January 06, 2023
Year in Review: Faculty research and creative work
Congratulations to all the faculty who received grants for research and creative work in 2022. Here are some highlights:
Adelaide Clark, Ph.D., chemistry
Adelaide Clark, Ph.D, assistant professor of chemistry, was awarded $109,221 from the Health Resources & Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Clark is a co-investigator with researchers at Oregon Institute of Technology on the project, “Hospital Burden, Air Quality, and Health Care Interventions in Southern Oregon.” They are studying the chemical composition of wildfire smoke samples, specifically looking for current-use flame retardants and plasticizers, as well as typical combustion byproducts, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Osama Siddiqui, Ph.D., history
Osama Siddiqui, Ph.D., assistant professor of history, received a highly competitive $6,000 summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities — the only one awarded in Rhode Island — for A Science of Society: Economic Thought in Colonial India, a book about the way European economic thought was received and transformed in nineteenth-century colonial India, including through translation into Indian languages such as Urdu.
Ileana Soto Reyes, Ph.D., biology
Ileana Soto Reyes, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology, received a $397,205 grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for her research, “Elucidating the impact of the Npc1nmf164 mutation in the cerebellar postnatal development of a mouse model of Niemann-Pick Type C disease.” Niemann-Pick is a progressive genetic disorder that leads to juvenile neurodegeneration, ataxia, dementia, and premature death. She was also awarded $395,662 from the National Science Foundation’s Early Career Development Program for “Metabolic control of Purkinje Cell dendritic development and mouse behavior.”
Eric Sung, MFA; Tuba Agartan, Ph.D.; Nicholas Longo, Ph.D. ’96
Eric Sung, MFA, associate professor of photography, Tuba Agartan, Ph.D., professor of health policy and management, and Nicholas Longo, Ph.D. ’96, professor of global studies and of public and community service studies, received PC’s first National Endowment for the Arts research grant for $15,000, which was matched by the School of Arts and Sciences. The grant for the project, “Arts for Community Portals: Stories Re-Imagining the Future,” funds an ethnographic study of arts and cultural responses during different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The City of Providence also provided funding to show Sung’s work at PVD Fest and other community-based locations. As part of this work, the art exhibit “PORTALES: Reimagining the Future,” opened at the Waterfire Arts Center in Providence in September, with additional funding from the Rhode Island Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Council of the Humanities. See a list of artists that participated in the PORTALES exhibit, which was curated by Shey Rivera Ríos and Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez: https://waterfire.org/events/portales-reimagining-the-future/.
James Waters, Ph.D., biology
James Waters, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, was awarded a five-year, $527,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Understanding the Rules of Life: Emergent Networks Program. The research is part of a larger $3 million dollar project with scientists at New Jersey Institute of Technology and other institutions. Waters, along with undergraduate students and a postdoctoral researcher, is measuring the metabolic rates of clonal raider ants to discover how mechanisms of energetic regulation operate in collective groups.
