The National Science Foundation's CAREER awards have been presented to three UB faculty members, which has generated nearly $1.5 million for new research projects in Buffalo.
Peihong Zhang and Wenjun Zheng, assistant professors of physics, received the awards in 2010 and Sheldon Park, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, will begin receiving funding through the award beginning this month.
The CAREER Program, also known as The Faculty Early Career Development Program, presents one of the NSF's most esteemed awards. CAREER awards support junior faculty members who demonstrate excellence in teaching and researching within the context of the mission of their institutions.
"These awards are recognition that these junior faculty are the best of the best in their fields," said Alexander Cartwright, UB vice president for research. "The process for winning a CAREER award is extremely competitive and requires that the faculty demonstrate an outstanding plan for research and education."
These faculty members must be at the forefront of their research areas, but they are also required to develop innovative education and outreach programs related to their science, according to Cartwright.
Zhang's project, entitled "CAREER: Excited States Properties of Semiconductors and Nanostructures: Methodology Developments, Practical Applications, and Education" will receive $450,000 in research monies through the award from 2010 to 2015. Zhang's main research goals are to understand and predict materials' properties with the purpose of developing a theoretical framework that enables accurate and efficient calculations of quasiparticle and optical properties of solids, and to promote physics education.
"Part of the research grant will be used to upgrade our computing equipment which is critical for the success of our research," Zhang said. "The majority [of the] funding is to support graduate and undergraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers."
Zheng's project, entitled "CAREER: Multiscale Structural and Dynamic Modeling of Kinesin-Microtubule Motor System" will be using $610,000 in research funding from the award. Zheng will employ computer-modeling techniques to examine important movements of kinesins, the smallest-known molecular motors. The aim of the study is to generate a computational structure that will produce realistic models of a variety of biomolecular systems.
The most recent recipient, Park, has issued a proposal, "Yeast-based disulfide trapping for engineering selective inhibitors of a protein kinase," that will be supported by $400,000 in research funding from the NSF. Park's lab will be using an engineered yeast strain to rapidly screen a large number of potential protein mutants in order to find rare mutants that can selectively disrupt key protein-protein interactions, which are known to play important roles in cell signaling, proliferation, and development. Finding such mutants can help with future research and medical applications.
"My advice to the students who are interested in research and trying to get funding to pursue research would be to keep thinking and thinking," Park said. "It is frustrating at times when you think you have a good idea and no one would believe it. That's where I was before this grant. I did not let it discourage me though, but rather tried to motivate myself to do better and think of an even more innovative and daring idea so that they would have to fund my work simply because it is so good."
For students interested in comparable research grants, there are many similar programs for undergraduate and graduate students.
NSF has a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program that exclusively supports undergraduate research. Recently, UB received an NSF grant under the program Computational Science Training for Undergraduates in the Mathematical Sciences (CSUMS). This program provides apprenticeships worth $10,000 to each student participating in the program.
In addition, almost all NSF research grants have an educational component, which supports undergraduate research. You can learn more about these opportunities at http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.cfm.
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