GRANTS AWARDED IN 2007-2008
Jane Chaplin (Classics) has been awarded a grant from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation at Harvard University to support her 2008-2009 leave. She will be working on intertextuality as an approach to classical historiography and plans to focus on Livy’s portrayal of Scipio Africanus and on the Romans in Arrian’s history of Alexander the Great.
Vermont EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), an NSF-funded program at the University of Vermont, has awarded grants to three Middlebury faculty members for research during this summer and the academic year. Jason Arndt (Psychology) has funding to develop and test a new simulation model of human memory. The grant will support an academic year student and computing infrastructure expenses for the project titled, Development and Testing of MINERVA-DP, A Model of Recognition Memory. Through his project Oscillons in Particle Physics and Cosmology, Noah Graham (Physics) will apply large-scale parallel computation to models of the early universe. This work will determine whether these models predict the formation of oscillons, coherent lumps of energy that oscillate without dissipation. His grant provides support for one summer research student and computer equipment. John Schmitt (Mathematics) has funding to support his efforts to develop the most cost-efficent transportation network to deliver a scarce resource such as water, electricity, petroleum or heat. His project is titled Constructing Cost-efficient Networks for the Transportation of Scare and Consumable Resources and stems from a graph (network) theory project started with one undergraduate student and continuing with another.
Matthew Dickinson (Political Science) has received two grants in support of his 2008-2009 leave when he’ll be working on a book project titled, The President and the White House Staff: People, Positions, and Processes 1939-2008 . A Truman Library Institute Scholar Award provides funding to support leave salary and expenses for research trips to four presidential libraries and the National Archives. The American Political Science Association awarded a Small Research Grant for expenses associated with data analysis for one of the book's chapters, titled Presidents and Executive Branch Political Appointments, 1933-2006: Responsive or Neutral Competence?
Laura Lieber (Religion) received a small subvention grant from the Littauer Foundation to fund her project, Yannai on Genesis: An Invitation to Piyyut, a book on the liturgical poetry of the Byzantine poet, Yannai.
Erik Bleich (Political Science) has received a Small Research Grant from the American Political Science Association for a project titled, Making it Hard to Hate: Limiting Freedom in the Name of Cohesion. The grant will support travel to Berlin, Germany during his 2008-2009 leave.
Ray Coish (Geology) has received a fellowship from the Marion & Jasper Whiting Foundation in support of a project titled, The Volcanoes of Italy. The grant provides funding for a trip to Italy during his 2008-2009 leave to sample and photograph some of the famous volcanoes and to learn about their origins from Italian colleagues at the University of Pisa. This trip will lead to enhancements in the non-majors geology course “Earthquakes and Volcanoes.”
Andrea Olsen (Dance) has received a fellowship from the Marion & Jasper Whiting Foundation in support of a project titled, The Place of Dance – Workshops, Writing, and Course Development. The grant provides funding for attendance at two international workshops during her 2008-2009 leave. Participation in these workshops will serve as a resource for her current book project[The Place of Dance] and inform development of a course, “Nature and Creativity” that she will co-teach with John Elder.
Cheryl Faraone (Theater) has received a fellowship from the Marion & Jasper Whiting Foundation in support of a project titled, Continuing the Marriage of Science and Art. The grant provides support for a trip to London during her Spring 2009 leave during which she will be investigating the burgeoning number of plays and other performance works which intermingle science, mathematics and theatrical forms. The research will invigorate 'Science and Math as Art in Contemporary Theatre," the interdisciplinary course she teaches with Steve Abbott, and will also benefit audiences at the College and the Potomac Theatre Project.
Jane Chaplin (Classics) has been awarded a grant from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation at Harvard University to support her 2008-2009 leave. She will be working on intertextuality as an approach to classical historiography and plans to focus on Livy’s portrayal of Scipio Africanus and on the Romans in Arrian’s history of Alexander the Great.
Sallie Sheldon (Biology) has received funding from the Vermont Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research as a consultant to their new “Streams Project” which is dedicated to collecting and sharing data from streams in the Lake Champlain Watershed. The data gathered by this project will serve the needs of VT-EPSCoR’s Complex Systems Modeling Group.
Erik Bleich (Political Science) has been awarded funding for his 2008-2009 leave through the American Philosophical Society’s Sabbatical Fellowship program. His book project, Making it Hard to Hate: Limiting Freedom in the Name of Cohesion, analyzes the periodic incompatibility of promoting cohesion across racial, ethnic, and religious boundaries with maintaining deeply held values of freedom of speech and association. Focusing on the dangers—but also the qualified successes—of how liberal democracies have managed these conflicts aims to foster informed discussion among citizens about where to draw the line between these two vital public values.
Molly Costanza-Robinson (Environmental Studies and Chemistry & Biochemistry) and Jeff Munroe (Geology) received research funding from the Cornelius King Charitable Trust, through a subaward from the University of Vermont, to continue work on a project titled The Taste of Place in Vermont. As part of this interdisciplinary Vermont Maple Terroir project, an undergraduate student will be characterizing the sugarbush-scale variability in sap chemistry.
Frank Winkler (Physics) has received funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's General Observer Program for a project entitled SN 1006: The Millennium Supernova Remnant, which involves collaborators from the Space Telescope Science Institute, North Carolina State, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They are using the Spitzer Space Telescope in an attempt to measure for the first time infrared radiation from the remains of the 1006 A.D. supernova, brightest star ever witnessed in recorded human history.
Kevin Moss (Russian) has been named a Lillian S. Robinson Scholar by the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in Montreal. This award provides additional support for his 2007-2008 leave and funds a short-term residency at the Institute next spring where he will continue work on a project titled, Three Gay Films from Former Yugoslavia.
Jeff Munroe (Geology) has received a Franklin Grant from the American Philosophical Society and a grant from the National Science Foundation's SGER (Special Grant for Exploratory Research) program to study the recent history of alpine glaciers in Glacier National Park, Montana. The funding will support laboratory study of sediment cores retrieved in 2007 from a lake below one of the largest remaining glaciers in the park.
Kathryn Kramer (English & American Literatures) was awarded a Bogliasco Fellowship by the Bogliasco Foundation to spend a month at the Liguria Study Center in Italy during her 2007-2008 leave. During this residency she will be working on a project titled The Rise and Fall of the Republic of West Delphi; she describes this book as "a memoir, with forays into fiction" about a village community in Vermont during the 1980s, "an exploration of the meaning of place and its relationship to community."
Pat Manley and Tom Manley (both Geology) and colleagues from Buffalo State College and SUNY-Buffalo were awarded a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation to acquire Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers and other oceanographic equipment to support research involving large lakes and rivers. The first projects will focus on the Buffalo River, a tributary to Lake Erie. In the future the equipment will also be use to support research on Lake Champlain. Acquisition of this equipment will help promote and expand undergraduate research at Middlebury as well as the other two institutions.
Jeff Munroe (Geology) has received funding from the Ashley National Forest (USDA Forest Service) to support data preparation for a glacial geologic map of the Uinta Mountains in Utah. This project is an extension of a field mapping campaign undertaken by Jeff and a colleague in 2006. The work will be done at Middlebury this fall by Lee Corbett, a geology major who graduated in 2007.
Amy Briggs and Daniel Scharstein (both Computer Science) have been awarded a three-year grant through the National Science Foundation’s Research in Undergraduate Institutions activity. Their project, titled Visual Navigation from Circular Feature Sequences, will develop new methods in robotics and computer vision to help enable mobile robots to navigate indoor environments using visual input. The grant will provide research opportunities for at least nine undergraduate students.
Vermont Genetics Network grants for Research in the Biomedical Sciences
Middlebury College is one of the baccalaureate partner institutions participating in a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to the University of Vermont. This grant continues the Vermont Genetics Network support that has been a significant source of funding for faculty and student research in the past five years. The following faculty members received individual one year grants from this program to support their research from June 2007-May 2008:
Catherine Combelles (Biology) New project grant for research that has implications for human reproductive health (title: Profiling of pro-/anti-oxidants during ovarian folliculogenesis) The grant provides funding for summer and academic year effort and stipends for two undergraduates.
Roger Sandwick (Chemistry & Biochemistry) Renewal of support for his ongoing research (title: The Maillard Reaction between Ribose 5-Phosphate and Proteins) The grant provides funding for summer and academic year research including stipends for two undergraduates.
Mark Spritzer (Biology) New grant to support a pilot neuroscience research project for titled Testosterone, hippocampal neurogenesis, and spatial memory in adult male rats. The grant included funding for one summer undergraduate assistant.
Matt Kimble (Psychology) New grant to support a pilot research project titled Changing perceptions of threat in military cadets. This is a collaborative project that also involves researchers at Norwich University. The grant included funding for the required eye tracking equipment at both institutions.
Jeff Munroe (Geology) has received funding from the Ashley National Forest (USDA Forest Service) to support data preparation for a glacial geologic map of the Uinta Mountains in Utah. This project is an extension of a field mapping campaign undertaken by Jeff and a colleague in 2006. The work will be done at Middlebury this fall by Lee Corbett, a geology major who graduated in 2007.
Richard Bunt (Chemistry & Biochemistry) has received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation through NSF's Research in Undergraduate Institutions activity for research related to that funded earlier this summer by the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund. The NSF grant provides additional funding for students, travel to conferences, and support for his 07-08 leave. At least six students will be involved in this project which seeks to understand how metal-based catalysts, such as palladium, control the three-dimensional orientation of new chemical bond forming reactions. Understanding the 3-D orientation of molecules is important in biological systems and drug design for new pharmaceuticals. Project title: Hammett Studies of P, N-Chiral Ligands.
Rebecca Gould (Religion) has been awarded a Contemplative Practice Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. The grant provides funding for developing a new religion course titled “Practicing for Life: Contemplative Practice and Social Change.”
Catherine Combelles (Biology) has been awarded a three-year research grant from the National Institutes of Health through the AREA program (Academic Research Enhancement Award) for a project titled, Oxidative Stress and Oocyte Development. This research will involve at least 9 undergraduate students. The results of these studies will improve our basic understanding of factors that may influence the quality of female gametes or oocytes thereby providing critical foundations for the improvement of female reproductive health.
Frank Winkler (Physics) has received a grant from NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute for research related to observations made using the Hubble Space Telescope. This project is collaboration with a colleague from Dartmouth and a number of other astronomers. They are observing the remnant of a "young" supernova--a star that exploded in the southern sky some 3000 years ago. Its age has just been determined by Karl Twelker ('07) in his senior thesis this past year.
Elizabeth Morrison (Religion) has received a Junior Scholar Grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation in support of her 2007-2008 academic leave during which she will work on a project titled, Religious authority family-style: The master-disciple pattern in Chinese Buddhism. The grant includes funding for a four month research stint at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
Pat Manley and Tom Manley (both Geology) have received funding from the U.S. Geological Survey to continue studies of climate change by collecting and analyzing data from Lake Champlain. This grant funds a site survey for locating a drilling site in Lake Champlain. During February 2008, the GLAD 800 Global Lake Drilling system will obtain cores, drilling on the ice, that will be analyzed for climate changes within the NE for the last 14,000 years.
Laura Lieber (Classics and Religion) has received a grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for a project titled, “The Liturgical Poetry of Yannai on Genesis” which she will be working on during her 2007-2008 academic leave. In this project, she will contextualize the poet Yannai (Galilee, 5th/6th century) in the world of the early synagogue, looking at his importance in terms of Jewish-Byzantine language, literature, art, culture, and society. The final monograph will consist of a series of analytical essays complemented by annotated translations of thirty poems.