Month: July 2020

Dr. Vivian Feng receives grant to continue analytical chemistry research

Dr. Vivian Feng, Associate Professor of Chemistry, has received a new research grant that will allow her to conduct another five years of research in analytical chemistry. She will assess the molecular-level interactions between bacterial species, such as Shewanella oneidensis and Bacillus subtilis, and engineered nanoparticles.

Dr. Feng will lead undergraduate researchers to collect and analyze the resulting measurements. This work is a key component of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (CSN), which recently received a five-year renewal to continue its research, education, and public engagement activities, at a sum of $4M per year. Among the ten other collaborating universities within the center, Augsburg is the only primarily undergraduate institution. Dr. Feng’s grant award totals $400,000.

Read more about the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology here:  https://susnano.wisc.edu/ (This is supported by the National Science Foundation under award number CHE-2001611.)

Dr. David Crowe awarded funding to continue mental health research

Dr. David Crowe, Associate Professor of Biology, has received a new subaward from the University of Minnesota, allowing him to continue his research about cortical system dysfunction in psychiatric disease. Dr. Crowe will be responsible for the processing and analysis of data associated with the NeuroPlasticity Research in Support of Mental Health (NeuroPRSMH) center at the University of Minnesota Medical School. NeuroPRSMH received a Silvio O. Conte Center grant valued at $15M from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which will fund Dr. Crowe’s work, totaling $95,000, until spring 2025. The title of the impactful new research study is “Dysfunctional State Representations in Psychosis: From Neurophysiology to Neuroplasticity-based Treatment.” More about the overall project can be found here: https://med.umn.edu/news-events/u-researchers-receive-15m-nimh-grant-study-psychosis (This is supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number P50MH119569.)