As a means to support continued research on campus, the Office of Research recently launched several seed grant initiatives to provide funding for faculty across a range of disciplines. The University’s award from the State of Texas National Research University Fund (NRUF) has helped us afford these internal funding opportunities. We are excited to see what this year’s recipients discover.

Collaborative Biomedical Research Award (CoBRA)

A novel immune-interactive surface coating approach to induce implant osseointegration in diabetic conditions

 $250,000

  • Danieli Rodrigues (Assistant Professor, Department of Bioengineering, UTD)
  • Javier La Fontaine (Professor, Department of Plastic Surgery and Department of Orthopedic Surgery, UTSW)
  • Steven Nielsen (Associate Professor, Chemistry, UTD)
  • George Liu (Associate Professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, UTSW)
Non-Invasive In Vivo Imaging of Extracellular Biological Milieu of Cancer Using Hyperpolarized 89Y MRI

$250,000

  • Lloyd Lumata (Assistant Professor, Physics, UTD)
  • Jae Mo Park  (Assistant Professor, ECE, UTD)
  • Zoltan Kovacs (Associate Professor, Advanced Imaging Research Center, UTSW)

Urinary Tract Infections and Uropathogenic Bacteria

$250,000

  • Lawrence Reitzer (Professor, Biological Sciences, UTD)
  • Philippe Zimmern (Clinical Urologist, UTSW)

Major Extramural Grant Award (MEGA)

Advanced Instrument Development for Future Opportunities in Space Sciences

$200,000

  • Roderick Heelis (Research Scientist, Space Sciences, UTD)

Development of Calibrated fMRI at the UTD BrainHealth Imaging Center

$200,000

  • Bart Rypma (Professor, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, UTD)

Strategic Center Investment Program (SCI)

Proposal to establish The Center for Advanced Pain Studies (CAPS)

$700,000 ($200,000 Years 1-3/$100,000 Year 4)

  • Theodore Price (Professor, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, UTD)
  • Gregory Dussor (Associate Professor, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, UTD)
  • Zachary Campbell (Assistant Professor, Biology, UTD)
  • Tae Hoon Kim (Associate Professor/Department Head, Biology, UTD)
  • Michael Burton (Assistant Professor, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, UTD)
  • Zhenpeng Qin (Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, UTD)
  • Eric Kildebeck (Research Scientist, Engineering Innovation, UTD)
  • Mario Romero-Ortega (Associate Professor, Bioengineering, UTD)

Center for Atomically Precise Fabrication of Solid-State Quantum Devices

$700,000 ($200,000 Years 1-3/$100,000 Year 4)

Dr. Reza Moheimani (Professor, Systems Engineering, UTD)

  • Massiomo Fischetti (Professor, Materials Science, UTD)
  • Moon Kim (Professor, Materials Science, UTD)
  • John Randall (Staff Guest, Engineering and Computer Science, UTD)

Texas Wind Energy Center

$700,000 ($200,000 Years 1-3/$100,000 Year 4)

  • Mario Rotea (Professor/Department Head, Mechanical Engineering, UTD)
  • Todd Griffith (Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, UTD)
  • Stefano Leonardi (Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, UTD)

Seed Program for Interdisciplinary Research (SPIRe)

Developing and Testing Speech-simulation Capabilities for Opti-speech Software

$100,000

  • William Katz (Professor, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, UTD)
  • Balakrishnan Prabhakaran (Professor, Computer Science, UTD)

Risk Prediction for Substance Use Disorder

$100,000

  • Swati Biswas (Professor, Mathematical Sciences, UTD)
  • Pankaj Choudhary (Professor, Mathematical Sciences, UTD)
  • Francesca Filbey (Professor, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, UTD)

Antigen-Stabilized and Controlled Delivery of Whole-cell E. coli Vaccine against Urinary Tract Infections

$100,000

  • Jeremiah Gassensmith (Assistant Professor, Chemistry, UTD)
  • Nicole De Nisco (Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, UTD)

STUDS: Secure, Trusted and Unclonable DNA Storage

$100,000

  • Leonidas Bleris (Associate Professor, Bioengineering, UTD)
  • Georgios Makris (Professor, Electrical Engineering, UTD)

Loss Hyperbolic Metamaterials: Fundamentals and Applications

$100,000

  • Qing Gu (Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering, UTD)
  • Chuanwei Zhang (Professor, Physics, UTD)

Social Sciences Grant

The Effect of Chinese Loans on Democracy in Developing Countries

$10,000

  • Jonas Bunte (Assistant Professor, EPPS, UTD)

Assessing the Core Assumptions of Cognitive Diagnostic Knowledge Tracing

$10,000

  • Richard Golden (Professor/Program Head, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, UTD)

Mapping Dynamism and Biodiversity Presence within Swidden Landscapes

$10,000

  • Anthony Cummings (Assistant Professor, EPPS, UTD)

Humanities and Emerging Arts Grant (HEArts)

The Bloodiest Prison in America: Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola

$10,000

  • Natalie Ring (Associate Professor, Arts and Humanities, UTD)

Patching Default Settings: Radical Feminist Gameplay

$10,000

  • Josef Nguyen (Assistant Professor, ATEC, UTD)

The Platform to the World: A Portals Symposium

$10,000

  • Juan Llamas Rodriguez (Assistant Professor, ATEC, UTD)

Workshop Grant

Institutional Complexities and Strategic Responses in the New Global Economy 

$5,000

  • Mike Peng (Professor, Management, UTD)

Recent Developments on Mathematical/Statistical Approaches in Data Science (MSDAS)

$5,000

  • Yifei Lou (Assistant Professor, Mathematical Sciences, UTD)

Texas Symposium on Computing with Emerging Technologies (ComET)

$7,000

  • Joseph Friedman (Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering, UTD)

The Plant Microbiome: Leveraging Complementary Expertise at UTD and Texas A&M AgriLife Center in Dallas to Create New Research Opportunities and Fill Important Knowledge Gaps

$5,000

  • Stephen Spiro (Professor, Biology, UTD)

Polymeric Drug Delivery at the Interface of Chemistry and Manufacturing

$5,000

  • Ronald Smaldone (Associate Professor, Chemistry, UTD)
  • Jeremiah Gassensmith (Assistant Professor, Chemistry, UTD)
  • Mihaela C Stefan (Professor, Chemistry, UTD)