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Geometry and Dynamics IGERT Awarded

August 26, 2011 By

Brandeis has just been awarded an NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant in the mathematical sciences.  The grant, titled Geometry and Dynamics: integrated education in the mathematical sciences, is designed to foster interdisciplinary research and education by and for graduate students across the mathematical and theoretical sciences, including chemistry, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics.  It is structured around a number of themes common to these disciplines: complex dynamical systems, stochastic processes, quantum and statistical field theory; and geometry and topology. We believe that it is the first IGERT awarded for the theoretical (as opposed to laboratory) sciences, and are very excited about what we believe to be a highly novel program which will cement existing interdepartmental relationships and encourage exciting new collaborations in the mathematical sciences, including collaborations between the natural sciences and the International Business School (IBS).

The resolution of a singularity that develops along Ricci flow, understood mathematically by Grigori Perelman.  If the red manifold represents the target space of a string, it is conjectured that the corresponding two-dimensonal field theory describing the string undergoes confinement and develops a mass gap for the degrees of freedom corresponding to the singular regime.

The award, for $2,867,668 spread out over five years, provides funds for graduate student stipends, travel, seminar speakers, and interdisciplinary course development.  It contains activities and research opportunities in partnership with the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) in Cambridge, MA.  It also provides opportunities for research internships at the International Center for the Theoretical Sciences in Bangalore.

The PIs on the grant are: Bulbul Chakraborty (Physics); Albion Lawrence (Physics: lead PI); Blake LeBaron (IBS); Paul Miller (Neuroscience); and Daniel Ruberman (Mathematics).  There are 11 additional affiliated Brandeis faculty across biology, chemistry, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, and psychology.  Contact Albion Lawrence (albion@brandeis.edu) for more information about the program.

Arrays of repulsively coupled Kuramoto oscillators on a triangular lattice organize into domains with opposite helicities in which phases of any three neighboring oscillators either increase or decrease in a given direction. Fig. (a) illustrates these two helicities in which cyan, ma- genta and blue vary in opposite directions. In Fig. (b), white and green regions represent domains of opposite helicities. The red regions indicate the frequency entrained oscillators, which are predominantly seen in the interior of the domains.

Admission to the program is handled through the Ph.D programs in the various disciplines:

Filed Under: grad students, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sprout Grant Winners 2011

May 13, 2011 By

Entrepreneurship is alive and well at Brandeis.

Last week, fourteen teams of Brandeis scientists presented their research to a panel of industry experts to compete for funding from the Brandeis University Virtual Incubator Sprout Grant Program.  The Virtual Incubator seeks to nurture and support entrepreneurial scientists at Brandeis by providing education, mentoring, networking and seed grants to help move their discoveries from the laboratory to the market.

Judges were impressed by the team presentations. The teams ranged from biologists who have projects that could be ready for licensing as early as next year, to computer science / IT entrepreneurship students with a web application that already has 1200 users.

“We were overwhelmed by the phenomenal proposals we received” says Irene Abrams, Associate Provost for Innovation.  “The response was incredible – with only a few weeks notice, 23 teams applied for Sprout Grants and 14 presented their proposals to the panel of judges.  I was impressed by the level of creativity among the applicants, and by the hard work the teams put into the presentations.  We only had $50,000, so we had to turn down many excellent applications, which we would have funded if we had more money.”

The 2011 winning projects are:

  • Generation Of A Rapid And Efficient Protein Knockout System, Lead Scientist:  Erin Jonasson (with Satoshi Yoshida)
  • Identification Of Molecules For Stabilizing DJ-1, A Protein Involved In Parkinson And Alzheimer Diseases. Lead Scientist: Joey Salisbury (with Brian Williams, Ala Nassar, Jeff Agar and Greg Petsko)
  • Targeting Oncogenic Ras For Protein Degradation, A Novel Approach To Therapy. Lead Scientist: Rory Coffey (with Marcus Long, Ruibao Ren, and Liz Hedstrom)
  • Identifying Pharmacological Chaperones that Promote Survival in Mouse Models of ALS, Lead Scientist: Jared Auclair (with Joey Salisbury, Dagmar Ringe, Greg Petsko, and Jeff Agar)
  • A Novel, Low Cost, Highly Sensitive Form Of Suppression PCR, Lead Scientist: Ken Sugino (with Sean O’Toole and Sacha Nelson)
  • Zen.Do, Team: Bill DeRusha, Joshua Silverman, Jason Urton (Computer Science)

see also: Brandeis NOW

Filed Under: awards, Biochemistry, Biology, chemistry, Computer Science, grad students, labs, postdocs Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Are You a Budding Entrepreneur? Find Out by Applying for a Seed Grant Now.

April 4, 2011 By

This semester, up to $50,000 in entrepreneurial research grants will be awarded to as many as four winning applicants. Undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty at Brandeis are eligible to apply. The seed grants will support research designed to step up the licensing and commercial potential of Brandeis technology. Projects may range from a new mobile app to initiating animal studies of a potential drug compound, to building a prototype of a microfluidics device, said Irene Abrams, Associate Provost for Innovation and Executive Director, Office of Technology Licensing.

The deadline for sprout grant preliminary proposals is April 13, 2011. Final applications are due April 29, 2011. Finalists will be invited to present to a panel of judges, made up of industry exerts, on May 5, 2011. For more information and application forms, email Irene Abrams at iabrams@brandeis.edu or contact OTL at (781) 736-2128, or visit the website at www.brandeis.edu/otl. The office is located on the first floor of Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Center.

Information Sessions (along with application help) will be held April 8, 10 a.m., and April 12, 11a.m. in the fourth floor conference room of the Ros-Kos connector, which is located in the Science Complex between the Rosenstiel and Kosow buildings.

Earlier this month, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Marty Krauss introduced the Virtual Incubator as a “program to help foster entrepreneurial students and faculty in the sciences at Brandeis by providing mentorship, education and small seed grants to help them move inventions from the lab to the marketplace.”

Said Abrams, “the Virtual Incubator can become a community for science and business at Brandeis — an interdisciplinary center promoting commercial application of Brandeis science and technology.”

Filed Under: labs Tagged With: , ,

NSF CAREER Award for Headrick

March 30, 2011 By

Assistant Professor of Physics Matthew Headrick has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. Headrick’s project “CAREER: Holography, Quantum Information, and Elliptic Relativity” will fund his research exploring issues in string theory and classical and quantum gravity. The two projects address 1) study of the thermal and statistical physics of holographic systems, and quantum gravity more generally, through the lens of quantum information theory, and 2) continuing the development of practical, general methods for numerically solving the elliptic Einstein equation to find static, stationary, and Euclidean metrics for higher-dimensional black holes and compactification spaces. NSF grants require broader impact activites. Headrick will participate in TheoryNet, an NSF-funded program in which high-energy physicists visit high-school science classrooms, and will also work with the Brandeis Science Posse program.

Associate Professor Zvonimir Dogic, also in the Physics department, was a 2010 recipient of an NSF CAREER award.

Filed Under: awards, Physics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Thomas, Epstein to Collaborate with Discovery Museums on Dreyfus Foundation Grant

February 16, 2011 By

The Discovery Museums (Acton, MA), in collaboration with Professors Christine Thomas and Irv Epstein (Brandeis chemistry department) and Brandeis’s American Chemical Society Student Affiliates Chapter have received funding from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation to develop and implement a project called Reaction Station: Adventures for Young Chemists.

Pilot tests of a prototype Reaction Box with students

The project aims to enhance and promote hands-on chemistry experiences for youth in schools and museums. Implementation of the project involves first designing “Reaction Stations,” comprised of large plastic boxes with holes cut out for gloved hand access, and then carrying out educational and experiential programming for children using these Reaction Stations. As children are often enticed by messy, smelly, or otherwise highly-reactive experiments, these portable Reaction Stations (similar in concept to gloveboxes used by members of Professor Thomas’s Lab) will provide a safe way for children to engage in experiments that are often avoided in school or museum settings due to their messy nature.

Denise LeBlanc, Director of Learning Experiences at The Discovery Museums (and also a former research scientist in the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center on campus), anticipates much success from the Reaction Stations. LeBlanc and Thomas will devise various experiments for children to carry out. Possibilities include: identifying a mystery substance as part of a “crime scene,” testing the pH of common household items, exploring reactivity of everyday chemicals that, at first glance, seem inert, and other experiments that introduce children to topics of polymers, chromatography, phase changes, etc.

Undergraduate students in the American Chemical Society Student Affiliate Chapter will work with the children as model scientists and helpers. Throughout the duration of the year, undergrads from the chemistry department will partake in demonstrations and lessons at the museum in Acton, MA, as well as offsite through various after-school programs. Beyond conducting demonstrations in a museum or school setting only, the Reaction Station will be a teaching tool that educators can bring to their own classrooms or other venues to perpetuate their students’ engagement in chemistry and hands-on research. Says Thomas, “Making research understandable and accessible to children at a young age is pivotal in the development of new generations of chemists.”

The Reaction Station: Adventures for Young Chemists proposal was one of 19 grants awarded this year. Other recipients include universities and museum/science outreach organizations who intend to advance the chemical sciences through innovative projects.

Filed Under: chemistry, outreach, Undergrads Tagged With: , , , , ,

NSF gives Zvonimir Dogic Teacher-Scholar award

September 1, 2010 By

Asst. Professor of Physics Zvonimir Dogic has won a $500,000 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development Program. The five-year award supports junior faculty who “exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through oustanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations,” according to the NSF. Dogic’s research seeks to explain how biopolymers organize themselves into macroscopic materials.

Filed Under: awards, labs, Physics Tagged With: , , , ,

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