks can be used to construct mushroom-growing huts, essentially using mushrooms to make the structure that mushrooms grow in.

With the parallel goal of using recycled materials, Sho engaged Carene Umubyeyi, a student studying civil engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a former architecture intern at GAC and a native of Kigali, the capital and largest city in Rwanda, in researching local material and waste flows in the country so that abundant waste products can be used as a mycelium growing substrate.

Mushroom growing bed in Akagera, Rwanda. (Photo courtesy of General Architecture Collaborative)

“In order to remove harmful waste from the environment, we investigated the continued availability of plastic waste, such as single-use beverage and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, in Rwanda,” says Umubyeyi. “The hope is to collect waste products from private waste management companies in and outside the city of Kigali, which we can process and utilize as a potential substrate material.”

Meanwhile, back in Syracuse, Sharifi’s team of interns, including Zoe Quinones ’23 (B.Arch), Morgan Noone G’23 (M.Arch) and Kiana Memaran Dadgar G’23 (M.S.), have sourced and begun to integrate the same substrate materials in the lab’s controlled environment where��they can test the performance of the mycelium-based construction materials under different environmental conditions.

“The goal is to minimize transport of physical modules to Kigali, and send nothing but initial formwork, raw materials and detailed design documentation and written manufacturing protocols,” says Sharifi.

Sharifi and Sho’s joint effort is ongoing as research yields new prototype designs and methods at Syracuse University while fabrication and construction are set up in Kigali.

The Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) grant program supports faculty research in all disciplines, including basic, translational and applied sciences; social sciences; physical and life sciences; engineering; liberal arts; humanities; professional schools; and creative arts, as well as various forms of scholarly activities. A total of $1.25 million was awarded for 2021 to projects representing all degree-granting schools and colleges. A full list of recipients is available on the .

CUSE grants are designed to grow the research enterprise, enhance interdisciplinary collaborations, and increase both extramural funding and high-quality scholarly output by Syracuse University faculty. The application and merit review processes emulate the most common practices found in leading external sponsors, with an expectation that CUSE-funded faculty members will seek extramural support for their developed projects.

One recent example is a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of more than $575,000 over three years awarded to Davoud Mozhdehi, assistant professor of chemistry. Mozhdehi and co-principal investigator Shikha Nangia, associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering, will combine experiments, simulations and machine learning to accelerate the discovery and design of new smart nano-biomaterials for biomedical applications. “A CUSE grant supported the collection of some of the preliminary data that made this proposal successful. We were able to present a convincing case that this will be a fruitful approach to designing recombinant nanoparticles with programmable properties such as shape and cell-targeting,” says Mozhdehi

“Professor Mozhdehi’s grant is just one example of how CUSE grants are being leveraged to bring exceptionally competitive external funding to Syracuse University and build academic excellence. In this case, a seed grant investment of under $5,000 provided an exponential return to the University and another prestigious NSF grant in a year where our faculty have already been exceptionally competitive,” says Interim Provost John Liu.

The program funded five types of grants for 2021:

• Seed Grant: Funding is capped at $5,000 per grant. (21 funded)
• Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant: Funding is capped at $30,000 per grant. (35 funded)
• Good to Great Grant: Funding is capped at $30,000 per grant. (8 funded)
• Interdisciplinary Seminar Grant: Funding is capped at $10,000. (2 funded)
• COVID-Relief Grant: Funding is capped at $15,000. (13 funded)

“We hope that the new COVID-Relief category will provide some bridge funding to help faculty whose projects have been slowed by the pandemic achieve their research goals. At the same time, this years’ successful grantees represent a truly broad range of research and scholarship, impressive interdisciplinary collaborations and projects that are sure to enhance Syracuse University’s reputation for innovative research and scholarship,” says Interim Vice President for Research Ramesh Raina.

The CUSE Grant program would not be possible without the dedicated service of University faculty each year as volunteer peer reviewers. This year’s program benefited from the time and expertise of 67 individual peer reviewers who vetted awards across 12 major University units and more than 39 departments, centers and institutes. More than half of the applications received were from assistant professors, reflecting a stated goal of the program to support the research agendas of junior faculty.

For more information on the program, types of grants or the application process, visit the .

Lava pour at the Comstock Art Facility in early 2020.

Robert Wysocki arrived at Syracuse University in 2008, having made a name in the art world by capturing landscapes in three dimensions. Known for large sand sculptures showcased in galleries from Los Angeles to Florida, Wysocki’s inspiration began on a driving trip through Central Nevada, where he kept stopping the car to look at a large formation of sand dunes far in the distance, seemingly floating in a valley.

“I couldn’t capture them in photos. I wanted to be a landscape painter, but I’m not talented, so painting was out. My wife suggested that I make the landscape instead,” he says.

Newly arrived at Syracuse, Wysocki felt like he had mastered sand as a medium for creating landscapes. As an artist and art professor focused on sculpture, he knew how to work with foundries and had experience with aluminum, bronze and iron. He started thinking once again about landscape formation and wondered how to make lava. Doing what any inquisitive person does when initially faced with a question, he turned to Google.

“All I found was instructions on how to make lava lamps. So I spent two weeks researching how mineral wool—the raw material for lava—is made. All of the materials engineering papers I found online were in Russian, Chinese or Hindi,” says Wysocki, director of the School of Art and the Doris E. Klein Endowed Professor of Art in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. “Google translate wasn’t what it is today, so it was a fair amount of filling in the blanks. I knew what size rock and what temperature, I didn’t know what type of rock would work best to produce lava. That’s when I turned to the Earth Sciences department. I called Jeff Karson because he had five minutes to talk to me. We ended up talking for an hour. He was laughing the whole time, but he eventually figured out that I was serious.”

“Bob came to me and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to make lava?’” says Karson, the Jesse Page Heroy Professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“I was skeptical, but it turned out that Bob knew a lot about geology and had thought a lot about how to simulate lava flows, so we just took it from there.”

Ten years and more than 2000 “pours”—simulated lava flows using a furnace, a crucible and molten rock—later, the pair are two of four collaborating authors of a recent paper in one of the world’s premier peer-reviewed science journals that demonstrates how planets made primarily of metal might form.

Believing in the process from the beginning, Wysocki and Karson never expected it to take this long for their work to be recognized as a scientifically valid—and artistically relevant—way to investigate lava formations and draw conclusions that inform our understanding of our own planet and others that exist within our range of observation.

Essentially, the Syracuse Lava Project bridges a gap in the traditional scales of observation for volcanologists and planetary scientists, notes Karson. “You can observe the properties of lava in a laboratory, but the scale is at a thimbleful at a time and you can’t observe some of the physical properties or interactions with surroundings. You can observe natural lava flows, but you are limited to working with the material nature provides in a dangerous setting,” he says.

“Thanks to this collaboration, we have created an experimental environment where we can control key variables like slope, temperature, viscosity and—at a moderate scale—how lava made up primarily of metal might behave.”

“Science is conservative,” says Wysocki. “Every volcanologist, physicist or planetary scientist who sees the project thinks it’s brilliant, but even though we can make the process consistent and reproducible, it was treated as a novelty.”

Karson adds, “We had this unique experimental program with an interesting niche—scientifically—between observing in a lab or during an active eruption. We eventually got grudging acceptance from the scientific community, but funding agencies really did not know what to do with us. The people in the lab didn’t see it as typical experimental work and the field volcanologists were skeptical that our findings could apply at a larger scale.”

Similarly, the art community isn’t really sure what to do with the project. “There’s an art to a lot of science,” says Wysocki, who has now observed lava for more hours than 90% of field volcanologists, based on the estimation of one geochemist involved with the project. “The impurities that float to the top, the lobes and petals that build up, crystal formations, these are all parts of the art of the lava pour that are relevant to the science.”

Now, with their latest paper and the help of a CUSE grant, this unlikely faculty duo and their collaborators have the data to submit a proposal to NASA for the planned mission to 16 Psyche, a 140-mile diameter giant metal asteroid in our solar system’s asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Earth sciences doctoral candidate Chris Sant working with lava.

Having observed the lava creation process thousands of times, the dynamic partnership between art and science means that both Karson and Wysocki are possibly the world’s leading experts on the practical dynamics of lava experimentation, Karson in terms of measurement protocols and reproducibility of experiments and Wysocki in understanding the alchemy of temperature, materials and experimental conditions that helps him predict—he says 99% of the time—how a lava pour will behave.

Each credits the other as the key to the project’s persistence and success.

“Our academic backgrounds are completely different,” says Karson, “But without Bob, we never could have done this. He’s very inventive and a terrific lateral thinker. While lava flows are one of the faster geological phenomena, this project is really eye-opening in that you see geological processes, such as the transformation of lava to rock and crystal formation, happen right before your eyes.”

Wysocki credits Karson, whose primary research interest is planetary architecture and specifically the phenomenon of sea floor spreading, for his insight, saying, “We’ve had MacArthur genius grant recipients, celebrated volcanologists and geologists—lots of intelligent and accomplished people around the project. Yet, in my mind, I have always found Jeff to be the smartest person in the room regardless of the scientific focus.”

After ten years, their unexpected partnership is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

Artist rendering of the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche. (Courtesy: Shutterstock)

In August 2022, NASA will embark on a space mission to 16 Psyche, a 140-mile diameter giant metal asteroid situated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA says it will be the first mission to investigate a planetary body made of metal rather than those dominated by rock and ice, such as the Earth, Moon or Mars. Inspired by that historic mission, researchers from Syracuse University and North Carolina State have collaborated to investigate how different lava types would flow on a planetary body made of mostly metal, like 16 Psyche. The team then plans to share the published results with NASA and other investigators interested in the 2022 NASA mission to the “metal world.”

As molten rock, or magma, from deep inside Earth oozes out onto the planet’s surface, the stream of hot liquid that pours out is then called lava. Lava is one of the fundamental materials that creates and modifies landscapes on planetary bodies in our solar system. The shapes of volcanic landscapes on Earth provide the basis for understanding eruptions on other planets.

Unfortunately for scientists, it is difficult to study active lava flows in nature due to the unpredictability and danger associated with research near an eruption. But researchers at A&S have found a way to study lava more safely. Since 2009, the has been recreating lava flows under controlled conditions on the Syracuse University campus by melting rocks to different temperatures using furnaces. They create meter-scale flows of molten basaltic lava, the same black lava that covers the seafloor, Hawaii, Iceland and other volcanic terranes on Earth and other planets.

As the city confronts new housing and economic opportunities for the neighborhoods adjacent to the highway, experts and audience members will consider questions about public policy and mixed income communities, re-renewal, the relationship between public space and private development, and how good design contributes to the success of neighborhoods and residents.

Forum participants include Lanessa Chaplin, Esq., assistant director for the New York Civil Liberties Union; Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones professor of American studies in the Department of History at Harvard University; Lawrence Vale, associate dean and Ford professor of urban design and planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and John Washington, organizer and political educator at People’s Action. Kishi Ducre, associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion and associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University will moderate the discussion.

This is the first of three planned events addressing housing issues in Syracuse constructed to create a dialogue among and between residents, local leaders and national experts on the history and impact of urban revitalization projects.

To register for the “Charting Renewal” public forum, visit .

I-81 and Pioneer Homes | Photo Credit: Lawrence Davis

is a partnership between the School of Architecture and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The partners hope their collaboration will help ensure that inclusive policy and design are at the forefront of challenges facing cities in the United States and around the world. The goal of the City Scripts symposia is to create an ongoing, interdisciplinary and applied dialogue that reaches beyond the university and influences both policy and design.

The “Charting Renewal” forum is supported by The Kresge Foundation’s American Cities Program, the Syracuse University Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) grant program, the at the , the School of Architecture, and Syracuse University. It is organized by School of Architecture Associate Professors Elizabeth Kamell and Lawrence Davis, undergraduate chair; and Maxwell School Professors Carol Faulkner, associate dean, and Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.

For more information, contact Elizabeth Kamell at ekamell@syr.edu.

“At Berkeley I was working on a biomaterial-based platform for cell micropatterning—basically we lay down a pattern and human pluripotent stem cells will grow and differentiate as directed by that pattern. When you have a technology you ask, ‘What can we use it for?,’” says Ma.

Induced pluripotent stem cells, reprogrammed from adult human cells, have the potential to develop into any kind of cells in the human body based on biochemical signaling and cues from the physical environment. That’s where the new technology came in.

Zhen Ma

In talking to some of his physician colleagues at UC Berkeley, Ma learned that very little is known about how various drugs affect the development of a human embryo; there’s no way to test the effects ethically in a living system. That got him thinking about whether this biomaterial system could be used to understand how the heart forms in the earliest phases of development. One of the major applications of cell micropatterning and related biomaterial systems is to develop organoids—tiny, self-organized, three-dimensional tissue cultures that are derived from stem cells. These cultures can be crafted to mimic much of the complexity of an organ or to express selected aspects of that organ, such as producing only certain kinds of cells.

At Syracuse University, Ma set up his lab and got to work developing and refining a cardiac organoid model. Using both biochemical and biophysical cues, stem cells are “trained” beginning with a 600 micron diameter pattern that creates a circular colony of stem cells. They then grow and self-assemble in a 3-dimensional chamber. Knowing that changing the shape of that chamber changes the cues that tell the cells how to develop, Ma sought to mimic the developmental shapes of a human heart as they occur naturally during fetal development. “The first stage in the heart’s development is a linear tube of tissue, so we started there,” he says.

His proof of concept earned a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award of more than $400,000 over five years, to continue to develop what Ma calls “heart embryonic development on a chip.” He says, “The goal is to optimize the biochemical and biophysical cues in the system that allows us to create a consistent model over and over. We want to hold everything constant in these living tissue models so we’re confident that changes result from the outside variable we’re testing.”

Studying how drugs affect fetal heart development hasn’t been feasible in a living system until this technology was developed. As he is developing a consistent model, Ma is now moving forward with testing between 30-40 well-known drugs with the goal of developing a risk classification for medications that might be taken during pregnancy. His research has been boosted by a $2.3 million grant over five years from the National Institute of Children’s Health and Human Development (part of the National Institutes of Health) to evaluate the specific effects of how these drugs might disrupt the formation of the correct three-dimensional structures and the capabilities that cardiac tissue has for contracting and expanding.

“We’re really excited because this could provide a pioneering breakthrough in drug discovery, regulation, and safe prescribing during pregnancy,” Ma says.

Zhen Ma

As a new father himself, Ma understands that doctors don’t really know whether a particular drug might hurt a developing fetus. There have been multiple studies of commonly prescribed drugs, such as antidepressants, on fetal health. Yet there are still many unanswered questions. This means that many women don’t have information they need to make decisions during pregnancy and forces difficult decisions as doctors try to balance risks while ensuring maternal and fetal health.

“It’s really exciting to begin work on the real practical application of this model,” says Plansky Hoang, who completed a Ph.D. at Syracuse University this past year and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Ma Lab. “There’s the potential to really understand what goes wrong in fetal development that leads to birth defects–whether as the result of exposure to a drug or a genetic factor.” As a postdoctoral fellow, Hoang hopes to better understand how different cell types work in the model and whether it will be possible to model genetic diseases that give rise to congenital heart defects.

Ma’s lab has benefited from the development of the and the collaborations available across the University. He’s collaborating with , assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering, on a project that was awarded one of BioInspired’s first six seed grants. Their goal is to create microgels, materials formed from a network of crosslinked polymers, that will enable them to develop a synthetic model of a blastocyst—one of the earliest structures formed in mammalian development. Because this is the point in development where human embryonic stem cells begin to differentiate, the ability to develop a synthetic model could have many uses in basic scientific research. The goal of BioInspired seed grants is to fast-track promising research ideas, funding proof of concept or preliminary studies allowing faculty to generate the data that will result in external funding.

“The more we can work on this technology, the more applications it may have,” says Ma. “Combining materials and living systems is opening doors to solving problems with applications we couldn’t have imagined just a decade ago.”

This research is funded by National Science Foundation, Award# 1943798 and National Institutes of Health/DHHS, Award #1R01HD101130-01.

A wide variety of workshops will help faculty, postdocs and graduate students hone their grant writing skills; tailor grant proposals to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation; get advice from industry professionals on publishing in the humanities; help researchers learn about support services provided by the University, including finding funding sources; and get tips on writing a successful CUSE grant proposal or advice on improving specific grant components.

“The events planned for Spring 2021 have been developed based on feedback to a survey that we fielded in December,” says Ramesh Raina, interim vice president for research. “These workshops are designed to address what Syracuse University faculty have told us would be most useful. We hope to continually gather feedback and develop programming that is timely, relevant and useful to faculty, postdocs and graduate students across all disciplines.”

Highlights include:

“,“ to be held March 11 and 12.�� Note that registration must be received by Feb. 15. This workshop will comprehensively address both practical and conceptual aspects that are important to writing competitive grant proposals to the NSF. The Office of Research has provided the funding for overall workshop, but registrants must pay for the workbooks which accompany the workshop. The fee is $100 for Syracuse University faculty, staff and graduate students. The Graduate School sponsored fees for the first 75 eligible Ph.D. students, all slots of which are now full. The workshop is open to faculty and graduate students at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and SUNY Upstate Medical University for a fee of $150.

““ to be held on Feb. 19. Sponsored by the Syracuse University Humanities Center, Office of Research and College of Arts and Sciences, the workshop features two editors from Stanford University Press. The editors have also set aside additional time for one-on-one consultation with faculty who have questions related to their specific humanities book projects.

will be held on March 19. The virtual workshop is hosted in collaboration with the Central New York Humanities Corridor and the Syracuse University Humanities Center and will be open to all members of Central New York Humanities Corridor institutions.

A full list of events can be found on the����or by downloading this��.�� Preregistration is required but can be completed up to the day of the event for most sessions. Many events will be recorded and posted with slides to the Office of Research webpage.

For questions about any of these events, please email vpr@syr.edu

A student works in the laboratory of Professor Robert Doyle.

The funding effort, managed by the University’s Office of Research, seeks to grow the research enterprise, foster interdisciplinary collaborations and enhance University-based scholarship to increase extramural funding and high-quality scholarly output. The program was launched in 2017 as part of the $100 million Invest Syracuse initiative to enhance academic excellence.

The 2021 CUSE Grant Program incorporates significant changes in response to requests from the Syracuse University research community. These include:

• A reduction in the number of proposal documents needed for all grant applications, especially for the smaller funding opportunities, to reduce the burden of application completion.
• An increase in the amount of funding that can be requested for equipment on the Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research and Good to Great grants, from $5,000 to $10,000.
• For 2021, the program will offer a limited number of COVID-Relief Grants of up to $15,000 to fund the continuation or completion of ongoing research projects that have slowed or stalled due to the impact of the pandemic.

The CUSE grant program supports faculty research in all disciplines, including basic, translational and applied sciences; social sciences; physical and life sciences; engineering; liberal arts and humanities; and professional studies, as well as creative and other scholarly activities. Priority is given to strategic interdisciplinary initiatives at the University and disciplinary research areas with great potential for extramural funding and institutional recognition.

Five types of grants are available for 2021:

• Seed Grant: Funding is capped at $5,000 per grant. Applications can be individuals or teams.
• Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant: Funding is capped at $30,000 per grant. Applications can be individuals (innovative) or teams (interdisciplinary research).
• Good to Great Grant: Funding is capped at $30,000 per grant. Applications can be individuals or teams.
• Interdisciplinary Seminar Grant: Funding is capped at $10,000. Applications can be individuals or teams.
• COVID-Relief Grant: Funding is capped at $15,000.�� Applications can be individuals or teams.

The full RFP is available on the . Applications are now being accepted through Syracuse University’s Applicant Portal: .

Subject-specific information sessions are also being scheduled; check research.syr.edu for more scheduled events.

In the 2020 round, the CUSE Grant Program funded 59 projects in the humanities, social sciences, creative arts and STEM areas.

For more information, visit the��.

Romita Ray

Associate professor of art history Romita Ray specializes in the art and architecture of the British Empire in India. With assistance from the University’s Proposal Support Services and internal grant funding, Ray is doing research she feels an intimate personal connection with, which she says sets her up for an intellectual adventure. “I’ve always felt when you’re most honest with yourself and your thoughts, which is actually a deeply personal engagement, I think that’s when your writing is the sharpest and your research is the most incisive.”

Originally from Kolkata, India, Ray’s latest interdisciplinary research has centered on a botanical novelty and a prized beverage that intersects with her personal family history: tea. While the British introduced the China variety of tea to India, they soon found out about an indigenous species of tea growing in northeast India. Realizing the commercial potential of growing tea in India, they industrialized the plant, and their colonial influence is evident in the industry even today.

Ray is taking a highly interdisciplinary approach to a historical study of tea. She sees tea as an intersection between plants, science, animals, and art and architecture. Several generations of Ray’s family were tea planters, and her great-grandfather was the founder chairman of the Indian Tea Planters Association at a time when tea was an irrefutably British imperial industry.

“So it’s very interesting to return to that history as more of a departure point, because it gives me a level of comfort. I’m intimately familiar with tea-growing landscapes,” she explains.

Even with her familiarity with how tea is grown, processed, exported and used, as a whole, India operates with a different set of parameters and organizational structures.

“You learn a lot of patience in the process. It’s a slow but sustained project,” says Ray. India operates on networks of trust and these relationships need time to develop, she says.

In 2016, Ray won a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship, that enabled her to travel to India, the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. “I was very fortunate to receive one of these nationally competitive fellowships, which really helped push the research forward,” she says. The yearlong grant enabled Ray to gain valuable insight into the industry and its networks by developing relationships over time.

For Ray, the history of Indian tea is essentially about taming the tea plant. “I can’t imagine writing a book about tea without understanding the plant itself,” she says.

Her research has taken her down surprising avenues and unexpected turns, everywhere from forest divisions to natural history collections. She has consulted with plant scientists, tea planters, a tiger preservationist and botanical artists. She has gathered material from the descendants of colonial planters and learned to pluck tea.

Her goal is to present these connected histories of art, science and living histories to shape the most interesting story she can tell. “It has taken me through many different journeys I would say,” says Ray. “The best part about this project is that I’m having fun, and I never get bored with it.”

Her international research brought Ray to archives, herbaria, libraries, private collections, museums, research institutes and tea plantations. “But that was only the beginning,” she says. “I just saw this entire world open up before me.”

Ray’s research brought her into contact with botanists, tea industry stalwarts, historians of science, and tea pluckers who harvest the leaves.

“My circle of life and thinking widened, and that’s what makes this project so fulfilling,” she says. “Turning to tea experts who are not necessarily academic has enriched my work far more than I had envisioned.”

One outside expert connection was a School of Architecture alumnus Todd Rubin. Rubin owns the Republic of Tea company. “There’s a lot of tea talk that happens between us,” says Ray. “Syracuse University has given me a much larger network who are connected to the American tea scene.”

On Jan. 21, 2021, Ray and Rubin will join College of Arts and Sciences’ alumnus Tim Takacs, co-owner of Marulin, a London-based tea company, for a virtual tea program for the SU Alumni Association. And in June 2021, Rubin will be co-sponsoring a tea conference that Ray is co-organizing with Richard Coulton (Queen Mary University of London) and Jordan Goodman (University College London), at the Linnean Society, the world’s oldest active biological society in London.

Since returning to the United States, Ray was awarded a 2020 Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) Grant and has begun working on her book tentatively titled, “Leafy Wonders: Art, Aesthetics, and the Science of Tea in Colonial and Modern India.”

Currently on research sabbatical, Ray is approaching the subject through the lens of an art historian.

“How to tell a multi-faceted story about a plant and the people, landscapes and wild animals associated with it, is bound to be challenging. So I’m relishing every minute of it right now,” says Ray.

While on leave, Ray is practicing botanical illustration. “It makes me understand what I am writing about through practice,” says Ray. “I’m grateful to Syracuse University for giving me the year to think and write.”

Charles Driscoll

Entering its final year of National Science Foundation funding, the EMPOWER (Education Model Program on Water-Energy Research) program at Syracuse University has delivered powerful lessons on interdisciplinary approaches to graduate education.

Originally led by Principal Investigator Laura Lautz and more recently by Professor Charles Driscoll, EMPOWER is a comprehensive graduate research training program that equips students with the content knowledge and professional skills necessary to pursue academic and non-academic careers at the water-energy nexus. Defined as the interrelationship between human needs for water and energy, the “water-energy nexus” is a priority for researchers nationally and globally, according to Driscoll, University Professor�� of Environmental Systems and Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Today, EMPOWER brings together graduate students from the College of Arts and Sciences, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and the College of Engineering and Computer Science to participate in shared professional development, education and research activities related to the water-energy nexus. “EMPOWER combines broad training across management, policy, communication and law with in-depth training in a self-designed focus area that is most applicable to the trainee’s career objectives,” says Driscoll.

Driscoll says despite the pandemic, EMPOWER has had a successful year thanks to the efforts of�� the University’s talented and energetic students, faculty and staff. Highlights include a suite of professional development activities, award winning research and the largest and most diverse cohort of Ph.D. students in EMPOWER’s history, enrolled in Fall 2019.

For example, trainee Lachlan Wright and faculty leadership member Christopher Scholz, professor of earth and environmental sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, published a paper in the journal Tectonics and presented their work at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco. In addition, trainee Julianne Sweeney also won two prestigious awards from the American Geophysical Union. In the last year, 10 graduate trainees completed their Ph.D. or master’s degrees and have found employment. Graduates are now working in private industry, for government agencies, as environmental consultants or in higher education.

“With the strength of our professional schools coupled with the College of Arts and Sciences, I believe EMPOWER could be an innovative model for future graduate interdisciplinary training in the sciences, engineering and computer science, social sciences and information science at Syracuse University,” says Driscoll.

Trainees in the program have several specialized courses and resources available. All students complete a one-credit seminar each semester featuring current issues at the water-energy nexus. In addition, research training, professional development and presentations by visiting lecturers help trainees understand specific ways that classroom learning can be applied in the field of their endeavor. Students are supported through coursework that provides focused training in professional skills. This coursework is tailored to students’ self-identified career trajectory. To help bridge any gaps in communications skills, trainees enroll in a three-credit course designed to improve skills in public communication of science. Every graduate student in EMPOWER also receives a “career pathway experience” that is designed to develop research activities that integrate professional development to support their career goals.

Other specialized support includes domestic and international field experiences where trainees learn to make field measurements that would support their research or career work with faculty under challenging conditions as a unifying capstone experience. ��Field experience is especially useful preparation for careers requiring intensive collaboration. EMPOWER’s faculty developed an integrated field course that is implemented either in the northeastern U.S. and Rwanda that weaves together EMPOWER’s research and training themes. To supplement their training, Syracuse University also offers trainees opportunities to apply for grants to support specific lines of emerging research or professional development activities that would not occur through traditional research grants or assistantships.

Future activities planned for EMPOWER include cultivating students’ professional development by offering mock review and paper reviews, resume development in collaboration with staff at the Graduate School, interview support and data visualization workshops. Tentatively, depending on public health conditions related to COVID-19, the program is planning to offer an international field course covering concepts at the water-energy nexus through hands-on exercises, student mini projects and demonstrations. This work would take place at various field sites on and near Lake Kivu in Rwanda.

“Our goal is to produce graduates with not only in-depth content knowledge, but also strong oral and written communication skills, a multidisciplinary perspective, entrepreneurial and project management skills, a sense of professionalism, and an understanding of how knowledge in one area can be applied across broad context,” says Driscoll.

“We designed the program to advance the mission of the BioInspired Institute: promoting world-class research,” says BioInspired Institute Director M. Lisa Manning. “Our goal is to jump-start exciting ideas that result from faculty collaborating across disciplines.”

One of 10 cross-disciplinary research clusters identified through a faculty-led proposal development process, BioInspired is supported by Invest Syracuse. The institute includes faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering and Computer Science with collaborators from SUNY Upstate and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Manning notes that the application was intentionally designed to be less time-consuming for this inaugural year, recognizing the challenges that many faculty face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.�� The goal is to fast-track promising research ideas, funding proof of concept or preliminary studies. Data generated through these studies enables faculty to submit strong grant proposals to funding organizations like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

“The proposals we received are really exciting. Each has the potential to be leveraged into high-impact research programs,” says Jay Henderson, associate director of BioInspired.

The awards of approximately $30,000 each will go to six projects:

• (principal investigator, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, SUNY Upstate) and (co-principal investigator): Investigating the effects of localized extracellular matrix stiffening on human trabecular meshwork biopolymer hydrogels.
• (principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Designer microgels for generation of synthetic blastocyst mimics.
• (principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Genetically programmable and mechanically adaptive engineered living materials.
• (principal investigator), (co-principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Deciphering the role of vimentin-centrosome interactions in cell function.
• (principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): An Interactive Virtual Reality System for Microfluidics and Beyond.
• (principal investigator) and (co-principal investigator): Strong creases, active folds: development of active matter for soft robotics.

“These projects, while early stage, all have exciting potential for important applications like fighting infectious disease, creating innovative biomaterials for medical use, creating more realistic systems for testing drug toxicity in the lab and expanding the frontier of robotics technology,” says Ramesh Raina, interim vice president for research. “We know that seed grants are an effective mechanism for building research programs that attract outside funding for innovative ideas. This program is just one way that the BioInspired Institute is doing exactly what we hoped by bringing together faculty from different disciplines and our partner institutions to spark innovative approaches to materials and living systems.”

“Interdisciplinary Approaches to Elder Justice: Unlocking the Potential of Restorative Practices,” is free and open to the public, but . Intended for professionals in social work, law, medicine, nursing, government, and psychiatry, the symposium will feature scholars and practitioners from around the world, including two distinguished international speakers:

• Jennifer Llewellyn, professor of law, Yogis and Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law, Dalhousie University Schulich School of Law, Halifax, Nova Scotia
• Chris Marshall, Diana Unwin Chair in Restorative Justice, University of Victoria School of Government, Wellington, New Zealand

Jennifer Llewellyn

With a focus on the strengths and challenges of restorative models, the conference will feature short presentations, panel discussions, break-out groups and circles designed to explore implementation barriers and appropriate methods for supporting and maintaining positive outcomes.

Conference organizers Professors Mary Helen McNeal, of the College of Law, and Maria Brown, Falk College’s School of Social Work and the Aging Studies Institute, have researched and published on this topic. Their most recent publication, “,” appeared in the Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect.�� Their work also includes advocacy and legal support of elders in the Syracuse community facing abuse and financial exploitation.

According to the organizers, few models exist that apply restorative principles to elder abuse, and existing research and scholarship measuring successful interventions and preventions is limited. By gathering a dynamic group of international scholars working at the intersection of restorative practices and elder justice, the researchers anticipate further innovations in responding to elder abuse.

Chris Marshall

Restorative processes are based on problem-solving models used by indigenous groups, and have been adapted to address a range of social problems, including school disciplinary matters, juvenile offenses, disputes on college campuses, and even domestic violence.�� They offer alternative approaches to address harm by bringing together the person harmed, the perpetrator and the community to address what happened, repair the relationships and generate a plan for future conduct.

Older adults, particularly those experiencing physical and cognitive decline, often rely on family and friends for care and support to remain independent. Unfortunately, the same individuals who help them maintain their independence can take advantage of their need for support, resulting in physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; financial exploitation; or neglect.

Elder abuse is experienced by 15.7 percent adults aged 60 and older, although only 1 in 24 cases is reported, according to the World Health Organization. Research indicates family members, usually adult children and spouses, are the most frequent perpetrators. While elder abuse can be addressed in many ways, such as social service interventions and civil and criminal justice responses, these remedies are not always viable options when a family member is responsible for committing the harm. And frequently, the older adult does not want to pursue any action against a family member.

Restorative processes offer another avenue for elder justice, with the added benefits of helping break social isolation that makes the older adult vulnerable to abuse while supporting caregivers whose struggles may be leading to the abuse.

For more information about the conference, contact Professor��Mary Helen McNeal at mhmcneal@law.syr.edu.

“We are excited to offer additional support to our research community, including faculty, students and staff,” says University Chief Information Officer Sam Scozzafava. “This National Science Foundation grant attests to the caliber and collaborative spirit of research at Syracuse University.”

The grant builds on previous success in GPU-powered research. Leveraging strengths in virtualization and workload management, the team deployed a smaller-scale GPU cluster in 2015 to address the emerging needs of campus researchers. The new GPU-powered computing cluster will serve researchers across disciplines as varied as computational forensics, high-energy physics, smart vision systems, computational chemistry, biomedical engineering, soft-matter physics and gravitational-wave physics.

“Graphical processing units are a unique resource for researchers,” says Eric Sedore, chief technology officer. “Instead of gaming or graphical output, which are common uses for GPUs, we use them to do a large amount of math for advanced research.”

The grant adds momentum to the emerging Data Innovation Institute project, an initiative led by Duncan Brown, the Charles Brightman Endowed Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. With funding from a and in collaboration with ITS, Brown is exploring how research computing can advance research and scholarship at Syracuse University.

“The new cluster, together with two full-time cyberinfrastructure engineers who provide expertise in software development and high-performance computing, continues our success in securing funding for research computing at Syracuse,” says Brown.

Access to GPUs will enhance research opportunities for Syracuse students. The new cluster will allow broader GPU use within courses and provide computing power to student researchers. Undergraduates and graduate students will gain practical experience with cutting-edge computing architectures.

Beyond campus, the new cluster will strengthen the global scientific community through integration with the Open Science Grid, a collaborative effort that leverages distributed computing cycles at member institutions. A substantial amount of Syracuse’s recent Open Science Grid contributions has supported computational research to address COVID-19. Syracuse University has been a consistent contributor to the Open Science Grid since 2015, fostering the University’s reputation for extramural collaboration and world-class cyberinfrastructure.

The Research Computing team interacts with campus researchers individually, at a research-group level and through campuswide events. Researchers interested in contacting the Research Computing team may email researchcomputing@syr.edu.

“We strive not just to improve research on campus but to transform it,” Sedore says. “This grant is a big step in that direction.”

The speakers include:

Catalina Devandas Aguilar
UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Friday, Jan. 24, 9-10:30 a.m.
Location TBA

Erika George�� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, University of Utah College of Law
Thursday, Feb. 13, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
College of Law Collaboratory
Co-sponsored by the College of Law Office of the Dean

Beth Simmons
University Professor of Law, Political Science and Business Ethics, University of Pennsylvania
Friday, March 13, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
College of Law Collaboratory
Co-sponsored by the College of Law Office of the Dean

Kathryn Sikkink
Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights, Harvard Kennedy School
Fall 2020

“This slate of speakers, representing the nation’s leading human rights scholars, is part of a two-year-long interdisciplinary CUSE Grant project on the role of human rights treaties in effecting societal change,” says Professor Arlene S. Kanter, Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence and professor of law, director of DLPP, faculty director of international programs and principal investigator for the grant. “Not only is this CUSE Grant project bringing to the College of Law leading experts in the field of human rights; ��it is also bringing together faculty from throughout the University, including my colleagues Professors (Cora) True-Frost and (Corri) Zoli from the College of Law, Professors (Audie) Klotz and (Lamis) Abdelaaty from the Maxwell School, Professor (Michael) Gill from the School of Education and Professor (Anne) Bellows from Falk College,” says Kanter.

Additional speakers and events will be announced in the months ahead.

The CUSE Grant program was designed to be highly interdisciplinary, to spur growth in the research enterprise and to further support the University’s standing as a pre-eminent and inclusive student-focused research university. The CUSE Grant application and merit review processes were designed to emulate the most common practices found in leading external sponsors, with an expectation that CUSE-funded faculty members will seek extramural support for their developed projects and collaboration. The program’s ultimate goal is to increase both extramural funding and high-quality scholarly output, which in turn will increase national and international recognition of awardees, their programs and the University.

Ed Bogucz and Senem Velipasalar

Two faculty members in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) will extend their collaborations to develop an innovative system that improves energy modeling of existing buildings using “aerial intelligence” acquired by drones. Senem Velipasalar, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Edward Bogucz, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, are members of a team that recently was awarded $1.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The DOE funding will support a three-year project called “Aerial Intelligence for Retrofit Building Energy Modeling (AirBEM).” AirBEM will complement human auditing of building interiors with the use of drones equipped with infrared sensors and onboard processors to audit the exterior envelope. The drones will use computer vision algorithms to detect both materials and heat transfer anomalies, which suggest construction defects, such as air leaks.

The concept for AirBEM originated at Syracuse University with initial seed funding from . ��Subsequently, AirBEM collaborators developed the concept using additional support awarded by multiple sources, including ECS and the Office of Research, the Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability program, the University College Innovative Program Development Fund (iFund) and the Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) grant program.

Tarek Rakha, assistant professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the principal investigator for the new DOE project. Previously, Rakha was a faculty member in Syracuse University’s School of Architecture and a SyracuseCoE faculty fellow. Velipasalar will lead the research tasks that will be conducted at Syracuse University for the project. Bogucz will assist with efforts to commercialize the technology.

More than half of all U.S. commercial buildings were built before 1970 and are inefficient relative to newer buildings. To address the inefficiency of this older stock, retrofit programs rely on on-site auditing to collect information about buildings’ envelope, lighting and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. The programs use physics-based, whole-building energy modeling to identify and diagnose specific inefficiencies in these systems and to design and optimize energy-efficiency measure packages that address them.

Envelopes and windows account for over 50 percent of energy loads in buildings, but collecting detailed and actionable information about them is challenging. A primary challenge is the difficulty in accessing building exteriors above the first or second story. Using humans to perform this inspection is time-consuming, costly, dangerous and error prone.

“The aspiration for this work is to profoundly inform building retrofit design by radically enhancing the methods and modes of envelope audits,” says Rakha. “We want to allow auditors to move past a small number of single-frame images for inspection; we want to enable retrofits to address specific building envelope issues, and we want to develop 3D models that designers can interact with when developing retrofit plans.”

“My students and I are excited by this opportunity to develop new computer vision algorithms and interpret thermal images for this challenging application,” says Velipasalar. “We look forward to continuing to advance ideas that we developed thanks to early support from the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Office of Research, the Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability Program and the iFund and CUSE grant programs.”

“AirBEM promises to be a valuable asset for accelerating the market for energy-efficiency retrofits of buildings in New York State, across the country, and around the world,” says Bogucz. “I look forward to helping the AirBEM team engage innovative companies that are prospective early adopters of the new system.”

“Disability Arts and Culture as Vital Performance” is supported by the 2019 Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) Grant program and BBI’s Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach.

Thursday, Oct. 17, 4-5:30 p.m., with a reception and book signing to follow, Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, 114 Bird Library

“In the Province of the Gods”: A Reading by Kenny Fries

Fries is a poet and nonfiction writer who has explored multiple facets of disability and cross-cultural experience from the Galapagos to Japan to contemporary Europe. He will read from his recent work.

Friday, Oct. 18, Noon-1:30, Cortland Lecture Hall, Room 340, Dineen Hall

New Opportunities for Contemporary Disability Writing and Cultural Diplomacy: A Pane Presentation

A panel featuring disabled poets and writers Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, Fries and Connie Voisine, with Christopher Merrill, director of the international writing program at the University of Iowa. Moderated by University Professor Stephen Kuusisto, CUSE Grant principal investigator.

The panel will discuss the development of a new international disability and cultural diplomacy initiative, including experiences and thoughts on disability and cultural engagement, what they mean, what a grassroots disability arts project could be in a global context and efforts to create an International Disabled Writing Program.

“The goal of our symposium is to highlight disability writing and culture, and to plan for a larger international cultural diplomacy program, which will introduce disability arts and culture in select global locations,” says Kuusisto.

“This coming spring, we will be hosting a second disability literature symposium as part of this grant project to address our goal of establishing an International Disabled Writer’s Program in partnership with the University of Iowa,” adds Professor Diane Wiener, co-principal investigator and associate director of BBI’s Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach.

“Additionally, the disability poetics and literature journal, , will be transitioning to Syracuse University, under the collaborative leadership of the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach and Syracuse University Libraries. The fall 2019 and spring 2020 symposium events and the eventual establishment of an International Disabled Writer’s Program are all interconnected with Wordgathering’s new home at Syracuse University.”

American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) will be provided during the reading and panel, and ASL interpretation will be provided during the reception and book signing. For other accommodations, contact Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri at 315.443.2156 or razubal@law.syr.edu.

The funding effort, named the Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) grant program, supports faculty research in all disciplines, including basic, translational and applied sciences; social sciences; physical and life sciences; engineering; liberal arts and humanities; and professional studies, as well as creative research and other scholarly activities.

“I am very happy to see funding of various research projects across all disciplines as well as interdisciplinary, collaborative projects,” says Provost Michele Wheatly. “This seed funding will allow faculty members to generate preliminary data that is so essential for seeking extramural support.”

A total of $1.67 million was awarded for the 90 projects. Among the funded projects, 51 are in humanities, social sciences and creative research areas, and 39 are in STEM research areas. All schools and colleges that applied to the program are represented in the funded projects.

The grant program employed a peer review process, which vetted awards across 12 major University units and more than 40 departments, centers and institutes. According to Stuart Taub, director of the Office of Sponsored Programs and program support for the CUSE grant program, “The CUSE grant program would not have been possible without the generosity and tireless efforts of the review panel, which was composed of 40 reviewers from various disciplines, to adequately cover the diverse expertise areas of the applicants.”

The program funded four types of grants for its inaugural year:

• Seed Grant: The funding levels of these grants are capped at $5,000 per grant for a period of up to two years. Applications can be individuals or teams. (26 funded)

• Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant: Funding levels are capped at $30,000 per grant for a period of up to two years. Applications can be individuals (innovative) or teams (interdisciplinary research). (40 funded)

• Good to Great Grant: Funding levels are capped at $30,000 per grant for a period of up to two years. Applications can be individuals or teams. (6 funded)

• Interdisciplinary Seminar Grant: Funding levels are capped at $10,000 per grant. Applications can be individuals or teams. (18 funded)

In addition to supporting a wide range of disciplines, the CUSE grant program directly invests in the involvement of all levels of expertise in the higher education spectrum. In addition to student involvement in interdisciplinary seminars, more than 200 undergraduate and graduate students will be included in the 90 funded projects, with the potential to involve many more as the projects progress over the two-year funding period. Additionally, more than 150 faculty members will be engaged to direct the funded projects as principal investigators or to support projects as co-investigator collaborators. These include 54 assistant professors, 50 associate professors and 54 full professors as well as 20 research staff. Finally, 40 junior and senior faculty participated as peer reviewers, which brings the eventual footprint of the 2018 CUSE grant program to almost 440 involved faculty, students and other research staff.

“The CUSE grant program is one of the strategic steps of achieving Chancellor Syverud’s vision of enhancing the student experience and increasing research and innovation,” says Vice President for Research John Liu. “As such, the CUSE grant program will not only help advance knowledge of the awardees’ fields and enhance the University’s research profile and impact, but it also will create more research opportunities for our students.”

The CUSE grant program was designed to be highly interdisciplinary, to spur growth in the research enterprise and to further support the University’s standing as a pre-eminent and inclusive student-focused research university. The CUSE grant application and merit review processes were designed to emulate the most common practices found in leading external sponsors, with an expectation that CUSE-funded faculty members will seek extramural support for their developed projects and collaboration. The program’s ultimate goal is to increase both extramural funding and high-quality scholarly output, which in turn will increase national and international recognition of awardees, their programs and the University.

For more information on the program, types of grants or the application process, go to the Internal Grant Programs link at or the the .��