Welcome Back to Making an Impact

STAY CURIOUS

A MESSAGE FROM DR. CURTIS

Welcome back for the spring term. I hope that everyone was able to enjoy some peace during the holiday season. Some significant events happened during the break.

The Federal budget was passed and signed into law, which included $5.68 million to support our Soldier Performance and Readiness initiative at Georgia Southern. It is a significant public impact program that reflects our strong partnership with the US Army and is poised to advance physiological and cognitive research to enhance tactical performance and injury prevention.

Also, the National Science Foundation released its annual rankings (based on the FY 2021 report) and Georgia Southern climbed to 227 – just ahead of Marquette University and UNC – Greensboro and just shy of the University of Denver. More information, including a breakdown

of our funding sources and institutional investments can be found here.

Lastly, in case you missed it, before we left for the holidays, Georgia Southern received the prestigious Innovation & Economic Prosperity University designation from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. It represents a tremendous achievement, especially for our Business Innovation Group, but for the university faculty writ large as we strive to build the institution’s reputation as a place of research, discovery, innovation, and scholarly excellence.

Good things are indeed happening as we move into a springtime of renewal and growth.

INNOVATING TOWARDS TOMORROW

IMPACT ACCELERATOR AWARDEES ANNOUNCED

One of the main barriers to program expansion identified by faculty was the lack of time to realize larger research and scholarship objectives. Impact Area Accelerator Grants target active researchers who are already leading substantive research efforts with demonstrated success but require additional support to take their research programs and scholarship to the next level. The goal of the Impact Area Accelerator Grants is to catalyze scholarship within the current university research impact areas and support active researchers to take their work to the next level.

This funding opportunity will provide "barrier-breaking" support for existing research programs within the five high-impact research areas at Georgia Southern University. The current research impact areas are: Holistic Fitness and Wellness; Logistics and Supply Chain Innovations; Community Enrichment; Advanced Materials and Manufacturing; and Coastal Resilience and Sustainability. This year’s awardees are highlighted below.

Title: Preparing for School-Based Literacy Learning: Multilingual Family, Community, and School Partnerships for Young Learners

PI: Sally Brown (Professor of Curriculum, Foundations and Reading)

This project aims to (1) identify the strengths of multilingual families in supporting literacy development of their children, the generation of strategies to promote successful school-based literacy learning, (2) develop strategies and activities leading to successful school-based literacy learning, and (3) provide family and community support for research school success and positive learning outcomes. This proposal aligns to the Community Enrichment research impact area, leveraging cultural and linguistic resources of communities to better support student literacy learning success. The Impact Accelerator funding of this project will provide time for the preparation of a Hearst Foundation grant proposal.

Title: Understanding local adaptation to diseases in oysters to improve management and resilience

PI: John Carroll (Associate Professor, Ecology and Zoology)

This project aims to focus on drivers of disease dynamics and immune responses in oysters, a coastal keystone species that is economically and ecologically important throughout the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The proposed research leverages local oyster disease data within a broader geographical scope and compliments the traditional disease metrics with immunological response and gene expression data to look at evolutionary adaptations to disease-causing parasites. This project aligns with Georgia Southern University's Coastal Resilience and Sustainability impact area by focusing on the conservation and shoreline ecology of oysters, a species that provides many ecosystem services (food resources, shoreline protection) for coastal communities. The Impact Accelerator funding of this project will provide time and supplies for novel analysis of data in preparation for multiple federal grant submissions: NSF Biological Oceanography, Ecology & Evolution of Infectious Diseases, NOAA, and the National Estuarine Research Reserve Program.

Title: The Effect of Detention and Legal Uncertainty on Immigrant Integration

PI: Matthew Flynn (Assistant Professor of International Studies and Sociology)

This project aims to identify the effects of detention and alternatives to detention on the integration of immigrants into American society through the examination of lived experiences between non-detainees and detainees. The project aligns with the Community Enrichment impact area, deepening the understanding of the experiences and needs of millions of people awaiting case adjudication after entering the United States. The project will also work with community partners to provide workshops to strengthen connections and infrastructures to support immigrant services, well-being, and quality of life. The Impact Accelerator funding of this project will provide time and support in the resubmission of an NSF Law & Science proposal as well as additional NSF RFP proposals for Accountable Institutions and Behavior and Sociology.

Title: Gut microbiome-targeted fiber supplementation to prevent accelerated cardiovascular aging induced by a high-salt diet

PI: Greg Grosicki (Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences and Kinesiology)

This project aims to identify and test effective preventive strategies to counteract hypertension and cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death globally. Specifically, the investigators will test the hypothesis that gut-microbiome targeted fiber supplementation may prevent accelerated cardiovascular aging due to high-salt consumption. This project aligns to the Holistic Fitness and Wellness impact area for innovation in health and wellness treatments, supporting the development of novel primary and secondary preventative care to enhance the efficacy of approaches to improve cardiovascular health. The Impact Accelerator funding for this project will provide time and grant writing support for the preparation of multiple grants including proposals to the National Institute of Health R15 call, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Heart Association.

Title: Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) Technology for Intelligent in-motion Inspection and Condition Monitoring for Infrastructures

PI: Hossein Taheri (Assistant Professor in the Department of Manufacturing Engineering)

This project aims to expand novel in-motion monitoring and detection of defect occurrence, cause, and severity in railway systems through the application of Distributed Acoustic Sensing technology, an intelligent inspection and condition monitoring method for infrastructure. Presently, modes of inspection are based on discrete points, missing transmission of critical data on speed, safety, and signal noise. This project centers around the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing impact area, specifically metrology and quality assessment for infrastructure that will improve safety in rail systems. The Impact Accelerator funding of this proposal will provide time and student support for the submission of proposals to the Department of Transportation, the Georgia Department of Transportation, and Small Business Innovation Research.

Office of Research | https://research.georgiasouthern.edu/

Editor: [email protected]