Inside Research & Funding Opportunities

02/16/2022, 11:00:02 AM

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News, Events and Resources for the UH Research Community

UH Mechanical Engineer Pradeep Sharma Elected to National Academy of Engineering

Of the millions and millions of engineers across the world, this year the National Academy of Engineering chose 111 new members and 22 international members. UH's Pradeep Sharma, M.D. Anderson Chair Professor and department chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering, was one of them.

Number of faculty in the national academies is one of the metrics that contribute to a university's national ranking.

“Induction into the National Academy of Engineering is the latest of many distinguished honors achieved by Dr. Sharma over the last decade, including being named a Fulbright Fellow, receiving the ASME Melville Medal, the James R. Rice Medal and the Charles Russ Richards Medal. He is also the only engineer in 2020 to receive the nationally prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship,” said Amr Elnashai, UH vice president for research and technology transfer. “We are very proud of Dr. Sharma’s accomplishments culminating in being elected to the NAE. To be so comprehensively recognized is not only a testament to his intellect but also of the intellectual environment that exists in our great University.”

UH Professors Named Senior Members of National Academy of Inventors

Six University of Houston professors have been named Senior Members of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the most UH faculty members to earn the honor in a single election year.

Greg Cuny, Jeff Feng, James Flynn, Hadi Ghasemi, Luca Pollonini and Navin Varadarajan are among 83 academic inventors from institutions around the country chosen for their success in patents, licensing, and commercialization and for producing technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society. The University of Houston now has 30 faculty members in the National Academy of Inventors.

50-in-5 Faculty Honored for Major Grant Awards and Patents

UH hosted its second 50-in-5 celebration event at the Wortham House on Monday, Feb. 7, honoring faculty members with major grant award and patent achievements.

President Renu Khator, Provost Paula Myrick Short and Vice President for Research Amr Elnashai recognized 148 faculty who received a major grant award or patent in Year 2 and Year 3 of UH’s 50-in-5 Program. The program was launched in 2018 to increase research and scholarly activity by 50% over the course of five years, aligning UH with other top research universities in the Association of American Universities (AAU) and supporting the University’s rise to become a Top 50 public university.

Potential Biomarkers Identified for Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Lupus

A globally renowned expert in autoimmune diseases and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) at UH has identified potential biomarkers for neuropsychiatric symptoms of lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks its own tissues, causing widespread inflammation and tissue damage in the affected organs.

While most people with lupus experience a variety of symptoms that include fatigue, skin rashes, fever, and pain or swelling in the joints, about half of people with SLE suffer neuropsychiatric symptoms. Those include seizures, aseptic meningitis, acutely confused states, cerebrovascular disease psychosis and mood disorders.

Support for Election Reform Strong in Texas, UH Survey Finds

A new Hobby School of Public Affairs survey found a sizeable majority of Texans voicing strong support for several provisions in the proposed federal Freedom to Vote Act. When asked individually about 18 specific voting and election reforms – each a key part of the proposed law – most survey respondents expressed robust support for 11 provisions. The remaining seven sparked less unity, although they, too, managed to find significant pockets of support among both Republicans and Democrats.

“While the Freedom to Vote Act was not passed last year, this survey finds there is much common ground to address voting rights,” said Renée Cross, senior director of the Hobby School. “Whether Republican, Democrat or Independent, Texas voters find value in many of these provisions.”

Upcoming Events

Introduction to Swarm Learning: A Privacy-Preserving ML Framework
Thursday, February 17
10 a.m.-11 a.m.
Register

NIH: Cultivating Trainee Resilience
Tuesday, March 1
Noon-1:15 p.m. (EST)
Register

RESCHEDULED!
New Faculty Lunch & Learn: Gifts, Grants, Contracts, IDC & Technical Reports
Thursday, March 10
Noon - 1 p.m.
Register

Third Annual Port of the Future Conference
Presented by the UH College of Technology
April 5-7
Register

Announcements

Join us for February's R&I Forum!

The Division of Research is pleased to announce the lineup for this month's R&I Forum. The DOR launched the Forum as a means of engagement with our research and innovation community.

This monthly forum will keep you connected to the research leadership and staff in DOR, to the ongoing implementation of our research strategy and to tactical operational updates. The Forum is also intended to respond to questions from our faculty, and to share information on our successes and challenges.

Here is the agenda for this month:

Research and the Libraries
Athena Jackson, Dean, University Libraries
Undergraduate Research
Stuart Long, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Research, The Honors College; Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
My Award Action: What’s the Major mal-FUNCTION?
David Schultz, Assistant Vice President, Sponsored Research Administration
How to Create a Recharge Center
Cris Milligan, Assistant Vice President, Research Administration

VPR Amr Elnashai will provide a welcome and be available, along with the presenters, for a Q&A session toward the end of the session.

R&I Forum
Thursday, February 17
1 p.m.-2 p.m.
Zoom Webinar
Register

Multicultural Success Initiative Grant Opportunities

The UH Asian American Studies Center is offering research grant opportunities to faculty and students. Research proposals should address the college experiences of Asian and Asian American students during the pandemic and/or the challenges and issues facing Asians and Asian Americans in the post-pandemic world.

Proposals are due March 1, 2022. Email proposals to Gayle Curtis at gcurtis@central.uh.edu and Amy Murdock at amurdock2@uh.edu. For faculty, five $6,000 grants are available. For students, four $5,000 grants are available. The opportunity is funded by the Provost’s Multicultural Success Initiative Program. For additional information, please review the faculty grant flyer and the student grant flyer.

View past announcements on the Division of Research website.

Featured Funding Opportunities

Health

Science, Engineering & Technology

Social Sciences, Art & Humanities

Education

Health

Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Title: BRAIN Initiative: Targeted BRAIN Circuits Projects- TargetedBCP (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

Application Deadline: July 01, 2022; October 06, 2022 (twice annually thereafter)

(Reissue of RFA-NS-18-030) This FOA solicits applications for research projects that use innovative, methodologically-integrated approaches to understand how circuit activity gives rise to mental experience and behavior. The goal is to support projects that can realize a meaningful outcome within 5 years. Applications should address circuit function in the context of specific neural systems such as sensation, perception, attention, reasoning, intention, decision-making, emotion, navigation, communication or homeostasis. Projects should link theory and data analysis to experimental design and should produce predictive models as deliverables. Projects should aim to improve the understanding of circuits of the central nervous system by systematically controlling stimuli and/or behavior while actively recording and/or manipulating dynamic patterns of neural activity. Projects can use non-human and human species, and applications should explain how the selected species offers ideal conditions for revealing general principles about the circuit basis of a specific behavior.

Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Title: Early-Stage Preclinical Validation of Therapeutic Leads for Diseases of Interest to the NIDDK (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

Application Deadline: July 14, 2002; November 14, 2022 (twice annually thereafter)

The goal of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support translational research that provides strong justification for later-phase therapeutics discovery and development efforts in health-related outcomes relevant to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. This includes outcomes relevant to obesity, diabetes and related aspects of endocrinology and metabolism, digestive diseases, liver diseases, nutrition, kidney and urological diseases, and hematology.

Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Title: Integrating Mental Health Care into Health Care Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)

Application Deadline: June 22, 2022

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) seeks research project grant (R21 and R01) that explore the utility of established services/platforms structure for treatment of chronic communicable and non-communicable diseases for providing integrated mental health care model / interventions for the treatment of patients with co-morbid mental and chronic conditions in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Specifically, this FOA will support research that builds on existing chronic conditions care and treatment platforms to incorporate management of mental illness, employs a multi-disease and multi-levels care management approach with potentially high impact for improving patient- and system-level outcomes, and establishes feasible methods to evaluate and manage multi-disease treatment in LMICs. Findings should have relevance for patients with mental illness across low-resource settings, including in the U.S.

Funding Agency: Centers for Disease Control - NCIPC

Title: Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program- NEW

Application Deadline: April 11, 2022

The Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program was created by the Drug-Free Communities Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-20). The Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) is accepting applications for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program grants. The purpose of the DFC Support Program is to establish and strengthen collaboration to support the efforts of community coalitions working to prevent youth substance use.