Four faculty have been awarded FORWARD Leap Research Grants. The recipients are Kasey Maddock Carlin, assistant professor of animal sciences; Erin Gillam, assistant professor of biological sciences; Senay Simsek, assistant professor of plant sciences; and Annie Tangpong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. The Leap Research Grants are funded by the National Science Foundation Advance Grant and EPSCoR. They support advancement of tenure‐track and tenured faculty women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines by providing research grants to seed proposals with strong potential that could lead to greater funding opportunities from federal sources such as NSF or NIH.
The Leap Research Grant will support Carlin’s research exploring the impact of maternal nutrition on skeletal muscle development and growth and provide funding for evaluation of samples collected from different muscle types. Gillam’s award will be used to help establish a strong research program in Costa Rica focused on understanding evolution of acoustic signaling in bats. The award to Simsek will help her develop a program in the field of carbohydrates and perform research leading to possible funding from NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development program to study biochemical changes in wheat cell wall chemistry. Tangpong’s award will help her establish a new research direction dealing with friction damping mechanism in nanocomposites and conduct further analytical study and new experimental study on proposed research laying a foundation for pursuit of federal grants.
Information about FORWARD’s Leap Research Grants and other funding opportunities is available at www.ndsu.edu/forward. For questions, contact Canan Bilen-Green at canan.bilen.green@ndsu.edu or 1-7040 or Charlene Wolf-Hall at charlene.hall@ndsu.edu or 1-6387.