Featured Awards – June 2019

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

Lora Billings • Dean’s Office, CSAM
Yvonne Gindt • Chemistry and Biochemistry
Louis Stokes STEM Pathways and Research Alliance: Garden State LSAMP
National Science Foundation
$51,473
This award continues the Garden State LSAMP (GSLSAMP) led by Rutgers Newark, in which MSU has been an active participant for nine years. GSLSAMP is a non-medical Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program designed to increase the number of professionals from minority groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields.

Paul Bologna • Biology
John Gaynor • Biology
Assessment of Clinging Jellyfish Gonionemus Vertens Populations in the Shrewsbury River Estuary and the Manasquan River Estuary – Supplement
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
$22,500
With more support and supplemental funding in year four of this study, Dr. Bologna and Dr. Gaynor will provide data to identify and quantify the distribution and abundance of G. vertens–invasive clinging jellyfish–from the Shrewsbury Estuary and the Manasquan River Estuary.

Yang Deng • Earth and Environmental Studies
Towards Innovative and Green Water Reuse with Integrated Constructed Wetlands and Ferrate(VI) Treatment
U.S. – Egypt S&T Joint Fund
$97,692
In the first year of a three-year, $189,543 award, Montclair State University and the National Research Centre in Egypt will collaborate to provide the scientific basis for the combined use of constructed wetlands and ferrate(VI) for addressing multiple chemical and microbial contaminants in municipal wastewater, and to enable a design capable of demonstrating long-term performance of the combined systems for agricultural water reuse.

Marc Favata • Mathematical Sciences
CAREER: Research and Education in Gravitational-Wave Science – Year 3
National Science Foundation
$77,812
In year three 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.

Margaret Freedson • Early Childhood/Elementary Education
International Consortium for Multilingual Excellence in Education (ICMEE) – Supplement
US Department of Education
$19,778
This supplemental award, funded by a subaward from University of Nebraska Lincoln, will support Dr. Freedson’s work as part of the International Consortium of Multilingual Excellence in Education (ICMEE) Design Team to develop an online professional development workshop for in-service teachers with the proposed title, Supporting Newcomers and Students with Interrupted Formal Schooling.

Andrada Ivanescu • Mathematical Sciences
Child growth curve dynamic modeling
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
$10,108
In this collaboration with John Hopkins University, Dr. Ivanescu will use statistical methods for dynamic modeling of child growth data from rural areas of the Peruvian Andes.

Eden Kyse • Center for Research and Evaluation on Education and Human Services
2019 New Jersey Middle School Risk and Protective Factor Survey
NJ Department of Human Services, Division of Mental Health and Statistic Services
$750,378
The Center for Research and Evaluation on Education and Human Services (CREEHS) will be responsible for the preparation and administration of a state-wide survey of middle school students about attitudes and behaviors around substance abuse and other risk and protective factors, as well as the analysis and reporting of survey results.

Donna Lorenzo • Health Careers
Montclair State University Upward Bound Project – Year 3
US Department of Education
$287,537
Funding for year three of Montclair State’s Upward Bound Project (UB) delivers educational opportunities for currently enrolled high school students, who come from low level income families and/or who are potential first-generation college attendees. UB provides fundamental support for participants to succeed in their current level of education as well as preparing them in their pursuit of higher education.

Rodica Martin • Physics and Astronomy
Faraday Isolator Optical Design and Test
National Science Foundation
$182,384
Montclair State University and the University of Florida will collaborate to build four Faraday isolators required for the A+ Upgrade Project, an upgrade to the existing Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors.

Patricia Tevington • Institute for Research on Youth Thriving and Evaluation
Understanding Americans’ Abortion Attitudes: A Proposal for Sociological Research
University of Notre Dame
$6,000
This funding from the University of Notre Dame will enable Dr. Tevington to conduct 40 in-depth interviews with participants living in the Philadelphia, PA area for a national study, “Understanding Americans’ Abortion Attitudes,” led by Dr. Tricia C. Bruce.