Featured Awards – March 2019

Stefanie Brachfeld • Earth and Environmental Studies
U.S. Science Support Program Office associated with the International Ocean Discovery Program (USSSP-IODP)
National Science Foundation
$61,746
This subaward from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University will support Dr. Brachfeld’s participation as a shipboard paleomagnetist on International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 382 to the Scotia Sea.

Stefanie Brachfeld • Earth and Environmental Studies
Collaborative Research: Elucidating the Role of Titanomagnetite in Vesiculation of Silicic Magmas
National Science Foundation
$113,225
This collaborative proposal with the University of Hawaii will explore the possibility that nanometer sized magnetite particles are present in magmas prior to eruption, and that these crystals control the formation of bubbles and escape of gases from magma. This in turn controls the explosive power of the eruption.

Mark Chopping • Earth and Environmental Studies
Forest and Shrub Mapping with MISR ‐ Supplement
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$40,629
A subcontract from the California Institute of Technology will further Dr. Chopping’s research into mapping aboveground biomass in the forests of the southwestern United States using data from NASA’s Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR).

Dawn Hayes • History
Gregory Pope • Earth and Environmental Studies
Documenting the Past, Triaging the Present and Assessing the Future: A Prototype for Sicily’s Norman Heritage, ca. 1061‐1194
National Endowment for the Humanities
$49,783
The Norman Sicily Project (normansicily.org) digitally registers, maps and analyzes the monuments erected during the island’s Norman period (ca. 1061-1194), arguably the most auspicious years in its long history, and accomplishes this by joining history and earth science in a collaboration made broadly accessible by digital technologies. The primary grant product from this award will be a proof-of-concept prototype that lays a firm technological foundation for future development while offering access to an entire class of monuments – the society’s monasteries – including images, geographic location, onomastic information, chronological data, types of attestation, gender, order, administrative rank, mother houses, dependencies, founders, dates of field visits, seismic region information and sustainability data. These data and their visualizations will be made freely available to the public on the project’s web app.

Jorge Lorenzo Trueba • Earth and Environmental Studies
Modeling Long‐Term Morphologic Response of Barrier Islands in Support of Research in Coastal Sediment Supply and Flux ‐ Year 1
US Department of the Interior/US Geological Survey
$30,000
This project will address the lack of quantitative understanding of the relative roles of overwash fluxes, shoreface dynamics, and backbarrier sedimentation processes (all factors which vary greatly among both natural and anthropogenically influenced barriers) in the response of barriers to environmental change through a coupled approach of integrated numerical modeling and field investigation.

Sarah Lowe • Psychology
GuLF Study: Support for Mental Health Analyses ‐ Year 2
National Institutes of Health/NIEHS
$46,885
In collaboration with the NIH-sponsored Gulf Long-Term Follow-Up Study (GuLF STUDY) investigative team, Dr. Lowe will continue to provide expert consultation and will collaborate on the conduct, interpretation, and reporting of analyses of study data focused primarily on the characterization of mental health outcomes observed among workers and volunteers who were involved in clean-up activities associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Jennifer Urban • Family Science and Human Development
Can Leadership Virtues be Taught? Developing Virtuous School Leaders
John Templeton Foundation
$300,534
Supported by a subaward from the University of Missouri ‐ St. Louis (UMSL), Dr. Urban and her team will build the capacity of the UMSL team, as well as the capacity of the 40 participating school programs, to develop high-quality, theory of change pathway models for their programs. In addition, the Montclair State will work intensively with the UMSL team to develop an evaluation plan for a subsequent follow-on project and with a cohort of 10 LACE exemplar programs to identify and define key outcomes and constructs that are of most interest as they seek to evaluate and learn more about what makes the Cultivating Virtue in Leaders (CViL) program work best.

Bradley van Eeden‐Moorefield • Family Science and Human Development
Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research ‐ Supplement
National Institutes of Health/NIDA
$33,577
Funded as a subaward from New York University, pre-doctoral fellow Ijeoma Opara from NYU will engage in research with a focus on producing multiple manuscripts each year of this study with Dr. Robert Reid of Family Science and Human Development as her advisor. The broad program of research covered across these manuscripts will seek to examine factors that reduce the likelihood of engaging in substance use and risky sexual behaviors among urban adolescents of color. Some of the mitigating factors will include empowerment, sense of ethnic identity, and other resiliency skills.