2007 Seed Fund Awards

Toward a Closer Alignment between High School and University Curricula: A Pilot Study on International Comparison in Students' Study of Chemistry

This collaborative effort between the Education and Chemistry departments will examine the secondary education systems of nations that consistently outperform the US in 8th grade to determine the differences in their science curricula. This research will position the team to develop a chemistry curricular framework for U.S. secondary schools-and urban schools in particular-that prepares students for university-level scientific study.

PI: Kenneth Wong, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair for Education Policy Professor of Education, Political Science and Public Policy & Director of Urban Education Policy Program, Department of Education
Co-PI: Peter M. Weber, Chair, Department of Chemistry
$80,000

Integrin Mediated Adhesion and Retraction during T Cell Migration

Using newly developed biophysical and engineering tools, an interdisciplinary team of physicists, engineers and hospital-based research faculty will study the forces involved in the adhesion and migration of T cells. These tools will allow for the visualization and tracking of specific proteins such as integrin, which are involved in adhesion during migration. The knowledge acquired will be pertinent to understanding the precise mechanisms used by immune cells to fight infectious diseases.

PI: Jay X. Tang, Assistant Professor of Physics and Engineering, Physics
Co-PIs: L. Ben Freund, Henry Ledyard Goddard University Professor, Mechanics of Solids and Structures, Division of Engineering; Minsoo Kim, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, Brown Medical School; Jonathan Reichner, Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, Brown Medical School
$90,000

Evolutionary Response to Nanomaterial Exposure in the Environment: Functional Genomics of C60-Resistance in Drosophilia

The release of nanoparticles to the environment could have significant impacts on the genetic composition of natural communities. Using fruit flies as a model system, this project will address the ecotoxicological effects of Buckminster fullerene (C60) exposures to determine the long-term environmental effects on the genetic variation in populations. This project will further current nanotoxicology research by adding a novel ecological and evolutionary component and will enhance the work of Brown's emerging cross-departmental center, the Alliance for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation.

PI: David Rand, Professor of Biology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Co-PIs: Kristi Wharton, Associate Professor of Biology, Department of Molecular Biology, Cellular Biology and Biochemistry; Robert Hurt, Professor of Engineering, Division of Engineering
$55,000

Developing an Integrated Genomic Approach to Explore the Antitumor Activity of Vitamin D and Derivatives to Treat Ovarian Cancer

The goal of this project is to take a global genomic view to understand the effect of vitamin D and the vitamin D derivative, MT19C, on ovarian tumors. This cross-disciplinary team of experts from molecular biology, chemistry, mathematics and medicine will combine complementary genomic technologies to understand how cells respond to vitamin D. This research will provide important insights to develop novel therapeutic treatments for ovarian cancer.

PI: Alexander S. Brodsky, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry
Co-PIs: Laurent Brard, Assistant Professor and Director of the Molecular Therapeutics Laboratory at Women & Infants Hospital of RI; Charles Lawrence, Professor of Applied Mathematics; Richard Freiman, Assistant Professor of Medical Science, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry
$90,000

Carbohydrate-binding Flourescent Nanoparticles: an Enabling Technology for Glycomics

This project brings together chemists, pathologists and biologists interested in studying cell surface carbohydrates and their functions. Using the tools of quantitative fluorescence microscopy and pattern recognition algorithms, this team will generate more accurate descriptions of cell surface carbohydrate compositions. This knowledge will contribute to a strategy for diagnosing cancer at the molecular level and for understanding the basic glycobiology of plant development.

PI: Amit Basu, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
Co-PIs: Douglas Gnepp, Professor, Department of Pathology, Brown Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital; Mark Johnson, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry; Matthew Zimmt, Professor, Department of Chemistry
$90,000

Targeted Research Seed Fund Award for Energy Research:

Development of a "Spouted Bed" Direct Carbon Fuel Cell (SB/DCFC)

In 2005, one billion tons of coal were consumed in the US for electricity generation. Given the increasing demands for electricity and the constraints on natural gas and nuclear power, coal will continue to play a very important role in the energy future of this country. In conjunction with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, this research is focused on the construction and characterization of a prototype of a new kind of direct carbon fuel cell (DCFC) that is being developed to circumvent some of the more important shortcomings of current DCFC designs. DCFCSs are electrochemical devices that produce electricity directly from carbonaceous sources, such as coal and biomass, without combustion or gasification. With much higher theoretical efficiencies than thermal power plants, DCFCs can significantly reduce CO2 emissions, as well as many other pollutants generated by conventional coal-fired power plants.

PIs: J.M. Calo, Professor of Engineering;
Co-PI: E. Bain, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Division of Engineering
$50,000

Targeted Research Seed Fund Award for Scientific Computing:

The Cellarium Project: A Teaching and Research Environment for Computational Systems Biology

The goal of this project is to build a novel research environment that will address unmet challenges of computational and systems biology in the post-genome-sequence and systems biology era. Building on Dr. Istrail's experience in leading the construction of some of the most powerful genomics suites of tools to date, for whole genome comparison, annotation and analysis, and his biological systems research in protein folding and misfolding, and gene regulatory networks, he will collaborate with scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and California Institute of Technology to develop new computational environments for molecular reconstruction. This project will involve the world's most powerful accelerator-based neutron source to create an environment where for the first time, researchers can computationally reconstruct in vivo protein folding.

PI: Sorin Istrail, Julie Nguyen Brown Professor of Computational and Mathematical Sciences, Professor of Computer Science, Director of the Center for Computational Molecular Biology
$65,000