Featured Awards – August 2019

Please join us in congratulating the following MSU faculty and staff who received awards this month.

Amanda Birnbaum • Public Health
Paterson Grow Healthy
US Environmental Protection Agency
$5,000
This award from the Paterson Grow Healthy project will provide paid internship opportunities to five MSU undergraduate public health students to be food waste educators. Their work will support the main project goal: to increase awareness about the food cycle and food waste as an environmental issue in Paterson Public Schools, to prompt students to make food choices that will reduce waste. The interns will work in Paterson elementary schools, with students, science teachers, and food service/maintenance workers.

Pankaj Lal • Clean Energy and Sustainability Analytics Center (CESAC)
To Perform RGGI Related Economic and Energy Dispatch Modeling
NJ Board of Public Utilities
$231,865
CESAC will assess the impacts New Jersey rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) through economic and energy dispatch models. This work will assess the potential size of that leakage, the economic impacts of that leaking potential in terms of energy prices/cost, and methods to mitigate the leakage potential including the value of any offsetting benefits.

Douglas Larkin • Secondary and Special Education
Sandra Adams • Biology
Studying the Retention of Novice Science Teachers by Learning from School District Induction and Mentoring Programs – Year 2
National Science Foundation
$368,602
In year two and the second phase of a five-year grant, Dr. Douglas Larkin and Dr. Sandra Adams will investigate the five-year science teacher retention rates in four U.S. states (New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), and then examine and describe high-quality induction and mentoring programs in identified school districts through a set of case studies that will promote best practices in design and implementation.

Bryan Murdock • Center for Community Engagement
Krystal Woolston • Center for Community Engagement
Randall FitzGerald • NJ School of Conservation
Montclair State University EECO Project – Year 1
NJ Commission on National and Community Service
$229,541
The thirty-one AmeriCorps members in this program will: assist students in Orange, New Jersey; serve at Montclair State University recruiting volunteers for local communities; and serve at the New Jersey School of Conservation providing conservation education. At the end of the first program year, the AmeriCorps members will be responsible for improving academic achievement for four hundred students in Orange Public Schools, providing environmental education and conservation methods to three thousand middle school students and teachers, and leverage two thousand volunteers throughout local communities.

David Rotella • Chemistry and Biochemistry
John Siekierka • Chemistry and Biochemistry
Development of Inhibitors of P. falciparum cGMP Dependent Protein Kinase (PfPKG) for Malaria Chemoprevention – Year 3
National Institutes of Health
$253,047
In the final year of this three-year grant, Dr. Rotella and Dr. Siekierka’s collaborative research with Rutgers University will support the design, synthesis, and characterization of potential inhibitors of P. falciparum Protein Kinase G (PfPKG) as antimalarial agents.