David Brown - US grants

health science research support;

The Cincinnati Infrastructure Institute and the University of Cincinnati - Structural Dynamics Research Laboratory are collaborating with Hewlett-Packard Co and Aura Systems, Inc. to design and implement an active-mass-driver closed-loop control system on a 250 feet span two-lane steel through- truss highway bridge. The bridge is located in Franklin County, Ohio and it will be loaded to destruction for structural identification by the Cincinnati Infrastructure Institute. This effort is being co-sponsored by the Ohio Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration and Franklin County, Ohio. The field-research infrastructure which will be developed for the destructive test program will be exploited to explore the problems in designing and implementing an active-control system for an existing constructed facility which is vulnerable to torsional excitation. The bridge will be incrementally shaken-down to destruction by four servo-control actuators reacting against rock- anchors while simulating a stationary truck at mid-span in one lane. A linearized element-level model of the bridge will be identified by impact, harmonic forced-excitation and truck-load tests to reflect the existing state. This will be the basis for control design. Extensive strain, distortion, displacement and acceleration instrumentation will be installed for nondestructive and destructive testing; some of these will be used for control feedback. The active-mass driver system will utilize three linear electromagnetic linear actuators. Hardware will be used for signal conditioning and processing and for implementation of real time digital control strategies. The control system designed for the existing state will be tested as the bridge is located to various limit states. To test the control system the bridge will be excited by sudden release of an initial displacement (step relaxation) and by sinusoidal and broadband input from a linear servo-hydraulic exciter.

The Department of Science and Mathematics is acquiring a high- pressure liquid chromatograph and integrator, a filter-weighing analytical balance, a solvent filtration system with pump, and three stereo microscopes. All of these are being used in an integrated curriculum which will lead to a new Environmental Sciences degree. Skills being developed from the use of this equipment include environmental monitoring as well as chemical analysis of the resulting air, water and soil samples. Quantitative skills for separating and chemically analyzing trace components, as well as field sampling and evaluation of samples in ecological and microbiological investigations, are being emphasized in the curriculum.

9305308 Brown The H1 histones are a multigene family of chromosomal proteins that are critically involved in organizing chromatin structure. H1s are major substrates for growth-related protein kinases and phosphorylation of H1 proteins has been suggested to be particularly important in regulated changes in chromatin condensation during cell cycle progression. The objective of this proposal is to identify and investigate some of the structural features of the different H1 variants that are important to their function in chromatin organization. Over the past several years we have developed a system in which genes for different H1 variants have been cloned into inducible overexpression vectors and transfected into homologous mouse fibroblasts. These transformants can be induced to overexpress the different H1 genes such that the product of the exogenous gene is the predominant H1 in chromatin. We have recently demonstrated that a transient inhibition of DNA replication can be induced in some of the H1 variant overproducing-cell lines. This inhibition is associated with a high H1/nucleosome ratio. Interestingly, different H1 variants exhibit a different ability to maintain a high H1/nucleosome ratio. For these proposed studies the cloned mouse histone genes will be systematically mutagenized in vitro prior to transformation. We will apply a number of in vivo and in vitro assays to these transformed cells to determine the effects of these mutations on replication and chromatin conformation. Particular emphasis will be placed on modification of the putative sites of phosphorylation of the histone H1 that are believed to be important in cell cycle-regulated alterations in chromatin conformation. We will also attempt to identifying the domains that lead to H1 variant specific effects on the cellular capacity to replicate by constructing hybrid genes in which the coding portions of the major structural domains of H1 and H1c have been systematically exchanged. The result s obtained will be the basis of further studies that will define the role of H1, H1 variants, and specific structural features of H1s, in chromatin. %%% The H1 histones are a family of proteins involved in packaging the genetic material. Correlative data has associated changes in histone content with alterations in cellular division. The object of these studies is to identify structural features of various key members of this protein family that affect a cells capacity to replicate. We have clones of the genes for various H1proteins. We will systematically alter sequences in these cloned genes and introduce them into cultured mouse cells in such a manner that they are overexpressed and replace most of the cells preexisting H1 histones. We will then determine the effects these alterations have on the cells capacity to divide, We already know that the H1 product of one gene inhibits replication and the H1 product of another gene has no apparent effect on replication. Our studies will focus on the structural features of these two genes that set them functionally apart. The results will provide a basis for further studies that will specifically define the role various members of the H1 protein family and their various structural features play in cell growth. Such an understanding will extend our understanding of the mechanism of cell division and how it relates to differentiation and unregulated cell growth characteristic of oncogenesis. ***

9319878 Aktan This is a proposal for research focused on deterioration mechanics of aged steel truss bridges, to develop a rational approach for quantitative assessment of the condition of these bridges. The scope includes the following phases. (1) An in-depth study of the properties of chemically and mechanically aged and deteriorated materials. This phase will include a study of how the fundamental characteristics of materials (including the fatigue properties) change with age and are affected by deterioration. (2) Laboratory studies of six full-length built-up members salvaged from the two destroyed highway bridges. (3) Development of a practical procedure for estimating the actual type and extent of deterioration. This procedure will enable predicting critical responses of bridge members and of complete bridges; (5) Calibration of the proposed analytical procedure by simulating the experimental responses of the two highway bridges tested to failure. This calibration will be done through nonlinear system- identification studies.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the intestinal tract, the first line of defense against pathogenic microorganisms is the layer of epithelial cells that line its extensive mucosal surface. These cells provide a physical barrier to infection and play critical roles at mucosal immune sites by detecting and eliminating enteric pathogens, including the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Salmonella enterica. The intestinal mucosa contains, in addition to epithelial cells, an extensive nervous system capable of pre-programmed behavior, and it houses the largest lymphocyte population in the body;these three cell types communicate with each other through molecular signals which modulate inflammation and coordinate mucosal defense responses to infection. Opioid abuse is an important co-factor in host susceptibility to HIV and other mucosal pathogens, but its impact on mucosal host defense is relatively unknown. Opioid drugs may impair neuro-immuno-epithelial interactions at immune inductive and effector sites in the intestine. The proposed experiments will test the general hypotheses that opioids impair the immune responses of epithelial cells and lymphoid cells in the intestinal mucosa through actions mediated by neuronal and extraneuronal opioid receptors, and that opioid neuroimmune signaling is enhanced by mucosal inflammation. In Specific Aim 1, we will determine and compare the effects of opioids on proinflammatory cytokine release and changes in opioid receptor expression before and after inflammation in porcine intestinal epithelial cells in culture and from explants of Peyer's patch and absorptive mucosae through measurements of secreted cytokines and their mRNA expression. We will also assess opioid actions on intestinal epithelial cell wound healing by electric cell-substrate impedance sensing. In Specific Aim 2, we will compare the morphological interrelationships between opioid receptors and opioid peptides in epithelial cells, neurons and leukocytes of Peyer's patch and absorptive mucosae by immunocytochemical and in situ hybridization methods. We will also examine opioid effects on an epithelial-neuronal co-culture from porcine intestine through measurements of cytokine release and changes in neuronal excitability evoked by Salmonella infection. Finally, we will characterize changes in the ligand affinity and G protein coupling coupling of specific opioid binding sites in neural membranes from inflamed and uninflamed Peyer's patches by radioligand binding techniques. In Specific Aim 3, we will characterize delta-opioid receptors mediating chemokine-induced chemotaxis of intestinal T lymphocytes, and determine the effects of opioids on neurally-mediated secretory immunoglobulin-A release from intestinal mucosa explants. The results from this multi-faceted transdisciplinary project will provide a fundamental understanding of how opioid drugs act to alter mucosal defense function. Moreover, they will unveil new drug targets for the modulation of mucosal immune responses to HIV and other gut pathogens as well as oral vaccines offering protection from these microbes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The goal of the proposed transdisciplinary investigation is to elucidate the mechanisms by which opioid drugs of abuse disrupt the interplay between enteric neurons, epithelial cells and immunocytes at sites of mucosal immunity, which are key targets for infection by enteropathogens like S. typhimurium and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Our experiments will provide new and significant information on the ability of opioids to influence mucosal responses evoked by Salmonella typhimurium, an enteroinvasive zoonotic pathogen and potential HIV vaccine vector. The results that we obtain in this multi-faceted project will advance our understanding of how opioid drugs act to alter mucosal defense function. In addition, they will reveal new drug targets for the modulation of mucosal immune responses to enteric pathogens including HIV, and provide new information contributing to the development of oral vaccines based on bacterial vectors that are designed to confer protection against HIV infection in gut-associated lymphoid tissue, the major body reservoir for this virus.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) causes morbidity and mortality in neonates and in immunocompromised individuals. HCMV encodes at least four genes (UL33, UL78, US27, and US28) with homology to G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). Studies of M78, the murine homologue of UL78, have shown that M78 is an integral protein in the envelope of virions. Mutations in this gene result in a viral growth defect and reduced expression of an immediate early gene, m123. Interestingly, the de novo expression of M78 is not required to mediate this effect suggesting that the M78 protein present in the virion envelope is sufficient for the efficient expression of m123. This research proposal will: 1.) Determine the expression pattern of UL78 mRNA and protein, 2.) Determine the growth properties of a UL78 deleted mutant virus and 3.) Determine whether the presence of UL78 protein by itself, or in the presence of a CC chemokine (RANTES, MCP-1, MIP-1alpha and MIP-1beta), influences the expression of HCMV and/or cellular genes. Protein expression and localization will be determined by Western blot analysis and/or epitope tagging of the C-terminal domain of UL78. Mutant virus will be generated in an infectious HCMV bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) and, if necessary, utilizing a complementing cell-line. Growth properties will be determined at a high and low multiplicity of infection in several primary or life-extended cell types. Effects on HCMV or cellular gene expression patterns can be monitored using a viral gene array or cellular affymetrix array respectively, and confirmed by Northern blot analysis.

Molecule for molecule, methane (CH4) is about 30 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2) on a 100-year time scale. Natural wetlands are the largest single source of global methane emissions and are the only source that responds directly to climate change. Despite the methane's significance, large uncertainties surround estimates of global CH4 emissions from natural wetlands. Uncertainties are particularly large for tropical wetlands (accounting for the majority of wetland emissions) due to the paucity of ground observations, detailed maps, and data for most of the developing world. Dambos (seasonally saturated, channelless valley floors) constitute the largest geographic extent of seasonal wetlands in Central and Southern Africa, occupying up to 20 percent of the central African plateau with more than 200,000 km2 of total extent. The objective of this project is to construct a spatially and temporally explicit estimate of methane emissions from 2500 km2 of representative dambos in the northern Luwero District, Uganda. The investigators will use multispectral (ASTER) remote sensing combined with digital terrain modeling to stratify the landscape, distinguishing dambo wetlands from upland regions as well as soil and hydrologic variability within dambos. Representative sites will be selected for detailed soil and vegetation characterization, hydrologic and temperature monitoring, and the measurement of methane fluxes. The project team will monitor methane fluxes through one major wet season and hydrology over one and a half years or three wet seasons. Using this data, they will identify key controls on dambo methane fluxes, and construct an empirical model relating these fluxes to soil properties, vegetation, temperature, and hydrology.

This project will provide the first rigorous quantification of methane emissions from dambos, providing the basis for a first-order estimate of methane emissions over annual and seasonal for tropical dambo wetlands throughout Central and Southern Africa. Theses data will help constrain highly uncertain tropical source estimates for global atmospheric methane models. The modeling strategy employed "linking a profile-scale methane model to a dynamic landscape wetland model" supports predictions of the response of tropical dambo wetlands to future climate change scenarios, allowing scientists to assess the potential for positive or negative climate change feedbacks. The two graduate students supported on this project will be trained in fields ranging from remote sensing and terrain modeling to the biogeochemistry of wetland CH4 emissions. They will also work closely in the field with both a U.S.-based investigator and a Ugandan collaborator, learning first hand about tropical soils, hydrology, vegetation, and landscapes as well as how to conduct research in a developing country. Conversely, a young Ugandan scientist will have the opportunity to work with U.S. scientists on a project of both local and global importance. To raise general awareness of dambos, in addition to normal scientific publication the investigators will direct an undergraduate researcher to construct a dambo website with remotely sensed images, photos from the field, maps, statistics, a bibliography, and grey literature.

The Washington Internship for Native Students, established under the auspices of American University's Washington Semester Program, was developed in response to the White House Initiative to help American Indian and Alaskan Native students develop knowledge and leadership skills that will enhance their potential to contribute to their communities on reservations, and the nation. Having access to a significant pool of American Indian and Alaskan Native students, the program focuses on experiential learning by coupling internships with coursework and ensuring that traditional values and practices of sovereign nations and tribes are intermingled in the program. WINS will collaborate with the National Science Foundation to provide internship placements for students sorely under-represented in the STEM workforce. As a result of this effort, the NSF will serve as a conduit to broaden participation of this under-represented group, and diversify the future STEM landscape needed to keep the US competitive in a global environment.

The Washington Internship for Native Students, established under the auspices of American University's Washington Semester Program, was developed in response to the White House Initiative to help American Indian and Alaskan Native students develop knowledge and leadership skills necessary to enhance their potential to contribute to their communities on reservations, and the nation. Having access to a significant pool of American Indian and Alaskan Native students, the program focuses on experiential learning by coupling internships with coursework and ensuring that traditional values and practices of sovereign nations and tribes are intermingled in the program. WINS will continue to collaborate with the National Science Foundation to provide internship placements for American Indian and Alaskan Native students, a group of students sorely under-represented in the STEM workforce. It is anticipated as a result of this effort, the NSF will serve as a conduit to broaden participation of this under-represented group, and diversify the future STEM enterprise, needed to keep the US competitive in a global environment.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Heart disease is the most significant health issue by several measures, and heart failure is one of our greatest medical challenges. Heart transplantation has remained the gold standard treatment option for severe heart failure. However, widespread applicability of heart transplantation is limited by a chronic, overwhelming shortage of donor organs. Cardiac tissue engineering has the potential to provide alternative solutions by creating additional treatment options. The largest barrier to the engineering of solid organs remains the deficiency of a vascular supply to support the three- dimensionality of the tissue constructs. To that end, we have developed a method to promote the development of an intrinsic blood supply to cardiac muscle tissue engineered in vivo. We isolated primary neonatal cardiac myocytes and suspended the cells in a fibrin gel within a vascularized 'chamber' in vivo, which promotes angiogenesis. We found that, by 4 weeks, the individual cells had remodeled to form functional 3- dimensional cardiac muscle which is supported by a well-formed vascular bed, and exhibited functional, histologic and phenotypic characteristics of mature myocardial tissue. This provided proof of concept for the engineering of functional, vascularized 3-D heart muscle in vivo. The work defined in this current proposal is focused on understanding the mechanics of the construct formation in vivo, as well as optimizing its functionality. We are interested in improving several key variables during tissue formation. We will optimize the seeding density, implantation time and size of the constructs. In addition, we will evaluate the feasibility of utilizing the model as a vascular conduit and evaluate its ability to act as a "pump" by producing intraluminal pressure with contraction, and ultimately flow, via the addition of valves. Completion of this study will allow for the formation of vascularized cardiac constructs with a significant improvement in performance metrics. In addition, we plan to demonstrate the in vivo development of a tissue engineered, single chambered cardiac pump, capable of effecting fluid flow through the construct. This will bring us closer to the ultimate goal of engineering clinically useful heart muscle. Heart disease is the number one health burden. The research proposed in this study focuses on engineering three dimensional heart muscle tissue within the body. This will provide a key step toward the ultimate goal of developing replacement tissues for people with heart failure. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]

The Nation's two-year colleges (2YCs) educate a substantial and rapidly growing number of undergraduate students, including a significant number of students in STEM fields. Furthermore, the racial, ethnic, and geographic diversity of students served by 2YCs make these institutions key entry points to STEM fields for students who have been historically underrepresented. While 2YCs serve large numbers of STEM students, the number of NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) proposals from and awards to these institutions remains disproportionately low.

This project is developing and implementing a grant writing workshop and mentoring program for STEM faculty from 2YCs. Project components are designed to address the barriers to participation in CCLI faced by 2YC faculty and, as such, to address the disproportionately small number of CCLI awards made to these institutions. The overall goals of the project are to broaden awareness of the CCLI program as a resource for 2YCs and to increase the number of CCLI awards to these institutions. A specific focus of the project is on faculty from rural 2YCs that have not had previous NSF funding. By enhancing participation of target faculty in the CCLI program, the project is directly impacting 2YC faculty and students through improved curricula, pedagogy, and instrumentation. Furthermore, by broadening the CCLI community to include institutions not previously represented, the project is seeking to further facilitate collaboration between 2YCs and the broader undergraduate STEM community.

The Washington Internship for Native Students, established under the auspices of American University?s Washington Semester Program, was developed in response to the White House Initiative to help American Indian and Alaskan Native students develop knowledge and leadership skills necessary to enhance their potential to contribute to their communities on reservations, and the nation. Having access to a significant pool of American Indian and Alaskan Native students, the program focuses on experiential learning by coupling internships with coursework and ensuring that traditional values and practices of sovereign nations and tribes are intermingled in the program. WINS will continue to collaborate with the National Science Foundation to provide internship placements for American Indian and Alaskan Native students, a group of students sorely under-represented in the STEM workforce. It is anticipated as a result of this effort, the NSF will serve as a conduit to broaden participation of this under-represented group, and diversify the future STEM enterprise, needed to keep the US competitive in a global environment.

The Nation's two-year colleges (2YCs) educate a substantial and rapidly growing number of undergraduate students, including a significant number of students in STEM fields. Furthermore, the racial, ethnic, and geographic diversity of students served by 2YCs make these institutions key entry points to STEM fields for students who have been historically underrepresented.

The Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM of Two-Year Colleges (TUESTYC) project is developing and implementing a grant writing workshop and mentoring program for STEM faculty from 2YCs. Project components are designed to address the barriers to participation in TUES program faced by 2YC faculty. The overall goals of the project are to broaden awareness of the TUES program as a resource for 2YCs and to increase the number of TUES awards to these institutions. This project is extending the work of two previous projects by specifically targeting faculty from the disciplines of biology, engineering, and physics/astronomy. By enhancing participation of target faculty in the TUES program, the project is directly impacting 2YC faculty and students through improved curricula, pedagogy, and instrumentation. Furthermore, by broadening the TUES community to include institutions not previously represented, the project is seeking to further facilitate collaboration between 2YCs and the broader undergraduate STEM community.

Proposal #: 13-35263
PI(s): Hu, Fei
Qahouq, Jaber Abu; Brown, David A.; Gray, Jeffrey G.; Tsoupikova, Daria
Institution: University of Alabama ? Tuscaloosa
Title: MRI/Dev.: Robot-aided, Cognitive Virtual Rehabilitation for Automatic Physical Training of
Individuals with Disabilities (iRAPID)
Project Proposed:
This project, developing iRAPID, a robot-aided cognitive virtual rehabilitation instrument for automatic physical training of individuals with disabilities, integrates several hardware components (the KineAssist robot, programmable treadmill, biomarkers (sensors) and Xbox kinect sensors) to build an augmented virtual reality animation of the patient. A series of newly developed software tools will support virtual rehab research computations of body balancing and neuro-pattern changes during rehab.
The instrument will be designed to be suitable for three different cost/performance levels, with successive levels making use of more comprehensive sensors. Combining the sensors (e.g., functional NearInfraRed and EEG brain imaging) with physical rehab mechanisms (e.e., treadmill) make possible interesting research areas related to the effectiveness of physical rehabilitation training. Hence, iRAPID will be a cognitive, research-oriented rehab instrument with automatic, accurate rehab training progress computation. To enable the stated goals, the system should be capable of recording a wealth of sensor measurements. Advancing the next-generation rehab system, the work
- Adopts a hierarchical (3 layers), incremental (3 modes) development strategy,
- Supports computational rehabilitation research, and
- Adopts evolution-oriented software design.
Broader Impacts:
The instrumentation enables research an education of an exciting new field, Cognitive ElectroBiomedical Systems (CEBS), enables the training in CEEBS of two PhD students, and outreach to minorities. CEBS is a trans-disciplinary (TrD) field has distinguished features compared to multi-disciplinary (MuD) and inter-disciplinary (InD). The authors compare these fields to a cake where different ingredients are not easily distinguishable (TrD) giving a new format product, and a plate of salad that still has clear existence of different ingredients ((InD). The PhD training program will have a training structure included TrD/MuD/InD curriculum and service learning. The Director of Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP) will assist in involving underrepresented students with summer CAMP and K-12 activities. This development is likely to highly contribute within an EPSCoR jurisdiction.

The project will research how student body movements support their reasoning and understanding about scientific concepts that involve hidden structures or unobservable mechanisms. Student and scientist descriptions and explanations often involve embodied expressions, such as body movements used to represent or symbolically manipulate components of scientific systems (e.g., turning the hands to an object's rotation, tilting the upper torso to demonstrate some type of imbalance, etc.). Exploring the embodied foundations of science reasoning is also timely because of recent advances in human-computer interfaces that allow people to interact with computers using expressive, natural movements as opposed to keystrokes and mouse-clicks. The project will initially research what types of body motion that support causal explanations for observable phenomena, which are called Embodied Explanatory Expressions (EEEs). Building on the research, the project will then explore whether identified EEEs can be integrated into the control structures of online simulations utilizing newly available motion sensing input devices (e.g., Microsoft Kinect, Leap Motion). The research findings will enrich our basic understanding of science learning and have practical implications in curriculum design and in the development of new learning technologies.

The project will research student gestures and body motion during explanation of such scientific concepts by recording and analyzed these gestures and motion not only to identify the embodiment of such knowledge, but also to design interventions and simulations based on such motions that could facilitate learning. Using interviews, available motion sensing input devices, and other methods, the project will validate the approach, investigate how students reason using body movements, and how their expressions change with interventions. This project will identify core EEEs for supporting scientific reasoning in three critical areas of science involving unobservable mechanisms: Molecular Interactions, Heat Transfer, and Earth Systems. The project will focus specifically on the types of embodied interactions that support students' construction of explanations, and explore whether these body movements can be integrated into the design of a new generation of online learning simulations that elevates the level of science reasoning exhibited by students who use them.

This REU Site award to Eastern Kentucky University, located in Richmond, KY, will support the training of 10 students for 10 weeks, during the summers of 2017- 2019. Students will be based in Richmond, and will conduct ecological research at remote field stations in a region of high biodiversity but impacted by mountaintop coal mining, logging, and other disturbances. Students will work directly with faculty mentors and collaborators, including agency professionals, and will participate in all aspects of research including study design, data collection, analyses, and presentation of results. A weekly workshop will provide additional learning opportunities on topics such as ethics and the responsible conduct research, leadership, and career development. Participants will engage with their community and develop communication skills with scientists, land managers, and the public, while exploring the implications of their own research in a setting rife with controversy related to the economic and cultural tradeoffs of resource extraction and environmental conservation. Research findings could help shape resource management in a way that brings socioeconomic benefits to the region.

It is anticipated that a total of 30 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, will be trained in the program. Student participants will include individuals from the study region, and from other parts of the nation, often from very different socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. First generations college students, students with disabilities, and veterans will also be recruited. Students will learn how research is conducted and communicated, and many will present the results of their work at scientific conferences.

A common web-based assessment tool used by all REU programs funded by the Division of Biological Infrastructure (Directorate for Biological Sciences) will be used to determine the effectiveness of the training program. Students will be tracked after the program in order to determine their career paths. Students will be asked to respond to an automatic email sent via the NSF reporting system. More information about the program is available by visiting http://biology.eku.edu/reu, or by contacting the PI (Dr. David Brown at david.brown@eku.edu) or the co-PI (Dr. Stephen Richter at stephen.richter@eku.edu).

The computing landscape has been changed in recent years due to the pervasive shift to multicore and GPU-based computer architectures. The current and future generations of our computing-related workforce will require the acquisition of a broad parallel and distributed computing (PDC) skill set, to enable the effective utilization of existing and emerging computing devices and cyber infrastructures. The current undergraduate computer science (CS), computing engineering (CE), and engineering curricula, in most cases, do not integrate PDC concepts as required topics. The overall goal of the project is to prepare CS, CE, and Engineering undergraduate students for their future careers in light of this technological shift towards parallelism by improving faculty expertise in PDC through a series of week-long training workshops and by providing them with the resources to integrate PDC topics into introductory programming classes. This will enable the future workforce to contribute effectively in the emerging technological ecosystem, promoting the progress of science and advancing the national health, prosperity and welfare, which serves the national interest, as stated by NSF's mission.

Based on the training of the trainer model, this project will be conducting a series of week-long workshops for the instructors of introductory programming courses such as CS1 and CS2 through whom the project will be able to reach a larger audience of CS, CE and Engineering undergraduates. The project will leverage existing PDC educational resources to enact a two-phase plan. The first phase is to conduct a preliminary planning workshop to plan and develop a faculty development workshop and an iPDC toolkit. The iPDC toolkit will be an all-inclusive resource repository for the easy integration of PDC topics in introductory programming classes without much effort required from the instructors. In the second phase, a series of 5-week-long training workshops will be conducted over three years. These intensive faculty development workshops will include: 1) introduction to PDC concepts, 2) developing parallel programs using libraries and tools like OpenMP, Java, and Matlab, 3) PDC concepts through unplugged activities, 4) hands-on programming modules, 5) access to tools and information beyond the scope of iPDC. Continuous improvement through assessment and evaluation will be an integral part of the project. The projects goal is to reach seventy-five faculty over 3 years period who in turn will introduce PDC concepts and topics to over four thousand undergraduates per year. The participants selected for the project will come from institutions primarily involved in teaching but lack research infrastructure and PDC resources. Beyond the NSF funding cycle, the project will continue to provide online faculty development workshops and mini-workshops, using the iPDC toolkit, at CS and CE education conferences.

Advances in many aspects of our lives rely on having a highly skilled, professional workforce in STEM. Regrettably, approximately 40% of students who begin their undergraduate studies intending to pursue a STEM major do not complete a STEM degree. However, recent developments in STEM education research have demonstrated convincingly that student success rates can be significantly improved by utilizing instructional methods that actively engage students in their courses. Due to evolving national demographics, the STEM education community must also strive to engage learners from diverse backgrounds and origins to further ensure a sufficient supply of STEM talent for the domestic workforce. Considering that the population growth rate of Hispanic citizens and permanent residents outpaces all other racial and ethnic groups, this project will focus on STEM education issues in two-year Hispanic-serving institutions (2Y-HSIs) located in California's San Diego and Imperial Counties. Specifically, this research will investigate factors that influence the implementation of active learning strategies by STEM instructors in 2Y-HSIs and how the active learning impacts the students in their classrooms.

This project will conduct STEM education research on capacity-building professional development efforts for 20 STEM instructors from participating 2Y-HSIs. The research foci will be primarily two-fold, exploring factors that influence instructors to change their teaching methods, and examining how the newly-established active learning environments impact student success. This project will contribute to the knowledge base about instructional change strategies and active learning in 2Y-HSIs, which are institutions of increasing national importance. During each year of the two-year project, 10 STEM instructors from the 2Y-HSIs will participate in a three-day Course Design Studio offered by the Center for Engaged Teaching at UC San Diego. The participants will redesign their STEM courses and, with follow-up support from the project team of Principal Investigators and UC San Diego graduate students, implement the redesigned courses and conduct assessments of their impacts. The graduate students will have completed a set of courses in teaching and learning and graduate teaching apprenticeships in 3-4 undergraduate courses. Results from the research will be disseminated through local symposia that convene 2Y-HSI instructors and administrators with UC San Diego and UT Austin collaborators, along with broader-ranging meetings, conferences and targeted scholarly journals.

PROJECT SUMMARY Up to 40% of patients who undergo mastectomy suffer from chronic pain, defined as pain lasting greater than 3 months. Nevertheless, mastectomy remains a mainstay of treatment for over 25% of breast cancer patients, necessitating novel, definitive solutions for chronic pain. Previous studies have documented that breast cancer patients with post-surgical pain experience worse quality-of-life with respect to physical and psychological well- being. Over 10% of opioid naïve patients who undergo breast cancer surgery require opioids for pain relief at least three months after surgery. Current pharmacologic strategies including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and neuropathic drugs (e.g. gabapentin or amitriptyline) are often insufficient due to adverse effects, incomplete pain relief, and poor patient compliance. Several reports have demonstrated that cutaneous nerve injury substantially contributes to post-mastectomy pain. Altered sensation, including `pins and needles' sensation and/or shock-like, burning, or stabbing pain in the known distribution of chest wall sensory nerves suggest a neuropathic etiology. A strategy which addresses the underlying nerve injury would offer an opportunity to definitively treat chronic post-mastectomy pain. The regenerative peripheral nerve interface (RPNI) has emerged as a novel strategy to treat neuromas in peripheral nerves. The RPNI consists of the residual peripheral nerve end implanted in a muscle graft, following surgical resection of the injured terminal nerve portion (neuroma). The muscle graft is separated from its native nerve input, leaving neuromuscular junctions open for ingrowth of nerve fibers from the implanted nerve; animal studies show that this provides a physiologic end-organ for the implanted nerve without neuroma recurrence. We have performed RPNIs to treat painful neuromas associated with limb amputation, with significant reductions in patient-reported pain. Recently, we have performed RPNIs to treat intercostal neuromas in patients with chronic post-mastectomy pain. Limited follow-up suggests that these patients experience substantial improvement in their pain, although formal evaluation is required. Our central hypothesis is that intercostal nerve RPNI surgery significantly reduces chronic post-mastectomy pain without neuroma recurrence. We will employ a cross-over study design assess the efficacy of RPNI surgery for intercostal neuroma while optimizing patient enrollment. Aim 1: To demonstrate the efficacy of RPNI surgery to reduce post-mastectomy pain and opioid consumption. We will obtain patient-reported outcomes (PRO's), using previously validated tools, to measure the effect of RPNI surgery on post-mastectomy pain and opioid use in this pilot clinical study. Aim 2: To demonstrate absence of neuroma recurrence in post-mastectomy patients after intercostal RPNI surgery. Neuroma recurrence in patients treated with intercostal RPNI will be evaluated using physical exam findings and ultrasound imaging.

Project Summary/Abstract The Comparative Medicine and Pathology training program was initiated in the fall of 2003 and provides state- of-the-art research training to veterinarians. Five years of continuing support are requested in the present application, including support for six trainees in each year of the program. It is anticipated that the majority of these individuals will have completed a residency in medicine, surgery, or pathology prior to entering the training program. Selection criteria will include: 1) strong interest in research and a desire for a career in academic veterinary medicine; 2) academic credentials and performance during clinical training/residency; and 3) desirable personal characteristics, including integrity, perseverance, and oral and written communications skills. The training program is located in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota and is directed by Drs. Cathy Carlson, David Brown, and Molly McCue. Thirty-three faculty mentors, all members of the Comparative and Molecular Biosciences (CMB) and/or Veterinary Medicine (Vet Med) graduate programs, will participate in the training program. These individuals represent a diverse group of disciplines, including pharmacology, cell biology, infectious disease, neurobiology, physiology, genetics, molecular biology, and orthopedics. Trainees without a PhD degree will pursue a PhD in the CMB or Vet Med graduate program, well- organized, multidisciplinary graduate programs created to focus graduate education efforts by faculty interested in comparative biomedical sciences and the molecular mechanisms responsible for human and animal health and disease. The goals of our programs are to provide students with the broad-based knowledge, quality communication skills, and advanced research training essential for a career as independent investigators.

The NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program supports the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need. It accomplishes this goal by funding two-year and four-year institutions of higher education, that use these funds to give scholarships and academic support to undergraduate STEM students pursuing associate-, bachelor-, or master-level STEM degrees. Increasing the ability of two-year colleges to obtain S-STEM funding would increase participation of students served by these colleges. To this end, this project will provide two annual capacity-building workshops focused on preparing competitive proposals for submission to the S-STEM program for 24 teams from two-year colleges. The specific focus will be on developing proposals for submission to the Institutional Capacity Building track of the S-STEM program. Each participating two-year college will send a two-person team composed of the STEM faculty member who will serve as the principal investigator of the proposal and a STEM administrator or education researcher. It is expected that working in these teams can improve proposal quality, increase the number of S-STEM grants to two year colleges, and most importantly, add new students to pathways toward becoming STEM professionals.

The workshops will be held in the western United States. Recruitment will be conducted through venues such as associations for two-year colleges (e.g., American Association of Community Colleges), and discipline-specific associations. The two-and-a-half day workshops will feature experts in different areas to advise community college personnel, and provide time for the team to work together on the proposal. Prior to the workshop, the participants will interview stakeholders to better understand their institution's needs and resources, thus building the framework for their proposal's activities and budget. Research and evaluation of the workshop's effectiveness will measure participants' experiences at the workshop and their subsequent work to develop their proposal. This information will provide insight into the constraints and affordances that workshop participants face in applying what they learned at the workshop to build capacity for research at two-year institutions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this PFI project is to benefit millions of post-stroke patients and other disabled people who need effective body rehabilitation, by developing an intelligent rehabilitation robot with adaptive upper trunk support and hologram-based virtual reality training scenes. The existing commercial rehabilitation products cannot efficiently support the upper torso of the patients with serious trunk disability, and do not have intelligent, fine-resolution robot control to train two legs with different impairment levels. An online rehabilitation training without frequent in-person visits to the office of the physical therapist (PT) would reduce the medical cost. This commercialization-oriented project will address those market needs. It will also develop and implement a new customer channel model called "8C + 5F", consisting of 8 communication channels with different types of customers and offering 5 technical facets of this platform. To enhance the academia-industry partnership, the team proposes an effective model called nexus organization (NEO), to achieve transdisciplinary, conflict-free collaborations between the university and the industry. To train future leaders in innovation and entrepreneurship, the team proposes a new education model called Innovation and Marketing-oriented Renaissance Foundry (IMRF) to prepare PhD students and postdoctoral researchers with strong entrepreneurship and innovation skills.

The proposed project aims to build a Holographic intelligent Rehabilitation robotic technology to train post-stroke patients. It has 3 marketing-oriented new designs: i) (Upper trunk exoskeleton with 3D linkage and elastic impedance control): A compact, light-weight and economic upper trunk exoskeleton will be developed for a robot system to improve the upper trunk stability control during rehabilitation. ii) (Intelligent platform control in each phase of intra-gait cycle to handle two-leg impairment asymmetry): Current treadmill control simply changes the speed/force of the treadmill in each gait cycle based on the user's speed or measured center of pressure. However, many patients have different impairment levels between his/her two legs. This PFI will use low-cost thermal/acoustic sensors with deep-learning-based 3D leg trajectory analysis to achieve fine-granularity 4-phase rehabilitation robot control. iii) (Self-engaging mixed reality rehabilitation environment based on holographic telemedicine): The team will extend their previously developed virtual reality (VR)-based design to a hologram-based mixed reality (MR) platform with the advanced telemedicine functions for virtual patient-to-PT or patient-to-patient co-rehab training.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.