Enabling New Catalytic Chemistry for Aluminum with non-Innocent and Redox-Active Ligands

SPONSOR: The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation

AWARD DATE: 7/25/2019

A pivotal challenge in chemistry is the development of catalyst systems that are both efficient and selective, and also practical and environmentally benign. Aluminum is an attractive choice for the development of new catalyst systems because it is readily available, comprising >8% of all elements in the Earth’s crust, inexpensive, less than $2/kg, and non-toxic. The development of aluminum complexes as catalysts for high-impact reactions is therefore desirable and serves as an important challenge of significance to green and sustainable chemistry. The Graves group will build on its expertise in this area to apply this knowledge to the development of new catalyst systems for the synthesis of both fine and commodity chemicals as well as novel materials. 

PROJECT PERIOD : 7/25/2019 - 7/24/2024

Direct and spillover effects of Medicare payment changes on nursing home quality and volume

SPONSor:  Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
Award Date:  7/31/2018

Daifeng He will work with research partners at the College of William & Mary to study the causal effects of Medicare payment rates on Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) volume and quality.  This project will provide evidence about how these subsequent changes will affect SNFs and lay the groundwork for informing policymakers about the effects of the ACA’s productivity adjustments for hospitals and other healthcare facilities.  Importantly, the results will inform legislative debates about state certificate of need laws, state Medicaid payment policy, and federal antitrust regulations.

Project Period:  8/1/2018 – 7/31/2019

The Listening Project

SPOnSor:  The Spencer Foundation
Award Date:  4/11/2018

"The Listening Project" is a collaboration with New York University that will offer a new direction in research for a solution to the “crisis of connection" in today’s schools.  This research will specifically focus on the pivotal context of middle schools where this crisis starts to emerge. This work is rooted in our shared capacity to listen to one another so that we may understand, be understood, see, be seen, and care and cooperate across and within communities.  The team will train a sample of NYC middle school teachers and 7th grade students of color in the practice of "transformative interviewing" to enhance listening skills, build relationships between and among students and teachers, and foster learning, satisfaction, and a sense of a common humanity.

Project Period:  9/1/2017 - 8/31/2019

RUI: Compressive Sensing and Neuronal Network Structure-Function Relationships

sponsor:  National Science Foundation
Award Date:  05/16/2018

Revealing the relationship between neuronal network structure and brain function is of central importance to neuroscience and applied mathematics. However, measuring the connectivity of large neuronal networks remains a challenge both experimentally and theoretically. This project formulates a novel framework for the reconstruction and characterization of neuronal connectivity by taking advantage of the widespread network sparsity found in the brain and utilizing recent advances in compressive-sensing (CS) theory.

Project Period:  06/15/2018 – 05/31/2021

RUI:  Exploring the Algebraic Geometry of Matroids

sponsor:  National Science Foundation
Award Date:  05/03/2018

There have been recent breakthroughs in matroid theory coming from the importation of tools and ideas from algebraic geometry.  This project proposes a program to continue this momentum by developing a module-theoretic framework for matroids, a moduli space of matroids, and a geometric setting for discrete polymatroids - all with a view toward some longstanding problems in the matroid literature.  The broader impacts of this proposal include undergraduate research mentorship and a summer enrichment program, focusing on interactions between math and law, for disadvantaged underrepresented students at a nearby underfunded public high school.

Project Period:  09/01/2018 – 08/31/2021

Bond:  Race and the Modern City

SPonsor:  Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts 
Award Date:  03/29/2018

Bond: Race and the Modern City is the first book-length study of the architect J. Max Bond, Jr. Bond. The preeminent African-American architect in the postwar United States, Bond was a civil rights activist, innovative educator, and designer of major commissions across scales.  Yet his work remains little known.  Indeed, throughout his life Bond occupied a unique position as both central figure and outlier, professionally successful but always one among a tiny percentage of black American architects.  By tracing this tension across key sites in Bond's life and work, including Cambridge, Paris, Kumasi, New York, and Washington, DC, this project uses the biography of one exceptional architect to chart an alternate history of architecture and urbanism in the modern and postmodern eras.  In doing so, Bond rethinks much broader histories of the fundamental and often surprising ways that race has shaped American places.

Project Period:  06/10/2018 – 05/31/2019

Quantification of the Wnt Morphogen Gradient in Hydra and Mechanically Induced Symmetry Breaking

SPonsor:  Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Award Date:  05/09/2018

The Wnt/ß-catenin pathway plays an important role for developmental patterning and tissue homeostasis.  Misregulation in Wnt signaling has been linked to numerous diseases in humans, including cancer.  During development, Wnt proteins are secreted and form a concentration gradient that conveys positional information to cells.  This allows Wnt signaling to exert long range effects on tissue patterning and growth, controlling anterior-posterior polarity in a variety of organisms.  Recent technological advances enable us to visualize endogenous Wnt proteins.  This opens the door to quantitative studies of the Wnt gradient during development and allows us to investigate the mutual regulation of mechanically-induced morphological changes and Wnt signaling in axial patterning.  How these mechanical oscillations influence the Wnt gradients and vice versa remains an unsolved question.  We study this mutual regulation in the freshwater cnidarian Hydra and seek to quantitatively dissect the interplay of Wnt gradients and mechanical forcing during symmetry breaking regeneration in Hydra.

Project Period:  05/25/2018 – 10/31/2019

CAREER:  Emergence of Population Diversity from Stem Cell Decision Making in Asexual Planarians

sponsor:  National Science Foundation
Award Date:  3/28/2018

Diversity of individuals is indispensable for population survival and evolution. This project examines how phenotypic diversity can emerge from decision making of individual stem cells in a multicellular regenerative organism. Asexual freshwater planarians are famous for the regenerative capabilities that are based on a large number of adult pluripotent stem cells (ASCs). These ASCs allow them to reproduce by binary fission, thus creating a clonal population and raising the question of how this species is able to create sufficient diversity to survive on evolutionary time scales. Using tools from statistical physics, we recently demonstrated that reproduction is largely stochastic, but that reproductive patterns exist whose molecular and physical determinants remain to be investigated. This proposal aims to test the hypothesis that population diversity arises from a joint effect of the specifics of planarian reproduction mechanics and epigenetic diversity of ASCs in individual worms.

Project Period:  3/1/2018 – 6/30/2021

Unraveling the Role of Mechanics for Tissue Self-organization in Vivo

sponsor:  Research Corporation for Science Advancement
Award Date:  2/6/2018

This project addresses fundamental questions regarding the role of mechanical interactions for pattern formation in development. It has two aims: (1) to determine the role of mechanical properties for cell behaviors during tissue organization and body axis formation and (2) to obtain in vivo measurements of the forces individual cells experience and their connection to cell signaling during these patterning processes. Using a multiscale approach from the molecular to the organismal level, this study will provide insight into how macroscopic organism-level patterning emerges from physicochemical interactions on the microscopic scale.

Project Period:  1/1/2018 – 6/30/2020

Exploring Fixed Costs in Female Hiring:  The Role of Adjustment Costs and Cultural Barriers to Women’s Employment

sponsor:  Harvard Kennedy School
Award Date:  08/22/2017

Saudi Arabia’s Nitaqat program has sharply increased female employment in the private sector.  However, hiring was not spread evenly across firms. Some have shown rapid growth in female employment; others have continued to employ only male workers.  This study will begin studying if this may be due to fixed costs. While hiring female workers may be attractive to firms trying to meet nationalization quotas, firms must first invest in the capacity to hire women. Workplace adjustments may also be needed to comply with cultural norms.  This pilot will gather information on firms’ assessments of these constraints through a combination of administrative data analysis, interviews, and a firm survey. While the focus will be on fixed costs, the evidence gathered as part of this study will likely shed light on the perceived barriers to hiring women, providing crucial evidence for future work on female labor force participation in the region.

Project Period:  6/1/2017 – 8/31/2019

Locus-Specific regulation of pericentric satellite sequences

sponsor:  The Charles E. Kaufman Foundation
Award Date:  7/26/2017

This research project will generate a high-resolution map of specific HSATII sequences within the human genome in order to propel further functional studies to understand the consequence of locus-specific HSATII misregulation in cancer. A full characterization of the level of variation within the HSATII sequence family, an analysis both fundamental and pure, is essential to understanding the regulatory roles of pericentric satellites. This rich resource, and the tools to be developed during the scope of the project, will be of value both within the genomics community, the broader cancer research community, and in the training of our future scientists.

Project Period: 9/1/2017 - 8/31/2019

Equivariant and Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry

sponsor:  The Simons Foundation
Award Date:  1/30/2017

The Simons Foundation has awarded a grant to Dr. Chen to support her research on combinatorial and enumerative problems in algebraic geometry, and fruitful interactions between modern methods in algebraic geometry and new developments in combinatorics, representation theory, symplectic geometry, and other fields. Fundamentally linked to these problems are the study of moduli and parameter spaces and their cohomology theories, and the study of objects that are combinatorially rich in structure.  Her work discusses recent and ongoing work on equivariant and quantam Schubert calculus of homogeneous spaces, brill-Noether theory of curves, K-theory of degeneracy loci, affine Grassmannians, Hessenberg varieties, and generalizations of the moduli space of curves.

Project Period:  9/1/2017 - 8/31/2022

Do connections persist? A pilot study investigating the lasting impact of a physics course designed to facilitate connections with biology

Sponsor:  National Science Foundation
Award Date:  6/13/2017

This early-stage, exploratory research study is designed to lay the groundwork for future large-scale research studies. The study addresses two central research questions: (1) Do IPLS students demonstrate a greater ability to leverage physics later biology coursework, compared to their peers with no physics or traditional introductory physics?; and (2) Do IPLS students view physics as more connected to biology and chemistry, compared to their peers? The research team will work with biology faculty to develop a set of tasks administered to upper division biology students and conduct longitudinal case studies with life science students.

Project Period:  8/15/2017 - 7/31/2020

RUI: Redox Active Aluminum Nitroxide Complexes for the anti-Markovnikov Hydrofunctionalization of Alkenes

SPonSor:  National Science Foundation
Award Date:  6/16/2017

Dr. Graves’ research addresses the important chemical challenge of limitation in the advance of new aluminum complexes around which sustainable and benign catalytic systems can be developed.  The goals of this proposed research are to synthesize aluminum complexes of redox-active nitroxide ligands that exhibit reversible, multi-electron electrochemical and chemical transformations. This novel redox chemistry will be exploited to expand the reaction portfolio of aluminum complexes and will enable new catalyst systems based around this abundant element.

Project Period:  7/1/2017 – 6/30/2020

Deciphering the structure and dynamics of quadruplex DNA and DNA-ligand complexes

SPonSor:  National Institutes of Health
Award Date:  3/24/2017

The proposed research will improve the selectivity and efficacy of anticancer therapies by contributing new knowledge about non-canonical G-quadruplex (GQ) DNA structure, and the interactions of GQs with small molecule ligands. GQ DNA has been firmly established as an important therapeutic target for cancer. Unfortunately, DNA-centered drug discovery programs suffer from limited structural information available for GQs, especially in the presence of ligands. To address these challenges, this research will perform comprehensive crystallographic investigations focused on telomeric and oncogene promoter G-quadruplexes. This work will be accompanied by spectroscopic and calorimetric studies of the thermodynamic parameters of ligand binding to GQ DNA (e.g., stoichiometry, affinity, selectivity, driving forces). Kinetic information can help identify the timescale of G-quadruplex formation and thus biological processes that can be affected by the presence of these structures. Collectively, the proposed work will enhance our understanding of GQ structural plasticity, supply coordinates for drug discovery platforms, shed light on the origin of ligand selectivity for a specific DNA target, and guide the design of novel highly selective anticancer therapies while providing transformative training to Swarthmore undergraduate students.

Project Period:  6/1/2017 - 5/31/2020

RUI: The role of mitotic trafficking in cell fate specification

SPonSor:  National Science Foundation
Award Date:  5/12/2017

Project Period:  5/15/2017 - 4/30/2021

Mid-Atlantic Algebra, Geometry, and Combinatorics Workshop

SPonsor:  National Science Foundation
Award Date:  2/15/2017

Linda is Co-PI on this collaborative grant to Haverford College that provides support for speakers and participants in the Mid-Atlantic Algebra, Geometry, and Combinatorics (MAAGC) workshop. MAAGC, an annual Philadelphia conference bringing together senior researchers and junior mathematicians, promotes collaborations and regional interactions, while highlighting recent developments in algebra, geometry, and combinatorics. MAAGC workshops bring mathematicians from North America together to discuss advances in algebraic combinatorics, algebraic geometry, representation theory, and other related fields.

Project Period:  3/1/2017 - 2/29/2020

Collaborative Research: Community Sourcing Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences

SPonsor: National Science Foundation
Award Date: 8/31/2016

The Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) Portal will enhance the education of hundreds of thousands of life science students each year by providing engaging and effective IPLS instructional materials and helping IPLS instructors use these materials. This collaborative effort of the American Association of Physics Teachers and eight colleges and universities, including a community college and a Hispanic-serving institution, will create an open-source, peer-reviewed, and innovatively structured environment for IPLS content. Initially containing materials from multiple NSF-funded research and development projects, the Portal will become a development platform for IPLS curricula. The site will serve as both an archive and a dissemination tool, including a course-building interface for faculty. Instructors will be supported in creating innovative and individualized courses, mixing and matching from multiple sources tuned to their needs, offering a flexible and low-cost alternative to traditional textbooks. 
 

Project Period: 9/1/2016 - 8/31/2020

Advances in Model-Assisted and Small Area Estimation Strategies for Forest Inventories

SPonSor: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Award Date: 7/27/2016

The Forest Service is responsible for ongoing research in all areas of forest management, including conducting the Interior West component of the Forest Inventory and Monitoring Program. Dr. McConville, along with her undergraduate students will be facilitating the use of new model-assisted and small area estimation techniques in forest inventory applications. The development, evaluation, and distribution of new statistical methods and tools combines modern techniques with current real world applications.

Project Period: 7/27/2016 - 8/30/2019

Collaborative Research: Plant and Fungal Diversity of Tafea Province, Vanuatu, a Threatended Hotspot

Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Award Date: 3/29/2016

Vanuatu is a group of 80 islands located in the South Pacific, situated roughly equidistant from New Caledonia, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands, all of which are globally important biodiversity hotspots. Despite its significance as a treasure trove of biodiversity, Vanuatu’s plants and fungi remain poorly documented, rendering it a “biodiversity black hole” and, thus, leaving a significant gap in our knowledge of biogeographic relationships with neighboring island countries. Along with its rich biological diversity, Vanuatu is also the most linguistically dense country in the world, with 112 languages for a total population of only 253,000; nine of these languages are found only in Tafea Province. The researchers will complete the first comprehensive survey of angiosperms, gymnosperms, ferns, lycophytes, bryophytes, endophytic and macro-fungi, and lichens ever undertaken in Tafea Province. Formal student training will also take place at the University of the South Pacific, California State University–East Bay, Swarthmore College, University of Hawai‘i, and the New York Botanical Garden. Because most land in Vanuatu is held under customary ownership, and local people are the stewards of their environments, the loss of biocultural knowledge is a serious threat to their ability to manage biodiversity resources sustainably.

Project Period: 7/1/2016 - 6/30/2020

RUI: STS: Standard Research Grant: Mathematical Explanation in Science

SponSor: National Science Foundation
Award Date: 8/10/2015

This project will analyze case studies of mathematical explanation in evolutionary biology to inform the philosophical debate about the nature of mathematical explanation in science. It will take place over three consecutive summers, and will make essential use of undergraduate researchers in philosophy, mathematics, and biology; specifically, it will integrate research and education by involving advanced undergraduate students in the project. Doing so will serve to broaden the scope of participation in science by exposing students in mathematics and in philosophy to a collaborative style of research that is often lacking in these disciplines; it will provide a model for institutional interdisciplinarity, fostering intellectual and logistical connections between the natural sciences and the humanities.

Project Period: 8/15/2015 - 7/31/2020

Collaborative Research: Infrastructure and Development of a Computer Science Concept Inventory for CS2

SPonSor: National Science Foundation
Award Date: 6/26/2015

This collaborative project involving four institutions (University of California-San Diego; University of Illinois, Chicago; University of California-Berkeley; and Swarthmore College) will develop a Concept Inventory (CI) for the second introductory programming course (CS2) in computer science. CIs are validated assessments of course content knowledge, and can be used to compare teaching approaches, identify student misconceptions, and quantify learning gains. In physics, the Force Concept Inventory was responsible for a widespread shift in the ways that physics students are taught. The development of a CI for CS2 will have a similar impact on the way computer science will be taught across the country.

Project Period: 7/1/2015 – 6/30/2020

REU Site Proposal Building dictionaries to support endangered languages and preserve environmental knowledge in Mexico, Micronesia, and Navajo Nation

Co-PI's: Brook Lillehaugen, Ted Fernald, & Jamie Thomas
sponsor: National Science Foundation
Award Date: 12/5/2014

The project builds bridges between indigenous linguists in the US academic community, Mexico, Micronesia, and the Navajo Nation, with collaborative research that benefits all parties. It helps uncover deep connections between languages and landscapes by documenting the knowledge base about the natural world found in endangered languages. The resulting linguistic materials support local communities' language revitalization efforts. They will also be a resource to the broader scientific community seeking to understand language complexity, diversity and universals. The project begins with a two-week intensive, hands-on training session on current best practice for recording languages (or areas of grammar within languages) that have not yet been adequately documented. Students learn directly from professional linguists and indigenous language experts how endangered languages are being modernized, digitized, and expanded into new technological domains. In weeks three and four, students participate in a two-week field practicum. Working in teams led by indigenous language experts, students help record basic and specialized lexica, folk taxonomies, toponyms, and ethno-biological nomenclature. They explore and help document the rich knowledge base in each language that uniquely encodes the natural environment (flora, fauna, weather, geography, etc.). They also learn current best practices in sustaining indigenous languages and supporting global language diversity.

Project Period: 5/1/2015 - 4/30/2019

Phase II:  Policy Research Engagement, Human Resources Development Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Evidence for Policy Design, Harvard Kennedy School

sponsor: Harvard Kennedy School
Award Date: 7/14/2014

Professor Peck’s expertise is in development and labor issues in resource-rich countries, and some of her recent work focuses on the impact of Saudi labor market policies on the growth of the private sector. Her experience in these areas will help advance the aims of Phase II of this policy/research engagement between the Human Resources Development Fund (HDRF) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) program at Harvard Kennedy School. Her contributions to this project include organizing and participating in policy research symposia to review research results and policy developments.
 

Project Period: 11/1/2014 - 10/31/2019