Research Prizes and Honors
[Have you or a colleague won a research-related prize or honor? Let the Research Alert know. Send an e-mail to timgreen@mail.utexas.edu.]
ARCHITECTURE PROFESSOR WINS ROME PRIZE
Hope Hasbrouck, an assistant professor in the School of Architecture, has received the Garden Club of America Rome Prize, awarded in the landscape architecture discipline by the American Academy in Rome.
Established in 1894 and chartered by an Act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is a center that sustains independent artistic pursuits and humanistic studies. Each year, through a national competition, the Rome Prize is awarded to 15 emerging artists (working in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Design, Historic Preservation and Conservation, Literature, Musical Composition, or Visual Arts) and 15 scholars (working in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and early Modern, or Modern Italian Studies).
Hasbrouck’s study is “Interpreting Cultural Landscape through Prospect and Passage.” The study seeks to inventory the devices of interpretation used for the reading of cultural sites and territories that focus specifically on the geometries of individual spatial movement. The interpretative devices are selected for their ability to define place and foster historic imagination.
The creation of the inventory will afford a unique opportunity to probe how both interpretation and actual experience of the user can be accommodated by the special flexibility that is possessed inherently by cultural sites.
Hasbrouck is the fourth Rome Prize winner on the School of Architecture faculty. Previous winners are Dean Fritz Steiner and associate professors Mirka Benes and Nichole Wiedemann.
News and Information
COMPANY SPONSORS ‘PROOF OF CONCEPT’ COMPETITION
Emergent Technologies, Inc. (ETI) is focused on commercializing technologies originating from the University of Texas System. Within the past 18 months, it has successfully launched four UT-derived life sciences start-up companies, and will announce several new UT startups later this year.
As part of ETI’s continued outreach to the UT System, it is offering the Opportunity Texas Proof of Concept (POC) Award for all UT campuses. All scientists and researchers within the UT System are eligible to apply for this award. There is no obligation to ETI for applicants or recipients of this award. With this award, ETI hopes to demonstrate its continued interest in UT research and also to ensure that all proposals are properly disclosed through UT System offices of technology commercialization.
Opportunity Texas POC Award Details:
- $25,000 award to winning proof-of-concept proposal
- Plus up to $25,000 of business services from ETI
- Open to UT System campuses only
- Submissions on a non-confidential basis
- Key criteria: market need, current or potential intellectual property, previous funding, published papers, well-defined value and differentiation
ETI will award the best proposal no later than June 15, 2008; ETI will review applications and announce the recipient at the Biotech Industry Organization Conference in San Diego in June.
The application can be downloaded in two file formats.
All applications from The University of Texas at Austin faculty/researchers must be submitted to the Office of the Vice President for Research to connie.brownson@austin.utexas.edu no later than 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, 2008, for internal review. Those selected to advance will be submitted by the UT Austin Office of Sponsored Projects by the ETI deadline.
NIH REQUIRES PUBLIC ACCESS TO PAPERS;
OSP, UT LIBRARIES OFFER SESSIONS ON COMPLIANCE
The Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) and UT Libraries will hold several informational sessions to explain the implementation of the mandatory National Institutes of Health Public Access policy and to highlight the resources on campus available to interested researchers, faculty and administrators.
The NIH Public Access mandate ensures that the general public has Internet access to the published results of NIH-funded research by endorsing PubMed Central (PMC) as the on-line repository for research products of NIH-funded research.
This mandate applies to investigators whose peer-reviewed articles are based on NIH-funded research, AND are accepted for publication on, or after April 7, 2008. The policy has potential copyright transfer issues as it requires investigators to submit their manuscripts to PubMed upon acceptance for publication.
OSP is implementing new procedures and assisting in the development of policy language that will reserve the rights necessary to allow faculty authors to comply with the NIH requirement. Authors will be required to include the PubMed Central reference number for each article when citing them in NIH applications, proposals or progress reports (as of May 25, 2008).
Learn more about the NIH public-access policy and visit the UT Libraries Web site.
The first training session on the NIH Public Access Requirement is scheduled for Tuesday, May 13, 2008 (1-2 p.m., AVAYA Auditorium, ACES 2.302). If you have questions, please contact Maria Winchell at mwinchell@austin.utexas.edu or 232-4319.
QuotedUT Researchers in the News
A sampling of recent quotes by university faculty members and researchers. To be included in this section, let Research Alert know when you or a colleague have been quoted.
The Associated Press
April 21, 2008
HEADLINE: Retail gas hits record $3.50 a gallon as oil marches higher
Energy Department data show Americans used about 1 percent less gas in the four weeks that ended April 11 than they did a year earlier.
That change, while not drastic, is significant, said Mariano Gurfinkel, project manager at the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, who expects per-capita demand to drop further this summer unless gas prices fall.
Americans will continue to drive, but some may change their summer vacation destinations as gasoline costs continue to make a bigger dent in their pocketbooks, Gurfinkel said.
Research Opportunities
Important university research deadlines:
Awards and Grants
Limited Submissions
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
2008 Advanced Fuel Cycle Research and Development – Nuclear Energy Research Initiative
Deadlines: Pre-application, May 8, 2008; Application, June 10, 2008
Advanced Water Power Projects – Topic Area 1: Advanced Water Power Renewable Energy In-Water Testing
Deadline: June 16, 2008
Advanced Water Power Projects – Topic Area 2: Marine and Hydrokinetic Renewable Energy Market
Deadline: June 16, 2008
Advanced Water Power Projects – Topic Area 3: National Marine Renewable Energy Centers
Deadline: June 16, 2008
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Healthy Indoor Environments
Deadline: May 30, 2008
NASA
Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences
Deadline: March 27, 2009
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES
NEH/Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Fellowships for Research on Italian Cultural Heritage
Deadline: May 15, 2008
Humanities High Performance Computing
Deadline: July 15, 2008
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Science Education Drug Abuse Partnership Award
Deadline: May 25, 2008
Fogarty International Research Collaboration – Basic Biomedical
Deadline: May 28, 2008
Academic Career Award
Deadline: June 12, 2008
Hispanic Health Services Research Grant Program
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, May 27, 2008; Application, June 26, 2008
Novel HIV Therapies: Integrated Preclinical/Clinical Program
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, June 11, 2008; Application, July 11, 2008
Development of New Tools for Cell Fate Determination and Tissue Homeostasis in the Aged
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, Sept. 30, 2008; Application, Oct. 30, 2008
Enhancing Zebrafish Research with Research Tools and Techniques
Deadlines: Letters of Intent, Aug. 17, 2008, Aug. 17, 2009, Aug. 17, 2010; Applications, Sept. 17, 2008, Sept. 17, 2009, Sept. 17, 2010
Biomarkers of Infection-Associated Cancers
Deadlines: Various, see applications, Program expires May 8, 2011
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Expeditions in Computing
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, July 10, 2008; Preliminary Proposal, Sept. 10, 2008; Full Proposal, Jan. 10, 2009
Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis
Deadline: July 16, 2008
OTHER FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
ConocoPhillips and Penn State University
ConocoPhillips Energy Prize
Deadline: May 30, 2008
Wenner-Gren Foundation
International Collaborative Research Grant (anthropology)
Deadline: June 1, 2008
Research Project
Let us know about your research projects at timgreen@mail.utexas.edu or 512-475-6596.
SEIDCAR: SEISMIC INVESTIGATION OF EDGE-DRIVEN CONVECTION ASSOCIATED WITH THE RIO GRANDE RIFT
FACULTY: Robert Pulliam, research scientist, Institute for Geophysics, principal investigator; and Stephen P. Grand, professor, Department of Geosciences, co-principal investigator
AGENCY: National Science Foundation
AMOUNT: $182,765
SIEDCAR intends to learn whether small-scale “edge driven” convection in the mantle is a significant, “real world” phenomenon and, if so, to explore its effects on surface geology. Specifically, the investigators try to determine whether a mantle downwelling is occurring along the eastern edge of the Rio Grande Rift and what effect it has on the tectonics of the Southern Rockies.
SIEDCAR’s investigators are installing a two-dimensional array of 75 broadband seismographs along the western edge of the Great Plains to supplement and increase the density of USArray’s Transportable Array stations, which will traverse the region in 2008-2009. The goal of the deployment will be to obtain quantitative estimates of the size, geometry, location, and density contrast of the feature observed by La Ristra and to model its effects on surface deformation.
