Brown University

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-04

This research investigates the implications of complexity on value and its underlying causes. In everyday life, people often face decisions involving complex options, such as lengthy insurance contracts or intricate investment opportunities. It is important to know how people value these complex options and whether the presence of complexity affects the value people give. Understanding how complexity influences valuation is critical to understanding decision-making and markets. This research shows, first, that people undervalue options that they deem particularly complex, which depends on i) how complex they deem the alternative at hand and ii) how they react to uncertainty in general. Second, this research studies whether a cautious reaction to complexity is also at play in many strategic interactions, that is, situations when what one obtains also depends on what other people do. Third, this research develops mathematical models that are useful to study this behavior. By increasing understanding of when and how aversion to complexity applies, this research informs decision making to avoid complexity-related pitfalls. This research comprises large-scale economic experiments and a theoretical project. The first set of experiments studies the valuation of complex bets in decision-making settings, including bets involving belief-updating, visual perception, and compound lotteries. These aim to show that the values assigned to bets are incompatible with standard theory, even accounting for risk aversion and biased beliefs. Instead, complexity generates cognitive uncertainty, and this uncertainty is treated like a source of ambiguity: undervaluation increases when both cognitive uncertainty and ambiguity aversion increase. The second set of experiments extends these ideas to strategic interactions. The standard assumption in game theory is that individuals perfectly process any complex aspect of a game or the behavior of other players and assign to games a value corresponding to their equilibrium value. The research investigates whether, instead, individuals are averse to the complexity of games and may undervalue them. The final theoretical portion of this research develops a model of caution in the face of complexity and uses it to derive an endogenous notion of revealed complexity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-04

Computing systems can exert substantial environmental impacts across their entire life cycles, encompassing manufacturing, usage, and end-of-life disposal. For example, manufacturing processes often require significant amounts of energy and produce substantial carbon emissions. When computers reach the end of their life, they become electronic waste (e-waste). E-waste, if not properly managed, can pose risks to human health and the environment due to the presence of hazardous materials. Mitigating these impacts is a significant challenge for sustainable computing. This project introduces innovative approaches to minimize the environmental impact of computing systems by recycling decommissioned chips, integrating them to extend their lifespans, and achieving near state-of-the-art performance with the newly integrated chips. The project will be carried out by a team of investigators from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Notre Dame. The project's impacts are twofold: significantly reducing carbon emissions from manufacturing and mitigating environmental risks associated with e-waste by keeping these toxic, non-biodegradable devices out of landfills. This project is making valuable contributions to society through education and outreach activities designed to engage K-12 students with an interest in environmental science, biology, and artificial intelligence (AI). The primary goal of this project is to achieve sustainable computing by reusing recently retired field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips to build REFRESH FPGA devices and employing 2.5-dimensional (2.5D) integration with an underlying interposer for interconnection. This approach aims to significantly reduce carbon emissions incurred from the fabrication process of new chips. The project consists of four research thrusts. Thrust 1 focuses on developing REFRESH FPGA architecture and design automation toolflow, tailored to address the challenge of targeting hardware designs onto non-monolithic FPGAs. Thrust 2 investigates REFRESH FPGA hardware analysis and prototyping through a design automation framework capable of automatically selecting the optimal design configuration including inter-chip connection topology, connection bandwidth, and the selection of FPGA chips based on their aging condition. Thrust 3 is dedicated to developing a system-in-a-package sustainability analysis, validation, and optimization process, aiming to accurately model and assess the environmental impacts stemming from the 2.5D integrated REFRESH FPGAs including fabrication, integration, and packaging. Thrust 4 extensively explores the most effective methodologies for accelerating a wide range of applications from machine learning to genomics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-03

Children need to learn the meanings of abstract logical words to express their own thinking and to understand the thinking that other people express. Unlike most early learned nouns and verbs, logical words such as “no” and “not” cannot be learned by observation because they do not refer to anything children can see or experience directly. Yet, the word “no” is one of the first words most children say. However, how children learn this word and other words like it is not well understood. Discovering the answer to this question would reveal both the basic mechanisms by which children learn abstract words generally, as well as the childhood origins of the most foundational elements of critical thinking, reasoning, and logic. The broader impacts of this project include teaching and training in developmental and languages sciences for graduate and undergraduate students, and sharing of new language corpus resources created through this project with the broader scientific community. This project aims to disentangle the difficulty of learning the concept of negation from learning the word (or words) that express the concept. Towards this goal, the project studies how infants and toddlers learn words for negation in English in comparison to other languages. These languages span a spectrum of how many different words are used to express related meanings such as rejection, prohibition, and absence. For example, English expresses these meanings with “no”, whereas other languages use a different word for each of these meanings. This project tests the hypothesis that infants can grasp the concept of negation early in life, but the ease with which they can learn to express it depends on how many different, closely related words exist in the language they are learning by using language corpora and behavioral testing studies with infants and toddlers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-03

Categorization is a fundamental, but complex, cognitive ability. Depending on the context, the same feature could place an object or event in different categories. For example, categorizing animals as “big” vs. “small” varies when a house cat is considered “big” when compared to an ant and an elephant is considered “small” compared to whale. How brains handle these categorization decisions flexibly and adaptively remains elusive. This project investigates the role of brain waves in the prefrontal cortex in categorization task. The project studies brain activity in humans and animals while performing a decision-making task to leverage a computational model to better understand the brain mechanisms involved. This project has potential to open a new window into understanding of decision making and will set the stage for future investigations into disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, in which both brain waves and cognitive function are impaired. This project tests the novel hypothesis that beta oscillations at different frequencies could act as separate channels to selectively transmit decision information downstream, akin to frequency-division multiplexing. Specifically, beta frequency shifts in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex appear to synchronize different neuronal ensembles that represent specific decision outcomes. This research involves a close collaboration between computational and experimental neuroscientists, utilizing a neural modeling framework uniquely designed to link macroscale oscillatory activity to the underlying cellular- and circuit-level dynamics that can be assessed electrophysiologically. The modeling work will be informed by spectrotemporal analysis of previously collected human and rodent data, as well as new electrophysiological recordings and optogenetic neuromodulation experiments in rodents to test hypotheses on cell- and circuit-level generation of beta frequency shifts and their causal implications in the context of decision making. This approach, combining electrophysiological recordings, causal manipulation and modeling, is designed to answer core questions regarding a crucial brain mechanism underlying decision making, and will provide a grounded understanding of consistency in brain dynamics across species and tasks, and their implications for behavior. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-02

Many animals, including humans, communicate using elaborate gestures and body movements. Indeed, such behavior can mediate interactions related to courtship, competition, parenting, cooperation, feeding, and even predatory defense. However, despite the importance of this behavior to survival and reproductive success, as well as its ubiquity in animals, very little is understood about its mechanistic basis. This gap is perhaps largest with respect to the brain. The current project will provide the investigator with training in cutting-edge neuroscience technology that will test how particular brain regions contribute to the production of specialized gestural movements that mediate communication between individuals. The work itself will involve woodpeckers, which readily drum their beaks on trees to notify others of their territory in an attempt to maintain access to important breeding resources. Training that the investigator receives will greatly enhance his research program by allowing him to address a set of novel questions about how brain-level control of behavior is used for communication. Such skills will also elevate the investigator’s ability to train future scientists (e.g., undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students) who are interested in exploring more about how the brain controls social behavior. More broadly, this project includes plans to support the development of STEM educational programming for limited English proficiency (LEP) high school students in the Rhode Island school system. Gesture and body movement are critical components of animal communication in a diverse range of taxa, yet little is known about how the brain controls such behavior. This project aims to uncover the neural basis of gestural communication, both in terms of gestural production and perception. To do this work, the investigator will receive rigorous training in cutting-edge neural electrophysiology techniques so that brain activity can be recorded in freely displaying animals, as well as animals that perceive such displays. The focal species will be downy woodpeckers, as these birds compete for territories by rapidly jackhammering their bills on trees in the environment. This is one of the most extreme gestural displays on the planet, and thus these birds make an excellent model to pioneer studies that explore how the brain controls this incredible behavior. Accordingly, this research will provide one of the first explorations of the forebrain system that controls discrete movements to facilitate drumming displays. This study will also compare the control of these movements to other non-communicative movements, such as basic locomotion or foraging. Finally, this research will work to establish how perceptual systems in the nervous system facilitate the appraisal of drumming. The auditory forebrain will be the focal point of perception experiments, and this work will provide a first look at how gesture-based displays might be assessed aurally by the brain. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2025-02

As access to cyclotron sources have become more readily available, radioisotopes of copper (e.g., 64Cu: β+ = 653 keV, t1/2 = 12.7 h; 67Cu: β- = 141 keV, t1/2 = 61.9 h) have received increasing attention for imaging and therapy due to their sensitivity, resolution, and half-life compared to other radionuclei (e.g., 11C, 18F, 68Ga). The overwhelming majority of active 64Cu or 67Cu clinical trials, as well as the FDA approved 64Cu radiopharmaceutical, [64Cu][Cu(DOTATATE)] (DetectnetTM), employ bifunctional chelators (BFCs) based on macrocyclic polyaminocarboxylates. These BFC form thermodynamically and kinetically stable copper complexes and display promising performance in head-to-head clinical trials; however, applications of Cu-based radiopharmaceuticals have been limited by their in vivo stability (i.e., reduced imaging sensitivity and increased off-target radiation to organs and tissues). Despite significant clinical attention and >25 years of BFC development, fundamental knowledge underpinning improvement-driven design (i.e., structure, reactivity, mechanisms of metal-loss) remain limited. In this research project, we will overcome longstanding challenges in the development of copper-based radiopharmaceuticals through advancing the designs of BFC with exceptional in vivo kinetic stability. Our mechanistically-driven study employs an interdisciplinary approach that embeds a tight feedback loop between novel BFC design, in vitro, and in vivo studies capable of enabling target-driven improvements in radiopharmaceutical performance. This approach will develop quantitative structure-function relationships bridging molecular-level BFC attributes with radiopharmaceutical properties and performance in vivo, and resolve longstanding questions regarding relevant pathways and (bio)molecular targets responsible for kinetic (in)stability in vivo. Knowledge gained in this study will contribute to improved BFC designs, which should serve as platforms to expand applications in imaging and therapy of a range of human diseases (e.g., prostate cancer, breast cancer, heart disease).

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

The flow and location of electrons determine whether materials can conduct electricity or act as insulators, forming the foundation of electronics. In this context, electrons are typically considered free, non-interacting particles. However, in some solid-state materials, electrons strongly interact with each other. These electrons can exhibit highly cooperative behaviors, such as traveling in pairs without resistance, a phenomenon known as superconductivity. Precise control and examination of electron-electron interactions are crucial for advanced information technologies. This project aims to control and visualize the interactions of electrons in atomically-thin materials with sub-nanometer-to-nanometer accuracy. Visualizing the electronic structures of materials with high accuracy, which is currently lacking at Brown University, is critical for studying functional materials. In this regard, the project will take advantage of the advanced surface imaging facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and establish a long-term collaboration between Brown researchers and BNL scientists in quantum science. The project has a potential to transform the PI’s career trajectory and benefit to Brown and to the jurisdiction with the new collaborations. Additionally, the project will involve local high school students in research at Brown and develop outreach modules deliver a basic understanding of quantum phenomena to K-12 students in Rhode Island. This Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) EPSCoR Research Fellows proposal will provide a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and training for a graduate student at Brown University. Quantum phase transitions, headlined by strongly correlated electrons, have been a major stream in modern physical sciences and play a critical role in quantum information sciences and technologies. Despite their realization in 2D materials, high-precision control and probing of quantum phases down to the molecular level remain a formidable challenge in current research of quantum materials. Tackling this grand challenge requires precise control over the confinement of electronic density of states (DOS), and the ability to detect local static and dynamic information of quantum phases. Leveraging expertise in molecular design and synthesis and 2D device fabrications in the PI’s Lab at Brown University, along with the state-of-the-art scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), the PI will exploit exquisite control in molecular chemistry to realize (1) the control of DOS in 2D systems via 2D-molecule interfacial interactions, and (2) the detection of local quantum phases in 2D materials at the molecular-level precision. These research endeavors will open the door to an entirely new route to realizing strongly correlated systems based on molecular assemblies and will enable the high-spatial and temporal-precision detection of local static and dynamic quantum phase information using molecular messengers. The PI and graduate student from Brown will periodically visit BNL to perform and discuss the proposed experiments; BNL scientists will also visit Brown University to plan joint experiments and delivery seminar. These collaborative efforts will enable a sustainable collaboration between the two institutions beyond the award period. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Project Summary In recent years, police violence has become a more visible occurrence in American society, largely due to the fast-paced availability of information and footage via social media.1 The resulting civil unrest following these events represents a form of structural violence with profound implications for marginalized communities. This violence leads to lasting effects on health through disruptions to education, transportation, economic opportunities, and other social determinants of health. The overarching goal of the proposed research is to examine connections between forms of structural racism and healthcare access, quality, and outcomes. The immediate goal of this dissertation proposal is to analyze the impact of civil unrest on long-term healthcare utilization and mental healthcare utilization for older adults in affected communities. We hypothesize that civil unrest events will increase preventable hospitalizations, emergency department (ED) visits, decrease primary care visits, and raise the volume of mental health visits related to anxiety and depression. The specific aims are to: (1) Evaluate the impact of civil unrest, following incidents of police violence, on healthcare utilization, specifically focusing on preventable hospitalizations, emergency department (ED) visits, and primary care visits, and (2) Analyze sustained changes in the volume of mental health visits related to anxiety and depression within communities affected by civil unrest. Our proposal will include older adults enrolled in traditional fee-for-service Medicare in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri, whose healthcare utilization will be tracked 6 months before and 24 to 36 months following incidents of unrest related to police violence. Using a quasi-experimental econometric design, we will compare healthcare utilization between Black and white beneficiaries within these regions before and after incidents of civil unrest. This approach is innovative because it uses sophisticated models to longitudinally analyze the impact of structural racism on healthcare at the regional level, rather than nationally. Previous research on structural racism and its relationship to health outcomes is limited to measures related to socioeconomic status, health system quality, and more, but not structural violence, such as police brutality and civil unrest. This proposal is the first analysis to use Medicare claims to examine if there is a relationship between structural racism and healthcare utilization through localized incidents of unrest. This dissertation proposal is significant because it is a direct response to the NIA's scientific priority of understanding “health disparities related to aging and develop strategies to improve the health status of older adults in diverse populations.”2 We expect this analysis to highlight the nuanced relationship between structural racism and healthcare utilization among traditional fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries. Though the results will be specific to the isolated incidents at the community level, the findings will have salient implications for future racial health equity research.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

The Pliocene, from ~5.3 to 2.6 million years ago (Ma), is the last epoch when Earth’s mean temperature was ~3°C warmer than today and CO2 concentrations were sustained at high levels. Global temperatures resembling those of the Pliocene may prevail during the 21st century, making this epoch a valuable opportunity to test our understanding of how the hydrological cycle functions in a warm climate. However, there is insufficient information about rainfall patterns during this time, limiting our ability to assess the mechanisms governing rainfall regimes during times of sustained warmth that could help making predictions about the near-future. This project aims to understand tropical rainfall patterns in northern South America during the Pliocene and across the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary. To achieve this goal, measurements of chemical signals of rainfall preserved in a sediment core from the Bogotá basin at ~4°N will be made. The proposed research will provide an insight into tropical rainfall and water resources that could help regional water managers prepare for the future. This project supports a female, non-native English speaker, Latina postdoctoral researcher as a PI. It will also support the resources for designing and implementing, in both English and Spanish, the following activities: 1) climate literacy lesson plans for elementary school students, teachers, and caregivers and 2) disseminating the results of the project in social media platforms that are culturally relevant to Latin Americans. Developing climate literacy and outreach content in both languages will help cross language barriers and accelerate access to educational materials. Specifically, this project aims to test the hypotheses about the mechanisms that governed, and may govern in the future, rainfall regimes during the late Pliocene to early-mid Pleistocene in northern South America. This research will generate and interpret a new record of hydrogen isotopic composition of precipitation from plant wax (Dwax), both with n-alkanes and n-alkanoic acids, preserved in the Funza-II core from the Bogotá Basin to detect paleohydrological changes between ~1.5 to 4 Ma. It is also proposed to generate a modern dataset of stable isotope composition of daily rainfall and back-trajectory analysis of rain-bearing air masses to improve the understanding of the regional hydroclimate patterns and variability. δDwax data of the Funza-II will be compared against model outputs and existing hydroclimate and sea surface temperature information to test critical hypotheses about the mechanisms that governed rainfall regimes during the Plio-Pleistocene. It is anticipated that project outcomes will provide fundamental insights into the mechanisms governing the hydrological cycle under these boundary conditions across the Americas. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Our society relies on clean sources of energy for food, shelter, transportation, and recreational activities. In recent years, nanomaterials have garnered much interest due to their transformative properties in storing information, catalyzing reactivity, and enhancing electronic dynamics for new modalities and functionalities. This fellowship project explores how an emergent class of nanomaterials based on the fusion of copper with carbon can lead to unprecedented levels of thermal energy management. To accomplish the scientific aims, the team will employ a range of advanced optical and X-ray radiation strategies that shed light on the complex origins of enhanced thermal conductivity on microscopic levels down to tens of nanometers – the length scale of grain boundaries, transport, and chemical structures. The work will further study the flow of electrons and changes through a material under a temperature jump, and how this translates into applied technologies. This new class of materials hold promise for the most demanding and intensive of clean energy applications because of their scalability and projected vast energy savings in electricity, high performance transformer cables, and in powering the national grid with great potentials for transforming societal outcomes in energy resilience and carbon-neutrality. Additionally, a diverse student body will participate as teaching trainees with the outcomes disseminated broadly. This Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) EPSCoR Research Fellows project will provide a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and training for a graduate student at Brown University. This work will be conducted in collaboration with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory. This fellowship aims to explore the physical, electronic, and chemical properties of clean energy-based nanomaterials. The project reveals important information about the charge transfer dynamics and flow of electrons in a highly conductive copper-carbon composite material for the development of novel enhanced thermal conductivity. To this end, the team will investigate the origins of enhanced thermal conduction properties with 2D X-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and ultrafast electron diffraction imaging. A range of spectroscopic techniques with high temporal, high spatial, and high energy resolution will help to understand the correspondence between macroscopic thermal conductivity and microscopic electron density changes at the copper-carbon interface. The fellowship will further quantify how size and structure play a role in enhanced electron or thermal transport especially along grain boundaries. Knowledge gained will help to design parameters inherent in chemical and electronic structures that lead to enhanced electron transport mediated by lattice distortions both across the surface of the thin film and its bulk properties. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

In magnetic materials, the particular microscopic pattern of magnetic ordering is determined by interactions between the materials constituent magnetic moments and can have profound effect on the material properties. A special class of magnetic materials, called frustrated magnets, have magnetic interactions that cannot be mutually satisfied. Such competing magnetic interactions generate exotic magnetic structures that often have the special property that they do not exhibit a net magnetic field, but can still influence electric or thermal currents. This unique characteristic makes frustrated magnets ideal to realize future low energy dissipation spintronic devices. However, characterizing the magnetic structures and microscopic energy scales that stabilize those structures in a given material prepared in device relevant geometries remains an outstanding challenge. This project will develop and use advanced synchrotron x-ray scattering techniques at the National Synchrotron Light Source II to elucidate the magnetic structures and fundamental dynamic response characterizing frustrated magnetic materials in nanoscale device relevant configurations. The material parameters quantified through this work will be essential input into theoretical frameworks for predicting physical properties of model frustrated magnets and provide essential input towards incorporating their novel functionalities into future energy efficient technologies. The project will establish a long term sustainable collaboration between Brookhaven National Laboratory and Brown University to train graduate students in synchrotron x-ray techniques and magnetic materials characterization. Frustrated van der Waals magnets offer unprecedented opportunities to realize new magnetic phases of matter exhibiting complex, multi-sublattice, magnetic textures. Such magnetic textures may exhibit a vanishing net magnetization and hold great promise for fast and low dissipation spintronic devices because they exhibit a vanishing net magnetization. However, elucidating the underlying microscopic physics of new and existing materials is challenging because the antiferromagnetic textures span broad length scales, do not couple directly to magnetic fields, and there is a current lack of measurements that can directly probe magnet structures and excitations in the two-dimensional limit. This project will catalyze a long term sustainable collaboration between researchers at Brookhaven National Lab and Brown University to develop new probes of magnetic order and excitations in two-dimensional materials and across nanometer length scales. Planned work comprises a comprehensive resonant x-ray scattering program to probe the static and dynamic response functions of model frustrated magnets. Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering will be used to quantify the dimensional evolution of dynamic magnetic response functions in a model van der Waals antiferromagnet, exfoliated to the two-dimensional limit. Resonant elastic x-rays scattering with nano-focused beams will be used to quantify the chiral antiferromagnetic domain distribution in a metallic frustrated magnet, and follow its evolution under applied biasing fields. New tools for quantifying the magnetic response of frustrated antiferromagnets will be developed and used to elucidate their microscopic organizing principles of frustrated magnets and provide essential input for the design of antiferromagnetic spintronics that require precise domain control. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Caribou are an ecologically and culturally important species in the Arctic, but their long-term survival is threatened by modern climate change. In the last century, caribou populations have declined considerably throughout their circumpolar range, with many herds shrinking by more than 50% in size. Wildlife managers and scientists must attempt to navigate an uncertain future for this culturally significant mammal, yet focusing solely on modern data provides a limited window into an animal’s ecology. Studying how a species has responded to changes in their environment in the past can greatly inform how they may respond to changes in the future, making the fossil record highly useful for modern conservation challenges. This research will use both modern and paleontological data to investigate how caribou are impacted by changing climactic and environmental conditions. The project will be undertaken in close collaboration with local Canadian and First Nation partners, and results will be used to inform ongoing conservation and management of this threatened species. Further, this project will be leveraged toward a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) at Brown University to broaden participation in polar science. This project will focus specifically on northern mountain woodland caribou, a threatened ecotype that congregates on alpine ice patches during the summer to escape biting insects, leaving behind dung that becomes permanently frozen in layers of ice for millennia. Researchers will use this unique—but climatically threatened—paleorecord to establish how caribou diet has changed in response to climactic shifts during the Holocene using fecal DNA metabarcoding. This approach will produce taxonomically precise dietary inferences that are rarely achievable from fossil records. Additionally, researchers will use GPS satellite collar data on modern Yukon herds to investigate the dependence of northern mountain woodland caribou on ice patches and how it influences their summer habitat selection. A more detailed understanding of caribou ice patch use is essential for quantifying the impacts of future ice loss as well as interpreting paleoecological data from the ice patch record. This project will address key gaps in our understanding of caribou ecology while further expanding cutting-edge genomic methods for ice-preserved samples. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-12

Abstract The goal of this R01 resubmission is to discover the targets of naturally acquired protection against severe Plasmodium falciparum malaria and to develop them as novel blood-stage vaccine candidates to complement existing liver-stage vaccines. Of the ~100 malaria vaccine candidates currently under investigation, more than 60% are based on only four parasite antigens and the most advanced vaccine, RTS,S, generates only modest protection 4, 5.The malaria vaccine pipeline is focused on a remarkably limited repertoire of candidates 6. New candidates are urgently needed, but strategies to identify them are limited. Previously, we developed a highly innovative whole proteome differential screening (WPDS) strategy which identifies the subset of parasite antigens that are recognized by antibodies expressed by resistant individuals but not susceptible individuals. Using this strategy, we discovered Schizont Egress Antigen-1 (PfSEA-1), a 244-kDa parasite antigen that is the target of antibodies which arrest parasites at the schizont stage and are associated with significant protection from severe malaria (SM) in a cohort of n=785 two yr old children. This was the first demonstration that antibodies that block egress can protect against SM in humans 2. Recently, we used WPDS to identify Glutamic Acid Rich Protein (PfGARP), a previously unrecognized vaccine candidate which localized to the exofacial surface of the RBC membrane in trophozoite and early schizont infected RBCs, but not to other parasite stages or uninfected RBC. Polyclonal antibodies to the highly invariant carboxyl terminal of PfGARP (PfGARP-A, aa 411-673) inhibit parasite growth in vitro (99% compared to controls (P < 0.001)) by killing trophozoite stage parasites. Numerous mechanistic assays demonstrated that the binding of anti-PfGARP to the surface of the infected RBC induces parasite programed cell death and vaccination of non-human primates with PfGARP formulated as a lipid encapsulated mRNA results in significant protection from P. falciparum challenge compared to controls 1. These preliminary results were based on differential screening using sera from resistant and susceptible individuals with the definition of resistance based solely on parasitemia. Previous work has demonstrated that children develop resistance to SM after only one or two episodes, and this protection can be distinguished from responses that simply control parasitemia 7-11. In the current proposal, we will capitalize on this observation to identify parasite antigens that are targets of antibody responses which develop during the convalescent phase of an episode of SM and protect against future episodes of SM. We will: 1) conduct a case-control study at our field site in a holoendemic region of western Kenya to identify infants and children with severe malaria and matched controls. 2) perform WPDS using sera from this case- control study, and 3) down select candidates for follow-on vaccine studies using a Systems Serology approach including functional antibody, growth inhibition, and human immunoepidemiologic studies.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-12

The mortality and morbidity of brain disease have a high impact across all stages of life. In the United States and worldwide, neurological diseases are estimated to be one of the costliest disease categories in terms of healthcare spending. Despite the emergence of neurologically based health challenges faced by many Americans, there is currently a shortage of neurologists in the United States. The demand for neurologists is projected to grow faster than supply, with an expected need for an additional 21,400 neurologists by 2025, leading to at least an 18% shortfall (3). According to the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in the USA, the number of American AAN members who self-identify as general neurologists has fallen from 46% in 2014 to 28% in 2023 (4). Neurosurgery has also experienced a significant decline in the number of individuals pursuing a career in neurological surgery in recent years (5,6). To address this workforce shortage, the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) has established specific initiatives designed to fund and conduct neuroscience research training, ultimately cultivating a vibrant and talented group of future leaders in the field. Scientific training, mentorship, and professional development are key cornerstones of the NIH NINDS mission to ensure Trainees are provided with a foundation for pursuing a wide range of careers in academic or industry research, as well as teaching, science, policy, writing, and research administration, among others, within the neuroscience field. Our goal is to address the neuroscience workforce shortage in the country and in Rhode Island through our proposed program. The Research- Clinical Experiences in Neurology and Neurosurgery (R-CEIN) program will provide a comprehensive summer experience for talented rising sophomores/juniors from the University of Rhode Island, Providence College, or Rhode Island College and/or a U.S. institution of higher education at Brown University. This program will cultivate a vibrant and talented group of future leaders in the field of neurosciences with the following Aims: 1) Exposure to clinical experiences in Neurology and Neurosurgery, 2) Training in research with projects in neurology, neurosurgery, and neuroscience 3) Skills training and career development, and 4) Cultivation of longitudinal mentorship opportunities.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-12

To scale data rates in the face of rapidly growing application performance demands, next-generation wireless networks must provide efficient and low-latency access to the next spectrum frontier above 100 GHz. At such high frequencies, wider bandwidths will be available, enabling significantly higher data rates approaching terabits per second. Moreover, highly directive beams will be required to focus the transmission on the mobile user. This project provides two key building blocks for realizing such networks. First, this project will yield a rapid localization method so that highly directive transmissions can dynamically track mobile users. Second, this project will yield the first experimental network above 100 GHz in which an access point can simultaneously transmit to multiple mobile users. Such a multi-user capability is critical for realizing high data rates with low-latency access in dense user populations. One demonstration will be to simultaneously form signal spotlights to mobile users, adapting both the center and size of the spotlights according to the user mobility. This project will demonstrate a sub-THz multi-user data-plane and control-plane via three integrated research thrusts, each of which includes implementation and experimental validation. The first project thrust will realize multi-user sub-THz spectrum access with a radically simplified architecture requiring no RF chains and no antenna arrays. The key technique is to dynamically reconfigure a transmissive metasurface with high-entropy wavefronts that yield different data symbols in different directions. Namely, off-line pre-characterization of the metasurface’s angular response will enable the metasurface itself to simultaneously generate multiple independent directional data streams. Designs will realize beamforming gains, angular symbol diversity, and robustness to client mobility. The second project thrust will realize multi-user spectrum access by generating custom-sized and shaped “spotlights” for each user. Exploiting the fact that the sub-THz near field can extend to tens of meters or more, the key technique is to reconfigure the metasurface’s meta-atoms to dynamically shape each user’s electromagnetic energy in space according to their location, mobility and potential interference, thereby enabling both robust and high-rate access. Spotlight shapes can be custom tailored to a user’s needs, even including curved trajectories to better support mobility around corners and to reduce inter-user interference. The third project thrust will realize a low-latency sub-THz control plane that yields high accuracy location and channel information. The key technique is for the access point to generate beacons with pre-characterized high-entropy wavefronts such that a small change in receiver position will yield a distinct spectral signature. The method enables one-shot localization and promises to significantly advance the state-of-the-art in both spatial resolution and time required. Consequently, it provides a key building block for realizing highly directional sub-THz access. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-12

Project abstract The goal of this pilot project is to investigate the vascular persistence of a novel hydrogel microcarrier that mimics the size of white blood cells but is extremely deformable, which is hypothesized to help avoid entrapment in small blood vessels and limit engulfment by phagocytic cells. The carriers we developed for this purpose are called hyper-compliant microparticles (HCMPs). The HCMPs, which can encapsulate other nano/microparticles that elute drugs or chelate toxins, are expected to circulate throughout the body for days, weeks, or even months just like native blood cells. The proposed project will compare the circulatory persistence of “hyper-compliant” versus “stiff” microparticles (MPs) following tail vein injection in an immunocompetent mouse model. Periodic blood draws will be taken to perform MP counts via spectrophotometry and microscopy. We will also investigate biodistribution and potential clearance of the near-infrared fluorescence-labeled MPs following the same administration procedures but with inclusion of live animal imaging over the course of a week. Animals will then be sacrificed, blood collected, and organs explanted before completing a secondary analysis of MP distribution via fluorescence imaging and histology. It is expected that “hyper-compliant” MPs will remain in circulation and be able to pass through even the smallest capillaries, whereas stiffer MPs will become entrapped in organs like the lung. Vascular persistence is also expected to be influenced by HCMP evasion of immune cell uptake due to its hydrophilic surface, relatively large size, and high deformability. We will explore this further through a small in vitro experiment comparing macrophage uptake of “hyper-compliant” versus “stiff” MPs when left uncoated or opsonized with IgG. If HCMPs can continue to circulate for even a week, this would have a significant impact for multiple therapeutic directions. Perhaps foremost would be the sustained release of intravascular drugs, which would greatly benefit from having a microcarrier technology that prevents drug-eluting nano/microparticles from being filtered out of the blood or cleared by the mononuclear phagocytic system. Likewise, strategies for toxin removal from blood, e.g, heavy metals or harmful drug metabolites, would have many new avenues of discovery with a vascular vehicle that functions as a long-acting sorbent. The current project is necessary before pursuing these exciting new directions, and while preliminary work is very encouraging, a more rigorous study is needed for completion.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-12

PROJECT SUMMARY Young adulthood is a crucial period for understanding the development of substance use disorders, which can lead to the development of cancer later in life. Two substances in particular, marijuana and tobacco, are of critical importance due to their prevalence and potential impact on this vulnerable age group. Marijuana use has reached critically high rates in young adults, and the majority of young adults endorsing marijuana use also smoke tobacco. Dual use of both substances is associated with a greater risk of health and behavioral problems later in life. However, behavioral mechanisms underlying marijuana and tobacco dual use are not well characterized. Novel methods and experimental data are urgently needed to better model and understand behavioral mechanisms underlying young adult dual use of marijuana and tobacco in order to reduce cancer risk across the lifespan. We propose to characterize young adults who smoke of marijuana and cigarettes (YASMCs) using rigorous laboratory-based behavioral economic measures: a novel cross-price elasticity of demand (CPED) task we have developed and an innovative extension of cue-induced demand to assess cross-cue reactivity. CPED can tell us how demand for one substance may shift as the price and availability of another substance changes in a model that approximates real-world tradeoffs. If these substances act as substitutes for an individual, then as the value of one decreases, demand for the other increases. In this case, cessation efforts aimed at one substance may lead to increases in use of the alternative substance. If they are complements, increasing access and exposure to one substance may drive a concomitant increase in demand for the alternative substance. Cross-cue induced demand can tell us the extent to which environmental cues (e.g., smoke, drug paraphernalia) can elicit elevated demand for the alternative substance in the moment. Thus, increased exposure to drug-specific cues could lead to unintended harms such as increased craving for both substances. Participants (N = 120) will be young adults (age 18-25) endorsing current tobacco and marijuana use and will complete 4 experimental sessions: one in which they will complete baseline assessments and the CPED task, 3 cross-cue reactivity sessions (cigarette cues, marijuana joint cue, and “blunt’ or mixed tobacco and marijuana cue; each precede by neutral cues in a single session), and a qualitative exit interview about modes of cannabis and tobacco use. Outcome measures will include: 1) degree of substitutability on the CPED, 2) change in demand for each alternative substance in the presence of target-substance cues, and 3) relationships between these outcomes and other measures of dual use. This proposal addresses NCI’s priority areas of: “Behavioral research in cancer prevention and control: Development and testing of interventions addressing risk behaviors such as: tobacco use” and will contribute to TCRB’s research priority area of “Etiology, predictors, correlates, and determinants of tobacco use, nicotine dependence, and cessation”.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-12

PROJECT SUMMARY Chagas' disease (CD) is a neglected tropical disease caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Over 70 million people in South and Central America, as well as immigrant populations, are at risk of CD. There is currently no effective vaccine, and treatment options are limited. The parasite is transmitted by the feeding activity of triatomine insects. Once in the blood stream of the mammalian host, the parasite invades nucleated cells and proliferates until the cell ruptures, restarting the lytic infection cycle. T. cruzi has a unique morphology with a single, anchored flagellum enclosed by the flagellar pocket (FP), and undergoes several morphological changes during its life cycle that allow the parasite to adapt to the different environments within its mammalian and insect hosts. The location of the FP and the flagellum along the cell body change during these transitions. Of particular interest is the phase of the life cycle known as metacyclogenesis where insect forms of the parasite (epimastigotes) differentiate into metacyclic trypomastigotes which are infectious to the mammalian host cell. My goal is to identify novel molecular markers and describe the morphological changes that occur during metacyclogenesis using transcriptomics and microscopy. In the first year of this fellowship, I will focus on aim 1, where we will use single cell RNA sequencing to identify the gene cascades underlying metacyclogenesis. From this, we will be able to identify molecular markers unique to either epimastigotes or trypomastigotes, and be able to describe the gene regulatory cascades that underly both the epimastigote cell cycle and metacyclogenesis. It is currently unknown if the transition from epimastigote to trypomastigote requires a cell division, a question we will answer using live cell imaging. This will be facilitated by using fluorescently tagged genes identified in the single cell transcriptomes to allow for real time imaging of transitioning parasites to be validated by an expressed specific stage marker. At the end of the first year, and in the second and third year, I will focus on aim 2 where we will map the localization of FP proteins during metacyclogenesis and [validate their role in serum survival and host cell invasion efficiency]. In the former approach, we will use CRISPR/Cas9 to endogenously tag several FP components and view transitioning cells using a combination of conventional epifluorescence and ultrastructure expansion microscopy to generate high resolution structural information. [Next, we will take FP mutants and expose them to complement active serum and measure lysis, as well as allow them to invade host cell monolayers.] The findings of the proposed work will generate novel and critical resources for the field of CD research, and reveal unique and essential biological pathways that may be amenable [to transmission blocking] to combat CD. This work will be facilitated by the excellent research environment both in the de Graffenried laboratory and at Brown University. Further, this work will be supported by my co-sponsor Dr. Richard Bennett, and through the network of other researchers I will build during the fellowship period.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Recent advances in machine learning are demonstrating the potential to find solutions of challenging nonlinear partial differential equations which hold great significance in a variety of fields, including applied mathematics, physics, and engineering. Computer-assisted proofs are gaining momentum in this field, demonstrating their success in situations that have previously been out of reach using traditional approaches. By harnessing the synergy between mathematical principles and computational methods, the goal of this project is to unlock new mathematical insights, streamline computational processes, and push the boundaries of scientific exploration using novel machine learning approaches for understanding partial differential equations. Training of undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs is a fundamental component of this project, involving research questions that are rich and suitable for trainees. The investigator will also devote significant time to enhance and broaden participation in the mathematical community by organizing conferences, designing new courses and creating new programs, as well as contributing with open-source code to existing libraries such as mathlib or Arb. This project has two complementary research goals. Machine-learning approaches will be developed for solving long standing open problems in (broadly defined) nonlinear partial differential equations, including dispersive, elliptic, and geometric frameworks. In complement, the project also intends to advance the heuristics behind machine-learning numerics for such equations, guided by new mathematical knowledge. This involves discovering and verifying new solutions to longstanding conjectures while at the same time improving on machine learning algorithms. This project is divided in four tasks: the first involves the incompressible Euler equation, the second addresses elliptic partial differential equations; the third studies geometric partial differential equations and Calabi-Yau metrics, and the fourth involves the development of mathlib and Lean code. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-12

Project Summary SLC13A5 Epilepsy, or developmental epileptic encephalopathy 25 (DEE25), is a genetic form of epilepsy characterized by severe multi-focal seizures within the first 24 hours of birth. This disorder is caused by bi-allelic mutations in the SLC13A5 gene, which encodes a sodium citrate co-transporter (NaCT) that mediates citrate import across the plasma membrane. Though there is currently limited understanding of the complete disease spectrum and lack of comprehensive characterization, studies have demonstrated that patients with SLC13A5 Epilepsy exhibit elevated citrate levels in both the cerebrospinal fluid and plasma. Given the function of the SLC13A5 protein in citrate import and regulation, it is hypothesized that SLC13A5 deficiency leads to the accumulation of extracellular citrate. Studies have found the liver and brain express high levels of SLC13A5, but the tissue-specific source of excess citrate and its impact on neuronal excitability, and subsequent epileptogenesis, are unknown. I will draw on years of translational neuroscience experience in my sponsor’s laboratory to understand the relationship between extracellular citrate levels and neuronal excitability. In mice, homozygous loss of SLC13A5 (SLC13A5-/-) is associated with epileptiform discharges in mouse electroencephalography. Preliminary data from our laboratory has found that increasing levels of extracellular citrate lead to increased interictal discharge events in local field potential recordings from both wild-type and SLC13A5-/- mouse brain slices. Based on this data, I hypothesize that elevated citrate levels, secondary to tissue-specific SLC13A5 deficiency, will increase overall neuronal excitability, thereby contributing to epileptogenesis. To test this hypothesis, I will examine the impact of SLC13A5 deficiency in tissues where SLC13A5 is most highly expressed by combining advanced imaging with traditional electrophysiology. In Aim 1, I will identify the tissue(s) where aberrant SLC13A5 expression leads to epileptogenesis using mouse electroencephalography and quantitative PCR. In Aim 2, I will assess the impact of elevated extracellular citrate on neuronal excitability using whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry of mouse bodily fluids. In Aim 3, I will quantify neurotransmitter levels secondary to SLC13A5 deficiency with high-speed glutamate imaging. Overall, these experiments will establish the role of citrate in abnormalities of neuronal excitability. My long-term goal for this award is to transition into a career as a physician-scientist studying and treating epilepsy. The sponsor team will share their expertise in translational epilepsy research, clinical evaluations, and career development. Further training will be acquired from workshops and conferences, both at and outside of Brown University, in addition to both national and international conferences. Overall, this proposal will provide research and clinical training in addition to professional development.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-11

PROJECT SUMMARY Antibiotic-induced damage to the natural flora of the human GI is associated with significant morbidity. As we advance more efficient strategies to fight the current antimicrobial resistance crisis, we must also develop therapeutic methodologies to reduce the collateral damage to the microbiome. Here we propose that the disruption of bile acid (BA) metabolism in the upper GI by antibiotics may contribute to antibiotic-induced dysbiosis (AID) in the lower GI and that correcting this may be a target for intervention. Host-produced BAs are vital to the stability of the microbiome and in defining metabolites available to the host and the lower GI. The host produces primary BAs that are deconjugated by bacteria with bile-salt hydrolase (BSH) enzymes in the small intestine (SI). Unconjugated BAs not reabsorbed by the host are modified into secondary BAs by microbes in the large intestine. Unconjugated and secondary bile acids can, in turn, modulate microbiome composition and activity by inhibiting the growth of certain bacteria and by changing nutrient availability. Research on antibiotics in the microbiome has mainly focused on fecal bacteria, leaving the impact of SI BA metabolism on AID largely unexplored. This lack of attention to upper GI bacteria and the spatial context of host-microbe interactions presents a significant obstacle to understanding AID. Our recent preliminary data showed that amoxicillin severely disrupts the SI microbiota. We also found that this disruption is associated with an almost complete reduction in the expression of BSH genes and BSH activity in the upper GI. A metabolomic analysis revealed that amoxicillin dramatically reduced unconjugated and secondary bile acids across GI regions. This is also associated with a reduction of lipids in the lower GI. Based on this data, we hypothesize that the depletion of microbial bile metabolism in the SI contributes to AID by altering BA-antimicrobial activity and microbial metabolism. The key goal of this application is to establish a causative link between the disruption of bile acid metabolism in the upper G.I. and amoxicillin-associated damage of the lower GI microbiome. Aim 1: Determine the role of BA metabolism in amoxicillin-induced gut dysbiosis. Aim 2: Evaluate the efficacy of BA restoration to control antibiotic-associated pathogens. Our ultimate goal is to develop novel prebiotic, probiotic, or pharmacological approaches to reduce the collateral impacts of antibiotics on the GI microbiota and prevent associated health burdens. Using matched multi-omic datasets we will uncover location-specific impacts of antibiotics over the entire length of the GI, enabling us to identify such intervention points. We envision that dietary supplements may be a particularly effective way to restore BA metabolism, and in this application, we test two such approaches.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

Nervous systems are biological communication networks that use signaling molecules called neurotransmitters to transfer information critical to every facet of brain function. “Bilingual” neurons are neurons that release two types of neurotransmitters to communicate with other neurons. Co-transmission allows the brain to fine-tune responses with multiple messages, which increases the functional flexibility of the brain, allowing it to accurately respond to a continually changing environment appropriately. The increasing number of examples of “bilingual” neurons found in the brains of animals from flies to humans indicates this is a fundamental mechanism by which neurons communicate. Despite this functional significance, there is still only limited insight into how co-transmission is regulated within neurons, and how the social environment impacts neuron communication. In this proposal, the investigators will use the fruit fly, Drosophila, to identify mechanisms that regulate co-transmission and identify how these mechanisms are dynamically regulated by the animal’s social environment, in both females and males. The outcomes of this work include an in-depth understanding of how multiple neurotransmitters generate behavioral flexibility, and separately provide a potential neuroprotective role in response to a social isolation environment. The project will provide research experience to students in molecular and physiological techniques through training and mentoring. In this proposal, the investigators will leverage their deep understanding of behavior-promoting neurons, spatial transcriptomic approaches, and functional imaging to test the hypothesis that the molecular and physiological mechanisms that regulate co-transmission are themselves dynamically regulated by sex and state-dependent properties. The PIs will use cutting-edge techniques to examine how glutamate+/octopamine+ neurons in the Drosophila model system differ within a novel sex-specific context as well in response to state-dependent changes at the anatomical, transcriptomic and functional level. Specifically, the investigators will first address how the neural dynamics, neurotransmitter levels and distribution of glutamate and octopamine are impacted in the context of sexual dimorphism and the social isolation state. Second, they will identify transcriptional pathways that regulate glutamate or octopamine signaling through single nuclei RNA-seq and the spatial transcriptomics technology, Ex-seq. Laboratory settings are increasingly international and collaborative places, both in the university and in the global biotechnology industry. As a team the investigators are providing a collaborative and interactive training plan for their students to receive international instruction and mentoring, as well as learn new molecular and physiological techniques. Additional student education will occur through laboratory courses taught at Brown University and the University of Montana. Ultimately, this work will fill a large gap in our understanding of the regulation of co-transmission by identifying the rich assortment of communication capabilities that neurons possess in behaving animals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

This project aims to serve the national interest by advancing our understanding of how universities nationwide can improve support for science faculty instructors in providing accommodations for students with disabilities in their classes. While the process of providing formal accommodations in higher education classrooms is initiated by students and coordinated typically by a disability or accessibility center, the actual implementation of accommodations is highly dependent on faculty instructors. Because faculty at different institutions have different responsibilities, resources, and student bodies, the context of providing accommodations likely varies greatly by the type of institution. Additional variables including rising numbers of students with disabilities and an increased use of active learning and hybrid/remote instruction inevitably influences a faculty instructor's experiences and willingness to provide accommodations to students with disabilities. By identifying and understanding the factors that impact faculty instructor motivation to provide accommodations, this project aims to elicit needed information on how to support science faculty instructors in meeting the needs of undergraduate students with disabilities. This project plans to identify personal, institutional, and logistical factors that impact how science faculty instructors administer accommodations to students with disabilities. Because factors including class sizes, accessibility center resources, numbers of students who receive accommodations, faculty instructor responsibilities and expectations, and teaching support resources vary greatly by institution, this project will disaggregate findings by four different institution types (community colleges, primarily undergraduate institutions, comprehensive institutions, and research-intensive institutions). This project includes a nationwide interview study to identify how different factors impact a science faculty member's expected ability and value for the task of providing accommodations for students. To increase the generalizability of this work, the project plans to use findings from the interview study to inform development of three survey instruments, designed to measure science faculty's: (1) motivation to provide accommodations; (2) perceptions of the logistical, situational, and instrumental factors that impact student accommodations; and (2) personal knowledge of disability and accommodations. After instrument validation, the project plans to deploy the three survey instruments to science faculty at institutions nationwide. Data analysis will explore how different factors impact science faculty instructor's motivation and experiences with providing accommodations. Outcomes will be disseminated through publications, presentations, as well as videos, recorded talks and blog postings. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

Reviewing and summarizing existing climate research results is critical for guiding future research and policy. The exponential growth of climate research literature makes working one paper at a time no longer efficient. The proposed work aims to discover new, more efficient ways to scour the scientific literature. This project will use artificial intelligence to build a climate science "chat bot" assistant. This assistant will be trained specifically for climate science literature. It will have the ability to independently read and report peer-reviewed papers. This will enable it to always include the latest peer-reviewed results published. It will help researchers review the literature more comprehensively and in less time. Improved assessment reports will contribute to better-informed climate policy. Addressing the assessment bottleneck will accelerate climate research by better identifying the multiple lines of evidence needed to assess consensus and consistency. This project will also create fundamental advances in artificial intelligence through use-driven research in climate science. Current large language models often emphasize “chat bots” that address general topics. This project will develop new methods that can teach large language models specialized knowledge and skills without human intervention through large-scale data annotation efforts. These methods include synthetic training-data generation and interacting large language models. To improve huma interaction, the project will also develop methods for users to identify what types of inputs are difficult for the artificial intelligence to understand. By combining these new methods into an artificial intelligence assistant, the project will initiate a new approach to conducting comprehensive assessments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

Rapid progress in artificial intelligence in recent years has been attributed to dramatic increases in the scale of deep neural networks (DNNs): DNNs have more parameters than ever before and are being trained on large proportions of the internet to acquire impressive, almost human-like visual abilities. However, even the largest, highest performing DNNs can fail in strange, inscrutable, and surprisingly “unhuman-like” ways, and this misalignment between humans and DNNs is worsening as DNNs grow in scale. This project aims to rectify the growing misalignment problem by designing the next generation of human-aligned DNNs capable of mimicking human behavior by relying on the computational, algorithmic, and representational principles that shape natural intelligence. The project will result in algorithms that behave like the human visual system, which are broadly applicable across computer vision, cognitive science, and neuroscience. This project combines large-scale visual psychophysics to characterize human visual strategies and identify the computational principles underlying object recognition in humans with machine-learning methods to translate these insights into algorithms for aligning DNNs with humans. Data from human studies will first be combined with the recently developed “neural harmonizer” training algorithm to generate a large “zoo” of human-vision-aligned versions of publicly available DNNs. A differential analysis of neural circuits and representations in aligned versus standard DNNs will explain why today’s approaches to deep learning are misaligned with human brains. Finally, this project will build on the insights gained regarding the misalignment of DNNs and humans towards reverse engineering the data diets and objective functions needed to align DNNs with human vision from the outset. The proposed work will lead to significant advances in understanding of the perceptual and computational principles underlying human vision and the development of mathematical theories, computational tools, and learning approaches needed to inculcate artificial systems with those same principles. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.