Featured Awards – June 2018

Lora Billings • College of Science and Mathematics, Dean’s Office
Aihua Li • Mathematical Sciences
Garden State LSAMP Phase II – Year 5
National Science Foundation
$71,343
Led by Dr. Lora Billings and Dr. Aihua Li, the fifth year of “Garden State LSAMP Phase II,” funded by a subaward from Rutgers University, will continue and extend the programmatic support for underrepresented students heading into the sciences other than medicine.

Mark Chopping • Earth and Environmental Sciences
Forest and Shrub Mapping with MISR – Supplement
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$13,673
With continued support and funding, this project– funded by a subaward from NASA/JPL (managed by the California Institute of Technology)–will map forest and shrub aboveground woody biomass and canopy structure for diverse environments, over both limited and larger areas and for multiple orbits and years, using data from the NASA/JPL Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer.

Gerard Costa • Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health
Socio-Emotional Formation Initiative (MSU-SEF) 2017-2018 – Supplement
New Jersey Department of Human Services
$25,000
The Socio-Emotional Formation Initiative (SEFI) will continue to support the statewide integration of professional development opportunities aimed at promoting the social and emotional well-being and inclusion of all infants, toddlers and young children with and without developmental, emotional and behavioral difficulties through a supplement award granted to the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health by the New Jersey Department of Human Services.

Gerard Costa • Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health
The Coordinating Center at Montclair State University (CC-MSU) – Supplement
New Jersey Department of Health/New Jersey Governor’s Council for Medical Research & Treatment of Autism
$36,000
Awarded with a supplement grant, through collaborative, multidisciplinary and reflective leadership, the Coordinating Center at Montclair State University (CC-MSU) provides research sites with support, opportunities for sharing and collaboration and ways to streamline practices to increase efficiency and to meet relevant research outcomes for persons affected by ASD. The CC-MSU includes a Principal Investigator with experience in both collaborative leadership and treatment of ASD, and also includes university partners with expertise in research and evaluation, information technology, organizational development, biostatistics, administration, and ASD clinical research and treatment. In addition, the CC-MSU benefits from the wide range of expertise within the research, training, administrative, and academic support structures at the pedagogically excellent and experientially diverse Montclair State University.‌‌‌‌

Marc Favata • Mathematical Sciences
CAREER: Research and Education in Gravitational-Wave Science – Year 2
National Science Foundation
$91,383
In year two of a five-year Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant, Dr. Marc Favata will focus his study on the gravitational-wave memory effect and modeling signals from compact binaries with elliptical orbits. The research will directly involve undergraduate and master’s degree students at Montclair State University.

Sally Grapin • Psychology
Teaching Multiculturalism and Social Justice to Undergraduate Psychology Majors: The Role of Service Learning
The Society for the Teaching of Psychology
$2,353
Dr. Sally Grapin’s study will evaluate student outcomes in an undergraduate service learning course designed to educate prospective psychologists about school based multicultural and social justice issues. More specifically, this study will address the following research questions: 1.) How does participation in a semester-long service learning course impact students’ perception of multiculturalism and social justice? 2.) How do aspiring psychologists come to understand themselves as advocates for youth from culturally diverse populations?

Jonathan Howell • Linguistics
Establishing a Ground Truth for Focus Placement in Naturally-occurring Speech – Supplement
National Science Foundation
$16,000
In year two of this grant, Dr. Howell’s project will develop a method of automatically detecting focus that is both computationally effective, e.g. for the purpose of representing focus in language technologies, and linguistically transparent, e.g. to understand how focus is realized acoustically and conditioned pragmatically.

Sandra Passchier • Earth and Environmental Sciences
Timing and Spatial Distribution of Antarctic Ice Sheet Growth and Sea-ice Formation across the Eocene-Oligocene Transition
National Science Foundation
$323,113
For this three-year grant, Dr. Sandra Passchier’s project will focus on the Antarctic Ice Sheet which first developed at the Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) about 34 million years ago. Her study will address following questions: 1) did both the East and West Antarctic ice sheets develop and coalesce at the EOT; and 2) did sea ice formation follow continental ice sheet advance onto the continental shelf? Dr. Passchier’s study will involve University undergraduate and graduate students to help assist on the research tasks, including sample preparation and instrument analyses, data reduction and interpretation, presentation at professional meetings, and co-authoring publications.

Robert Reid • Family Science and Human Development
Pauline Garcia-Reid • Family Science and Human Development
Project C.O.P.E – Year 4
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
$283,875
In year four of the five-year federal grant given to the Department of Family Science and Human Development, Dr. Reid and Dr. Garcia-Reid lead Project COPE which works to prevent substance abuse and the spread of HIV among African American and Latino youth in Paterson, NJ.

Amy Tuininga • PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies
Jersey City Greenhouse Gas Inventory
Sustainable Jersey, The Gardinier Fund
$26,736
As a subrecipient of the city of Jersey City, NJ and under the supervision of Dr. Tuininga, two Montclair State University students will be responsible for familiarizing themselves with standard carbon emissions reporting in formats such as CDP and Carbone, conducting fleet surveys, estimating emissions from the fleet, assessing energy use in town buildings and estimating associated emissions. The students will summarize their data collections and findings in quarterly posters and presentations to Jersey City’s Environmental Commission and team leaders.

Jude Uy • Counseling & Psychological Services
Project Suicide Awareness Violence Education and Response (Project SAVER) at Montclair State University – Year 2
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
$102,000
In year two of a three year program, Project SAVER will support mental health services on campus focused on suicide and self and other directed violence prevention. The initiatives proposed by Project SAVER are comprised of two major components, a University on-campus initiative, known as Project HawkSAVER, and an off-campus initiative to establish a consortium for suicide prevention among institutions of higher education throughout the state of New Jersey, or The University and College Alliance for Prevention of Suicide (UCAPS).

Ashuwin Vaidya • Mathematical Sciences
Collaborative Research: Dynamics of Surfactant – Amyloid-beta Protein Interactions during Self-assembly
National Science Foundation
$111,404
This three-year grant will allow Dr. Ashuwin Vaidya to focus on biophysical understanding of amyloid-β (Aβ)-biological surfactants (SA) interactions, and to simulate the temporal evolution of Aβ-SA dynamics, with two-way feedback between experiments and simulations. Dr. Vaidya’s project will employ one Montclair State graduate assistant to help with mathematical modeling, experiments and numerical simulations, help prepare papers and present at conferences.