University of Oregon Eugene

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-02

This project explores how different plant species repeatedly develop the same traits even when they evolve separately from each other. Flower color is an essential trait for attracting animal pollinators, which helps plants reproduce and contributes to their amazing diversity. This research will help scientists understand the genetic reasons controlling independent changes in flower color in a model plant known as the monkeyflower that has multiple species that repeatedly evolved red flowers from their yellow-flowered ancestors. This study will provide new knowledge about how organisms adapt to their surroundings and the evolution of new species. By revealing how specific genetic patterns and environmental factors combine to cause these changes, the findings will provide critical information needed to understand how plants and animals could adapt or be adapted in the future. The project will also train undergraduate and graduate students in fundamental aspects of research in plant science, genetics, and evolution. In addition, the project includes a community outreach program that will engage children, encouraging early interest in plant biology and environmental science. This project investigates the genetic and genomic factors underlying the repeated evolution of red flowers in the Mimulus aurantiacus species complex, a system where previous work has uncovered a complex evolutionary history and genetic basis related to this trait. Researchers will identify candidate mutations controlling the trait, will map epistasis and determine its impact on the efficacy of selection, and will distinguish between linkage and pleiotropy as causes for existing genetic correlations with red flowers. The study will have important implications for distinguishing which traits and loci are the targets of natural selection, and how genome structure generates genetic correlations that can alter the evolutionary response to this selection. By examining whether the same or different mutations cause the repeated evolution of red flowers, the research will address fundamental questions about predictability and the constraints driving evolutionary change and will elucidate the fundamental role of genetic architecture in shaping natural selection. The project will provide interdisciplinary training for undergraduate and graduate students in plant science, genetics, evolution, and bioinformatics. This project also includes a community outreach program in a local elementary school that is aimed at enhancing early scientific engagement and curiosity in evolution and biodiversity. 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

With support from the Chemical Structure and Dynamics (CSD) program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Cathy Wong of the University of Oregon-Eugene is developing a new darkfield transient absorption spectroscopy that uses spatial frequency filtering strategies to investigate the intermolecular arrangement and photophysics at domain boundaries in films of fused ring electron acceptors (FREAs). The performance of a film of molecular aggregates is determined by how domain boundaries form, and how their electronic structure, excited state dynamics, and intermolecular arrangement emerge during molecular aggregation. However, the challenge in a typical bulk measurement is that signal from a boundary is usually overwhelmed by the larger signal from adjacent domains. Professor Wong and her students will develop an in situ darkfield transient absorption spectrometer for measuring domain boundaries in films of electron donors and FREAs and will determine the measured molecular arrangements by simulating the measured spectra. Their studies could provide better understanding of molecular aggregation at interfaces and could develop darkfield transient absorption as a widely adopted technique in photophysics. The central concept of this research is brought into the undergraduate classroom with a complementary physical chemistry laboratory focused on darkfield microscopy. Single-shot transient absorption spectroscopy, developed in Professor Wong’s laboratory, can measure the excited state dynamics and electronic structure of materials systems in a few seconds. This spectroscopy enables the measurement of materials while they change, for example during their formation. Professor Wong and her team will combine this technique with spatial frequency filtering to isolate the signal from domain boundaries as they form in thin films of FREAs. They will isolate the signal from domain boundaries with particular spatial orientations, and measure rates of charge transfer and exciton recombination as a function of pump polarization. In this way, the rates can be determined as a function of molecular orientation relative to a domain boundary. By performing these measurements while varying film deposition parameters, they can determine how domain boundaries that result in higher charge transfer rates can be produced. FREAs have been shown to improve the efficiency of organic photovoltaics, and these studies may elucidate how functionality can be further improved. The broader impacts of this work include the ability to control domain boundaries in organic films that are used in electronics and photovoltaics, and the development of a new spectroscopy that can isolate signal from tiny boundaries and defects. 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

The acquisition of a cryogen-free Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS) enables next-generation energy and quantum materials research and education at the University of Oregon. The state-of-the-art PPMS tool facilitates investigations of thermal, electrical, and magnetic material properties to low temperatures without the need for helium to operate. The ability to characterize these properties is crucial to the development of advanced materials, for example, those used in solid-state batteries, superconducting qubits, and semiconductor devices. The tool also enables new research on the natural minerals that influence volcanic activity in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. The instrument meets critical needs of research, education, and training by a large, diverse group of faculty across the College of Arts and Sciences and the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. Training and access of the instrument for academic and external partners is facilitated through the Center for Advanced Materials Characterization in Oregon (CAMCOR)—a research core facility with dedicated scientific technicians and business management. The tool will offer advanced training capacity for two new degree programs: a Quantum Technologies Master’s Internship program and a Materials Science and Technology undergraduate degree program—the first in the state of Oregon. In addition to strengthening current research and education capabilities, the PPMS provides a new point of engagement with many regional industries, facilitating opportunities for students and postdocs to seek out job prospects and internships, thus growing the ecosystem of materials science and technologies in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Thermophysical and transport properties of materials play a critical role in the understanding and development of nearly every kind of engineering technology and are central to materials research across physical sciences. The PPMS provides unparalleled opportunity for condensed matter investigations of engineering and research materials from ~1.8–400 K and under magnetic fields up to 9 T. In particular, the ability to measure heat capacity, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion coefficients, as well as electronic conductivity and magnetic susceptibility of materials, makes the PPMS a versatile instrument for investigating diverse topics from the characterization of phase transitions and informing magma reservoir dynamics, to understanding thermal runaway and thermal management in batteries, probing dynamic bonding in porous framework materials, identifying emergent properties of atomic-scale heterostructures, and searching material losses in order to engineer better superconducting quantum computing devices. Ultimately, the cryogen-free PPMS expands research capabilities and experiential trainings that promote needed technology development in coordination with industry and national laboratories within the Pacific Northwest and beyond. 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

Lakes worldwide are impacted by harmful algal blooms (HABs), also known as cyanoHABs. HABs can lower water quality and produce toxins, impairing fisheries, recreational waters, and drinking water sources. HABs are often related to nutrient pollution, but nutrient reductions from surrounding watersheds require collaboration, awareness, and community buy-in to make sustainable long-term changes and prevent bloom formation. This is particularly the case for areas that have limited access to drinking water infrastructure and where the impacts of HABs have been largely overlooked. In this project, community-based activities engage two rural communities in Western Oregon near Tenmile Lakes and Dorena Lake with respect to HABs awareness, risks, and vulnerabilities. The communities’ economies are reliant on watershed resources, e.g., timber and agriculture, that may contribute to nutrient loading, and on resources provided by the impacted lake, such as fishing, drinking water, and irrigation water. In partnership with rural stakeholders, organizations, and community members, this project explores climate-smart, sustainable, value-added intervention strategies to prevent HABs and reduce health risks. Collaborating with civic partners focused on environment and livelihood, our research addresses knowledge gaps regarding the health risks and economic impacts of cyanoHABs in rural regions. We work with local communities to address the loss of water security due to cyanoHABs and test the use of a carbon by-product technology, biochar, to mitigate impacts of cyanoHABs. Biochar is used in agriculture and forestry to improve soil and ecosystem health. Here we apply it in the context of watersheds and water treatment. Through roundtables, workshops, interviews, and pilot experiments, and in collaboration with civic partners, stakeholders, and impacted community members, our research assesses the efficacy, feasibility, and sustainability of local biochar (i) to enhance near shore buffer zones designed to mitigate nutrient loading and reduce frequency and severity of blooms and (ii) to remove cyanotoxins through gravity-fed filters. Our work informs mitigation and water treatment strategies in two rural communities and helps inform other projects in rural communities impacted by cyanoHABs globally. This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program’s Track A. Climate and Environmental Instability - Building Resilient Communities through Co-Design, Adaption, and Mitigation and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy. 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

Geodiversity is the variety of non-living elements like rocks, landforms, and processes in a given area, and plays an especially critical role in Antarctica. Geodiversity provides the conditions in which life can develop and underpins all ecosystems on Earth. It also provides tangible services to people (like construction materials) as well as intangible benefits (such as scientific knowledge from ice cores and artistic inspiration from glaciers). Despite its importance, Antarctic geodiversity remains under-explored, under-described, and inadequately mapped. This knowledge gap is particularly concerning given the threats posed by increasing human activity and environmental and climate change. This project uses a variety of datasets to map Antarctic geodiversity, assess its benefits to people, and help identify priority locations for conservation. Through an interdisciplinary and mixed-method approach, this research will fill a major gap in the current understanding and representations of the Antarctic. Using the McMurdo Dry Valleys as a case study, the researcher will combine geospatial data on geology, geomorphology, pedology, and hydrology to map geodiversity of the region. This project will identify sites of key geosystem services by analyzing geospatial data on placenames, scientific samples, and a web-based participatory mapping survey. The geodiversity and geosystem services data will then be overlaid and combined to identify hotspots of geo-social diversity. The resulting maps will be compared with the region's protected area boundaries to assess the fit-for-purpose of current environmental management and identify priority locations for future research and conservation. The fellow will promote Antarctic geodiversity broadly, including at UNESCO International Geodiversity Day. 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 · 2024-12

Quantum information science and technology provides tools that can significantly impact nearly all activities in modern society. Quantum sensors currently allow the most precise measurements possible enabling new discoveries in science and engineering. Quantum computers promise to perform calculations beyond the capacity of any classical device, enabling advances in diverse fields such as medicine, chemistry, manufacturing and security. Quantum networks, which distribute fragile quantum entanglement between multiple parties, permeate the entire quantum technology environment and enable new modalities of both quantum sensing and computation, as well as novel communications capabilities that allow secure communications with no classical analog. This project is developing the Attosecond Synchronized Photonic Entanglement Network (ASPEN-Net), a scalable quantum networking platform capable of distributing entanglement at high rates and over large distances. Three separate interoperable quantum networking testbeds, located in Colorado, Illinois and Oregon, focus on delivering a quantum advantage in sensing and communications applications, while providing user access to the quantum network. To increase the quantum workforce, the project provides a range of on-ramp, training opportunities for pre-college, undergraduate, and graduate students and post-graduate training activities. Equitable access to education and workforce development activities is made possible for individuals from diverse backgrounds, including groups underrepresented in the quantum workforce. Realizing ASPEN-Net requires technical development of the key compatible network components: hardware (high-rate, high-quality single-photon sources; phase-stable all-optical quantum memories; efficient photon-counting detectors; and active, attosecond-level synchronization between network nodes), software (network management and feedback control systems), and interfaces for both physical and remote users. The project has four major areas of scientific research activities required to deliver the full network stack from hardware to control software. 1) Hardware development is focused on the co-design of the core components for the network to deliver the entanglement needs for specific applications. 2) System integration is focused on ensuring interoperability of network devices allowing for scalable and reconfigurable network architecture. 3) Network interfacing, control and error correction develops network-level control and reliability, including application programming interfaces for research and education. 4) Quantum advantage demonstrators experimentally establish enhanced performance of quantum sensing and communications tasks utilizing ASPEN-Net. This project advances the objectives of Quantum Information Science and Engineering at NSF in response to the National Quantum Initiative Act for the continued leadership of the United States in QIS and its technology applications. 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 · 2024-12

A fundamental question in topology is whether we can deform one shape into another while preserving certain intrinsic properties. By adding a time dimension, it is natural to think of the deformation as being a 4-dimensional object which has one object at one end, and the other shape at the other end. A fundamental question in low-dimensional topology is whether we can build a 4-dimensional space which connects two given 3-dimensional objects. Heegaard Floer homology is an important tool for studying such questions. It gives topologists a way of knowing that two 3-dimensional spaces cannot be related by a 4-dimensional space. Heegaard Floer homology involves the counts of complicated solutions to differential equations and has deep connections to Seiberg-Witten theory, Yang-Mills theory, and mathematical physics. This project aims to develop new tools for computing Heegaard Floer homology. A main focus of this project is to develop a new minus version of bordered Heegaard Floer homology for 3-dimensional spaces with torus boundary components. This theory is based on the link surgery formula of Manolescu and Ozsváth. The project aims to use this theory to study the lattice homology conjecture of Némethi. Additionally, the project aims to study symmetries in this theory and in the link surgery formula. With these tools, the PI hopes to give computable invariants of homology cobordism. In addition, the PI endeavors to mentor graduate students and undergraduates, as well as organize events to disperse knowledge. 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 EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project develops a framework to measure the dynamics, intermediate outcomes, and broader socio-economic and environmental impacts of regional innovation programs. Large scale investments like the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program require more inclusive and comprehensive attention to the participants and the range of activities, including the development of supply chains. This project engages novel interdisciplinary perspectives to guide assessment and involves state of the art curation of data sources to manage and assess such investments in a timely manner. The team will design an evaluation system and data infrastructure to track outcomes from NSF Engine investments; this includes short-term enabling outcomes and intermediate outcomes that become inputs into building local capacities that will ultimately translate into the desired social and economic results. The team will design and begin to implement a public dashboard, which will help scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and the public deepen their commitment and engagement in economic development. This EAGER project develops a data intensive, multi-level analytical framework to determine the dynamics, intermediate outcomes, and broader socio-economic and environmental impacts of regional innovation programs. Such large-scale government investments defy standard geographic classifications requiring the need to geocode organizations, activity, and firms to situate them in a delineated catchment area where impact may be observed. This project engages novel interdisciplinary perspectives across the fields of public policy, economics, geography, and management to build the conceptual foundation guiding assessment and involves state of the art curation of myriad data sources to manage and assess such investments in a timely manner. The team will assemble a novel panel dataset of firms and organizations; these data will be geocoded to precise address location to understand the concentric zone of investment impact. The approach centers on tracing the micro-foundations of ecosystem activity, encompassing employment dynamics, supplier-buyer networks, and financial, innovative, and societal performance. The team will design and begin to implement a public dashboard, providing communities with immediate access to essential economic development metrics. This instrument will facilitate strategic adjustments informed by empirical insights and augment the capacity of communities to articulate their development narratives effectively. 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

Memories are not exact records of past events; rather our emotional states can distort memories leading to accurate recall of the most intense parts of an event and misremembering of more mundane details. For example, imagine while eating brunch at a busy intersection you witness a horrific car accident. While you may have great memory for the anguish in the passenger’s face, you may not have great memory for how the car accident transpired (e.g., was the driver texting while driving?). Understanding how emotion distorts memories is of critical importance because as a society we use personal accounts of prior events to inform communication in both legal and media contexts. This project increases our understanding of how individuals form memories for complex emotional events by defining the features of learning that contribute to distortions in memory. The project leverages rodent and animal models of how emotional arousal influences brain structures underlying memory and extends them by employing more real-life, threatening events. There is accumulating evidence that emotional events heighten threat-related arousal, such as increases in sweating and heart rate, which can impair the function of regions known to construct episodic memories, such as the hippocampus. However, most laboratory based studies use static word lists or pictures as experimental stimuli, which preclude the ability to understand how threat changes individuals’ ability to construct accurate memory-based narratives of real-world situations. Threat may bias memory formation towards the most emotional parts of events while also encouraging the ignoring of mundane details (like where or when the event happened) which makes it difficult to accurately reflect on how events unfolded. A series of behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging experiments, using highly arousing naturalistic stimuli, address arousal’s role in fragmented memory by placing individuals in more complex, threatening environments than previous research. Understanding the intersection of emotion, arousal, and memory cohesion has broad implications for improving methods to make sure when individuals convey their interpretations of past events to broader audiences—such as an individual sharing their interpretation of a traumatic event to a news outlet or a courtroom—we can accurately determine which parts of their memories are more or less fallible. Alongside the research project are plans for the mentorship of a diverse body of undergraduate and graduate trainees, public outreach through theatre events and digital media, and a plan to develop collaborations with experts in eye-witness testimony, digital media, and memory research. This project translates models of arousal-mediated biases in episodic memory into the domain of naturalistic, ecologically-relevant stimuli in humans. Research in both rodents and humans shows that emotional memory is supported by a cascade of events which are triggered by threat detection in the amygdala, which then increases physiological arousal and noradrenergic tone in concert with facilitating medial temporal lobe-dependent encoding. These neuromodulatory signals are specifically thought to bias memory encoding towards cortical medial temporal lobe-based memory representations over hippocampal-dependent representations, which in turn results in greater memory for the most salient features of an emotional event at the expense of more mundane details. Critically, intact hippocampal function is necessary to form cohesive memories that maintain their temporal order, contextual details, and a continuous narrative. It follows that, due to amygdala involvement, memories of emotionally arousing events would lack typical markers of hippocampal-dependent memory such as a cohesive temporal narrative. However, prior research has precluded testing such hypotheses based on the use of more simplistic stimuli that are static and lack narrative structures (i.e., word lists, pictures). Emerging work in the cognitive neuroscience of memory has provided behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging techniques to assay memory processes that unfold over time by utilizing more complex memoranda that include a narrative structure. In the first set of studies, participants attend a highly arousing haunted house during the collection of physiological data and then complete free recall tests characterizing the cohesive structure of their memories. In a second series of studies, the investigators leverage neuroimaging methods during the encoding and free recall of horror and neutral movies clips to better understand the relationship between amygdala-medial temporal lobe interactions, physiological arousal, and memory distortion. In the final series of studies, the investigators manipulate individuals’ agency while playing a horror-themed video game, testing a novel hypothesis that agency may protect individuals from arousal-based memory distortions by providing them control over the event, a form of intrinsic emotion regulation. Thus, these studies expand our knowledge on emotional memory by moving beyond simple laboratory-based stimuli into more naturalistic memoranda (i.e., staged events, movie viewing, videogame play). Together, this project tests a model by which physiological arousal disrupts hippocampal-dependent encoding resulting in fragmented, distorted representations of past events which are less communicable to the public. Understanding the behavioral and neural mechanisms that drive memory distortions for complex, aversive events provides a foundation of knowledge to more accurately assess the veracity of individuals’ memories for traumatic events, and provides targets of remediation to reduce distortions in memory. Thus, the findings from this project inform practices of incorporating first-person narratives in service of societal well-being in legal and media contexts. 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

The Earth’s faults can rupture abruptly causing hazardous earthquakes, but some can also slip slowly, in events that can last hours to years. In the Cascadia Subduction Zone, slow slip events (SSEs) have durations of days to weeks and occur at depths between 30 and 45 km, which are deeper than typical earthquakes. These events produce a weak seismic signal known as tectonic tremor. Despite their status as one of the most significant discoveries in geophysics, the physical mechanism(s) responsible for SSEs remain enigmatic, and the effects of deep slip on seismic hazards are unclear. This project explores processes that affect the strength of the fault through time, one of the factors thought to control SSEs. Areas in the Earth where SSEs occur are typically hot and under high pressure. These conditions facilitate chemical reactions, suggesting that rapidly growing minerals could act like a quick-setting glue, binding faults together through cementation, and promoting rapid fault strengthening between SSEs. To explore this possibility, the team will conduct experiments where small rock and mineral samples are subjected to the temperature and pressure conditions of SSEs. The team will then measure the material properties, such as their strength and permeability to fluids, of the experimental products as they vary with experiment duration. Using the experimental results, the team will develop a mathematical description of rapid fault healing for incorporation into numerical models exploring the influence of cementation on SSEs. Results of these simulations will be compared to real-world observations to determine whether this process plays a fundamental role in the generation of SSEs. This project will catalyze interdisciplinary research in subduction zone geoscience through the training and mentorship of undergraduate and graduate students, plus postdoctoral researchers in the fields of seismology, rock mechanics, and geochemistry. The team leaders will enable interaction between the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT) and Subduction Zones in 4 Dimensions (SZ4D) to facilitate coordination between these two efforts to achieve common goals relevant to geohazards. This proposal explores the role of cohesion, which is normal stress independent fault strength, via cementation and pore fluid pressure evolution in the dynamics of SSEs. Cementation is commonly observed in exhumed faults zones and is thought to play a key role in fault healing during the interseismic period. The high temperatures (~500°C) and pressures (1 GPa) present in SSE environs should favor relatively rapid cementation. There is also abundant evidence for fluids in the SSE source region that appear to play a crucial role in the generation of SSEs. The team proposes that pore-fluid pressure evolution and cementation can explain several enigmatic features of slow slip events, including radiative phenomena like tremor and low-frequency earthquakes, the tendency for the same section of the megathrust to re-rupture on short timescales during an SSE in so-called secondary slip fronts, the lack of sensitivity to tidally induced normal stresses, and the existence of fault strength in environments inferred to have nearly lithostatic pore fluid pressure. This work leverages interdisciplinary expertise from the fields of petrology, geochemistry, rock mechanics, observational seismology, fault mechanics, and numerical methods to explore the role of cementation and resulting cohesion in SSEs. This team will constrain the mechanisms of cementation, mineralogy and petrology of the cement, and the resulting time-dependent strengthening by performing a suite of piston-cylinder experiments at pressure, temperature, fluid compositions, and other conditions relevant for Cascadia SSEs. The project will determine the resulting cohesion and permeability using deformation experiments and contact area using microscopy. The results will provide quantitative constraints on time-dependent fault strengthening and permeability evolution. Constraints from these laboratory experiments will be used to develop a mathematical framework for cohesion and fluid flow. This framework will be implemented in numerical simulations to determine the impact of rapid cementation and cohesion on SSEs. The models will be validated with observables including propagation speeds, spatial scales, and time scales representative of SSEs and secondary fronts. This project will catalyze interdisciplinary research in subduction zone geoscience through the training and mentorship of undergraduate and graduate students, plus postdoctoral researchers in the fields of seismology, rock mechanics, and geochemistry. The team leaders will enable interaction between the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT) and Subduction Zones in 4 Dimensions (SZ4D) to facilitate coordination between these two efforts to achieve common goals relevant to geohazards. This project is funded by the Frontier Research in Earth Science (FRES) program as well as Education and Human Resources (ERF) in support of Research Experiences for Undergraduates and Postdoctoral Scholars. 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 supports the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) program, an introductory high school course and teacher preparation program designed to support computer science for all students. The ECS program offers evidence-based curricular and professional development and employs high-quality and innovative instructional strategies for all computing students and teachers. The REAL-CS partnership model has established a wide, national reach that impacts thousands of computing students and their teachers each year. REAL-CS aims to work with school districts across the United States to create systemic change within high school computer science by iteratively designing, implementing, and studying generative efforts in computing in collaboration with teachers. Building on 15 years of development, research, and implementation in schools across the nation, this project focuses on the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) introductory course and associated curricular (co)-development and professional development. REAL-CS aims to make progress towards CS for All goals using four key strategies: 1. Leveraging national organizational partners to serve as hub in supporting ECS classes and teacher learning communities in school communities nationwide; 2. Developing innovative and inquiry-based high school ECS curriculum and supplementary curricular materials that incorporate a co-design process with a group of experienced ECS teachers; 3. Increasing CS educator knowledge, capacity, and preparation to integrate culturally responsive and sustaining CS teaching practices across different levels of teaching experiences; and 4. Conducting synergistic qualitative research across the US that investigates teacher support to practicecomputing teaching and to build a professional community around it. This project will continue to provide learning experiences to thousands of students each year, expand ECS course availability in schools across the nation, and prepare dozens of new ECS teachers, and support hundreds of experienced ECS teachers. The research that emerges from this project will advance the field in understanding effective practices for teaching high school CS. 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 award supports research in relativity and relativistic astrophysics, and it addresses the priority areas of NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea. The era of gravitational wave astronomy began with NSF's LIGO announcement of the detection of a black hole merger in 2016. This first detection led to a Nobel prize and spectacularly confirmed predictions of general relativity, but it also opened a new window into the universe. We have since seen an amazing show through this new window: a cosmos continuously punctuated by collisions that, in energy, briefly outshine all of the stars in the universe. These dozens of black hole merger detections have allowed scientists to make ever-improving independent estimates of the age and expansion of the universe, and an ever-improving understanding of the population of black holes and the death of stars. The detection of a neutron star merger in 2017 triggered radio and other telescopes to observe the aftermath, which, among other things, increased our understanding of the source of heavy elements like gold. In the future, continued observations, and increasing sensitivity will predictably promote the progress of science and our understanding of the universe, and, perhaps, reveal un- predicted phenomena. The awardees will help make these discoveries by helping to increase the sensitivity of the LIGO detectors by studying and mitigating environmental influences (vibration, magnetic fields, radio waves, etc.) on the LIGO detectors. The team will train students in STEM areas. In order to further increase sensitivity, LIGO must overcome known noise sources but also unknown and unexpected noise sources, many of which are driven by the environment. The proposed research will further the identification and mitigation of environmentally driven mystery noise sources that keep the detectors from reaching their design sensitivity. The result will be that the detector becomes more sensitive and can see further into space, enabling new discoveries. The awardees will increase sensitivity for 200-300 solar mass black hole in-spirals, by developing characterization and mitigation techniques for scattered light noise, increase sensitivity to gravitational wave bursts and to stochastic backgrounds by developing methods to reduce the noise produced by lightning strokes thousands of kilometers away, increase sensitivity to continuous wave and transient sources by characterizing and mitigating electronics grounding fluctuation noise, and vet O4 gravitational wave candidates for environmental influences. 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 · 2024-09

Hazards such as wildfires and landslides threaten environmental and societal resilience and increase systemic inequities. Although experts provide increasingly accurate and speedy communication to guide public actions in response to hazard events, public actions frequently do not align with the best available science and guidance. Expert intuitions about how to communicate also do not always match evidence-based practices and, indeed, can harm comprehension and use of information. Thus, the need exists to understand how people judge threats and make decisions about them so that more effective science communication methods are developed. This planning project investigates what is currently known and not known in these areas and identifies research gaps and opportunities that advance community needs. Developing long-term capacity to deliver effective risk messages will empower people to act safely in response to threats, build a more resilient society, and enhance quality of life. Ultimately, it will improve societal wellbeing by increasing the public’s autonomy, avoiding harms of not preparing for crises or reacting inappropriately to them as they occur, improving quality of life, and saving money and lives. This planning project develops plans for a transdisciplinary, convergent, and collaborative approach to advance knowledge on science communication related to environmental hazards. The project collaborates with historically marginalized and vulnerable communities to identify key opportunities and challenges drawing from research in decision science, risk analysis, psychology, and science communication. The project uses a mixed methods and solutions-oriented approach that considers people’s mental models of hazards—their psychological representations of how hazards work and have impact—to develop evidence-based messages and educate communities about hazards while motivating protective behaviors. It integrates theory on mental models with that on emotion and statistics, thus contributing to mental-model, risk-communication, and other theories. Planning and convening activities enable an integrative assessment from a social behavioral framework and co-produce a compelling and responsive strategic plan that captures the current landscape of research, identifies research gaps and opportunities—especially with respect to decision, risk, and psychological sciences related to hazards—aligns with and advances community needs, and leverages and develops natural and social sciences. The emergent theory-based taxonomy of effective risk communication is expected to improve hazard decision making. 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 · 2024-09

A major goal of Earth science research is to understand interactions among tectonic and surface processes that control topographic evolution in regions of active mountain building, particularly in zones of terrane-continent collision at convergent plate boundaries. Early Eocene sedimentary rocks in SW Oregon offer an ideal opportunity to test models for the surface response to collision of the oceanic Siletz terrane with western North America, and regional post-collision adjustments, that affected the PNW region between ~ 55 and 40 million years ago. The events associated with collision of Siletzia are central to understanding the origins of the Coast Ranges in western Oregon and Washington, as well as the regional crustal structure that governs processes active in the modern Cascadia subduction zone. This research applies a novel combination of field and analytical techniques such as isotopic dating of sand grains that are well suited for testing hypotheses in this setting, and the results will be useful for understanding this and other terrane-continent collisional margins around the world. The study provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to conduct place-based research by investigating the deep-time geologic history of Oregon. Student researchers will be recruited from Lane Community College and University of Oregon (UO) to work under the mentorship of PIs and graduate students. This project benefits local communities through cooperation and data sharing among the UO, Oregon State University, and the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI). The study also contributes to the broader impacts of an ongoing NSF-RUI funded study of bedrock evolution in the Klamath Mountains through cross-project fieldwork, conference presentations, and student-focused workshops. Eocene sedimentary rocks in southwest Oregon preserve an unparalleled archive of the surface response to collisional mountain building and post-collision tectonic reorganization. The syn-collision Umpqua Group (~ 54–49 Ma) rests on basalts of the Siletz terrane and filled a syn-orogenic basin on the north margin of the Klamath Mountains orogen. The post-collision Tyee Group (~ 47–45 Ma) is a thick succession of fluvial, deltaic, and marine turbidite deposits that record rapid progradation of an integrated fluvial-delta-shelf-slope-basin clinoform system during initiation of the modern Cascadia subduction zone. Hypothesis 1 postulates that the Tyee paleoriver originated in western Idaho, traversed a large low-gradient continent-interior drainage, and flowed through the former collisional orogen to a prograding fluvial-deltaic to offshore marine turbidite system. In Hypothesis 2, the Tyee paleoriver was sourced in the Klamath Mountains, and changes in sand composition record bedrock exhumation, recycling of older sediments, and/or catchment growth. Because paleocurrent data show unequivocally that the Tyee paleoriver flowed directly out of – not around – the Klamath Mountains, evidence of a large continent-interior catchment for the Tyee paleoriver would imply major post-collision reorganization of the drainage system by headward erosion and stream capture and/or extensional collapse of the former collisional orogen. These hypotheses will be tested through integration of modern provenance tools, detrital thermochronology, and detailed field observations. Methods include U-Pb dating and Lu-Hf analyses of detrital zircon, 40Ar/39Ar dating of detrital micas, basin subsidence analysis, and detrital thermochronology, all tied to detailed geologic mapping and stratigraphic analysis. The results will generate new insights into the regional surface response to collision-related mountain building and post-collision reorganization associated with accretion of Siletzia to North America. 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 · 2024-09

Marine microorganisms are among the most abundant life forms on the planet, playing a key role in ocean nutrient cycling. Though predation on these microorganisms is critical to nutrient cycling, little is known about their interactions with predators – specifically the direct interaction between microorganism cell surfaces and predator capture surfaces. This project examines how cell surfaces may influence the predation of marine microorganisms. Cell surface modification is a recognized strategy for predator avoidance among terrestrial microorganisms, but its application in the ocean is largely unexplored. By examining microbial prey with varying surface characteristics and predators with a range of feeding strategies, this research is providing foundational knowledge for future ocean food web models. This project engages public audiences through exhibits and workshops at museums (e.g., Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) and coastal aquariums with a focus on predator-prey interactions in the ocean from small microbial prey to larger predators. A large-scale art installment emphasizes these food web interactions. These “Eco Murals” focus on ocean ecosystems and involve participation from community members, especially underrepresented minorities. This project is training the next generation of scientists by involving graduate and undergraduate students in research, professional development, and scientific communication. This research includes independent graduate student research as well as capstone projects in Bioinformatics and Genomics. Undergraduate students participate in this research following the previously successful NSF REU Exploration of Marine Biology on the Oregon Coast model. Finally, by leveraging initiatives aimed at promoting the persistence of historically underrepresented and underserved populations in STEM fields, this project recruits, supports, and retains female, first-generation, and underrepresented minority students. The differential selection and rejection of microbial prey alters our understanding of carbon fate and nutrient cycling in the ocean. This project directly tests the effects of microbial surface properties on particle selection by globally abundant suspension feeders. Cell surface properties are known to be a fundamental aspect of predation avoidance in terrestrial microbes, but the role of microbial surface properties in avoiding or enhancing predation is a research frontier in ocean science. This knowledge gap limits understanding of microbial mortality, microbial loop function, and prediction of ecosystem response to future climate scenarios. This research links specific particle properties with ecologically-relevant trophic interactions through experiments with widespread suspension feeders representing major feeding strategies by copepod nauplii, pteropods, appendicularians, and echinoderm larvae. First, this project quantifies the surface properties of major marine microbial groups to inform feeding incubations with artificial prey. Second, artificial microspheres with varying surface properties are used in controlled laboratory feeding incubations to determine selectivity and third, to quantify particle fate from released fecal pellets and pseudofeces. Finally, the major marine microbial taxa in the guts of wild-caught suspension feeders are quantified using qPCR. This research forms an integrative approach, yet the results of each objective have scientific impact which can be applied to diverse fields beyond the ocean. 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 · 2024-09

The Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB) is the University of Oregon’s marine research and teaching laboratory. OIMB is located in the mouth of the Coos Estuary, 2 km from the open ocean, and offers unparalleled access to diverse and largely undisturbed habitats, and an especially rich flora and fauna. Despite the proximity of OIMB to the outer coast, access to the nearshore open ocean has historically been severely limited by the lack of an appropriate nearshore operations vessel for accessing subtidal habitats close to emergent rocks, reefs, and kelp forests. This capacity award funds an 8 m coastal nearshore operations research vessel which will help OIMB overcome this outer coast access problem. Like OIMB, most coastal marine stations are situated in protected bays or inland waters; the field-based research that gets done at these places is commonly in areas where scientists have the least problems with access, such as salt marshes, intertidal regions, inland waters, bays, and estuaries. There has been relatively little research on the ecology of the nearshore zones (e.g., <100 m depth, ~5 km from shore) of a substantial portion of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem, simply due to a lack of infrastructural vessel capacity and the difficulty of access. The new research vessel will remedy the ongoing challenge to access the nearshore environments of the exposed coast and enhance OIMB's research, teaching and outreach capacity, making important habitats accessible to many more scientists and students. The vessel will be configured for diverse activities, including small remote operated vehicle deployment, SCUBA diving, benthic grabs, drop camera deployment, fishing, CTD casts, deployment of smaller moorings, wildlife surveys, and plankton sampling. The funding for this project will cover the construction of the 8 m vessel, twin outboards, standard rigging and electronics, and a trailer for storage and transportation. This award by the Infrastructure Capacity for Biological Research program within the Division of Biological Infrastructure is jointly supported by Division of Ocean Sciences. 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 · 2024-09

Research in the 1960s revealed that Earth’s outer shell is broken into a dozen or so relatively rigid plates that represent the top of a convecting system in Earth’s deep interior. Motions between and within these tectonic plates create mountain ranges, volcanoes, sedimentary basins, and other major geologic surface features. These features represent vertical relief that, under the force of gravity, is then subject to erosion, landsliding, and other forms of downslope movement of mass. Earth’s topography is thus controlled by the balance between tectonic processes that build relief, and erosional processes that remove and redistribute relief. Conversely, the evolution of topography affects the forces within tectonic plates, influencing subsequent faulting and volcanic activity, and leading to feedbacks over a range of spatial and temporal scales. On million-year timescales, sedimentary basins create natural resource deposits (such as oil and gas reservoirs), and chemical reactions associated with erosion can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, directly influencing Earth’s climate and habitability. On human timescales, the creation of vertical relief promotes landsliding and far-reaching sediment distribution, which is often associated with interacting geohazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. Building on prior, previously independent work modeling Earth’s interior and surface processes separately, this project develops new computational methods to simulate and advance our knowledge of the dynamic interplay between Earth’s surface and interior and makes these methods available to the scientific community. The computational methods derived through this project have direct societal relevance to studying geohazards and resource exploration. All software developed through this award follows established software engineering practices, is openly available to the public, and is fully documented. Community training activities are used to engage other scientists and promote the adoption of the new methods developed by this project. A major research challenge in the geosciences is understanding how the Earth’s surface and its interior interact to shape one another. Because much of the relevant interactions are inaccessible due to their space or time extents (or both), computer simulations serve as an essential tool for studying interactions in coupled geologic systems. Yet, numerical models have traditionally treated the Earth’s surface and its interior as independent domains. None of the widely used, open-source software packages for simulating mantle convection, long-term tectonics, or short-term tectonics have incorporated surface processes until very recently. Similarly, software for the simulation of surface processes has generally been driven by prescribing vertical uplift rates, even though it is clear that these uplift rates depend on, and thus must be coupled to, erosion rates. This project couples two widely used community codes: (i) ASPECT, a package originally intended for the simulation of mantle dynamics but more recently also used extensively for modeling of long-term processes in tectonic plates, with active development towards incorporating physics (such as compressible elasticity) necessary to capture shorter term processes; and (ii) Landlab, an environment that includes and facilitates the description of surface processes. Since their inception, these codes have transformed the level of complexity of simulations in their respective domains and have gained large user bases. Both codes are backed by large NSF-funded centers: the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG) in the case of ASPECT, and the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) in the case of Landlab. The software and workflows developed through this project enable scientific communities that are typically siloed, studying either Earth’s surface or its interior, to initiate new studies of coupled processes with direct societal relevance, including geohazards and resource exploration. Model use cases implemented by the project demonstrate the coupling on different spatial and temporal scales, which can be used by domain scientists to initiate independent research projects. Project training materials are incorporated into long-standing training programs associated with ASPECT (e.g., annual hackathons) and Landlab (e.g., CSDMS clinics), as well as online videos, interactive web visualizations, and at various community meetings and workshops. Finally, a major part of the development effort is parallelizing Landlab, which improves its performance over a wide range of applications, including modeling short time-scale processes such as volcanic eruption cycles, landslides and flooding. This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the National Discovery Cloud for Climate initiative within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering and by the Geosciences Directorate’s Research, Innovation, Synergies, and Education and Earth Sciences divisions. 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 · 2024-09

In January 2022, Hunga volcano in Tonga produced the largest underwater volcanic eruption recorded by modern instruments. This project will collect samples and new observations of volcanic sediment at this location to understand how underwater volcanic eruptions transport material. The research uses this recent eruption to learn about underwater volcanic landslides that can damage communication cables and other seafloor infrastructure. The project involves international collaboration with the Kingdom of Tonga and the training of graduate students. In 2022, Hunga Tonga volcano erupted explosively producing a widely studied stratospheric ash cloud and an estimated 10 cubic kilometers of much less well studied submarine volcaniclastic deposits. This project seeks to characterize the large-scale submarine volcaniclastic density currents produced by this eruption in order to better understand these understudied volcanic products globally. Systematic sampling and mapping in a field campaign using remotely operated submersible Jason, autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry, and ship-based gravity and coring will sample the eruption deposits at multiple spatial scales. These new data will enable computational modeling aimed at better understanding transport mechanisms, mobility, and rheology of submarine volcaniclastic flows. The project will include public outreach from the ship and through events hosted at the Smithsonian Institution. 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 · 2024-08

This is a project in representation theory which, roughly speaking, is the idea of understanding symmetry in the broadest sense by studying the different ways in which symmetries can be realized in terms of matrices. There are many applications, including to number theory, combinatorics, low-dimensional topology, theoretical physics and chemistry. Nearly forty years ago, quantum groups were discovered and shown to possess some remarkably rigid canonical bases. This had a dramatic impact on the study of the classical Lie groups which are the most fundamental symmetries in nature. In fact, quantum groups and their canonical bases are shadows of some even more remarkable higher structures, Kac-Moody 2-categories, which are often referred to as the categorifications of quantum groups. In classical mathematics, Lie groups go hand in hand with the symmetric spaces on which they act. Symmetric spaces admit quantizations, namely the i-quantum groups appearing in the title of the project, which were first introduced in 1998 and rapidly developed into a rich theory. This project will also provide research training activities for graduate students. The main goal of this project is to take the next step by categorifying all quasi-split i-quantum groups, building on the recent discovery by the PI and collaborators of a 2-category which categorifies the simplest rank one i-quantum group. This theory, which although algebraic in nature, has many connections to the geometry of the underlying Lie groups via the theory of singular Soergel bimodules. In addition, the PI will study more classical topics in representation theory by applying the deeper understanding of quantum and i-quantum groups that appear as hidden symmetries in more classical settings. 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 · 2024-08

Groups are mathematical objects arising in the study of symmetry. This project is concerned with some of the most important, fundamental and universal examples of groups: symmetric groups arising as symmetries of finite sets, and general linear groups arising as symmetries of vector spaces. Representation theory studies groups via their actions on other mathematical objects, such as vector spaces. Rather informally, representations of a group are snap-shots of the group taken from different angles. In the past several years, the idea of categorification has become important and has led to the development of higher representation theory. This involves studying actions of groups on higher mathematical structures such as categories, analyzing not only the relations between these structures (functors) but also relations between the relations (natural transformations). In particular, quiver Hecke superalgebras encode higher symmetries underlying representation theory of objects including symmetric groups, their double covers, and general linear groups. This project will develop further the theory of these and other superalgebras and apply it to improve our understanding of classical representation theory. The research in this project has potential future impact in theoretical physics and computer science. More directly this project will have an educational impact through the training of graduate students and the mentoring of young researchers in this active area. In more detail, this project is concerned with a variety of projects in representation theory of Lie algebras, finite groups, and related objects, for example Hecke algebras, quantum groups, Schur algebras and quiver Hecke superalgebras. The PI will draw on recent advances in higher representation theory, with various diagrammatically defined monoidal (super)categories playing a prominent role. On the other hand, most applications are to classical problems in representation theory such as block theory of finite groups and Schur algebras, decomposition numbers, and structure theory of finite groups. The PI will study the local description of blocks of double covers of symmetric groups up to derived equivalence, Turner-Schur (super)algebras and (super)categories and their properties, representations of quiver Hecke superalgebras and their imaginary cuspidal superalgebras, cyclotomic quiver Hecke superalgebras and their RoCK blocks, RoCK blocks of Schur superalgebras, decomposition numbers for RoCK blocks of double covers of symmetric and alternating groups and irreducible reductions modulo p for these double covers, irreducible restrictions from quasi-simple groups to subgroups and subgroup structure of finite groups. The results of the research will have applications to several areas of mathematics including finite group theory (and its applications), Lie theory, combinatorics, representation theory, knot theory and category theory. 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 · 2024-08

Large volcanic eruptions are rare but when they occur, they can devastate areas close to the volcano and have severe impacts on areas hundreds of miles away. But large eruptions do not occur without warning: they are typically preceded by earthquakes, gas emissions and smaller eruptions. Under these circumstances, it can be difficult to determine when, and how large, the main eruption will be. A good example of this behavior is the eruption that formed Crater Lake, Oregon, about 7700 years ago. Here explosive eruptions occurred over the decades before the big eruption, with several eruptions during the months leading up to the final event. The research team will study deposits from these eruptions to determine the changes in the system that produced the catastrophic event. This work will improve our ability to forecast volcanic activity. This project will not only train two PhD students but will also (1) engage students at a local community college in running a hazard assessment exercise simulating the buildup to the eruption, and (2) engage professionals in related fields to examine the long-term (decades to centuries) impact of the eruption on the vegetation, rivers and human occupants of the Pacific Northwest. This proposal to conduct a multidisciplinary re-examination of the precursory activity an archetype M7 eruption, Mount Mazama, Oregon will track, in P-T-X-t space, the products of explosive and effusive activity that both preceded (by ≤ ~200 years) and include the climactic Mazama eruption that formed Crater Lake, OR. The team's goal is to identify changes within the magma storage region that led to reservoir evacuation and caldera collapse, and, by doing so, to define key observables in eruptive products that could provide early warning of a major explosive eruption. Detailed studies of precursor eruptions are limited, because these smaller eruptions are over-shadowed by the climactic event and early deposits are often covered and/or destroyed by later activity. In this respect, deposits from precursor Mazama eruptions may be unique, both in their preservation and in the number and complexity of the precursor eruptive sequences that they record. The proposed approach is comprehensive in linking petrology to physical volcanology through detailed analysis of ash, pumice and lava samples. Ash samples, in particular, may be enriched in components that are not well-represented in larger clast sizes typically used for petrologic studies and that record conduit processes controlling eruptive transitions, including onset of a paroxysmal phase. The approach is innovative in using deposits from precursor eruptions to track changes in both the chemistry and physical properties of the larger magmatic system in space and time. The approach is unusual in combining textural analysis and diffusion chronometry to monitor P-T changes within eruptive sequences and link them to larger-scale processes operating within an evolving magmatic system. This project will not only train two PhD students but will also (1) engage students at a local community college in running a hazard assessment exercise simulating the buildup to the eruption, and (2) engage professionals in related fields to examine the long-term (decades to centuries) impact of the eruption on the vegetation, rivers and human occupants of the Pacific Northwest. 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 · 2024-08

This award supports the Neotoma Paleoecology Database. Neotoma is one of the most widely used and trusted international data resources for fossil data, growing rapidly in the volume and variety of its data holdings, functionality of its software services, and the size and scope of its user community. This award will allow Neotoma to grow and enhance systems to support higher rates of data additions, more streamlined data curation, and better support solutions for new communities seeking to use Neotoma data. This project provides access to publicly funded data and supports researchers, educators, and the public by providing a high-quality, expert-curated open data resource for paleoecological and paleoenvironmental data. Specific activities for this project include better support for rapid upload of hundreds to thousands of datasets from participating research teams through enhancements to the Data Bulk Uploader System (DataBUS), with newly added ORCID user authentication and support for the popular Linked Paleodata (LiPD) format. Embargo Manager will support early data contributions and better data management practice, in alignment with NSF Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) Data and Sample Policy. The Hierarchical Vocabulary and Taxonomy Manager (HVTM) will improve data quality and interoperability by enabling efficient viewing and curation of controlled vocabularies. Neotoma will freely upload supported data types, with priority for NSF-EAR PI data, and will help on-board major geoscience paleodata communities. Neotoma PIs will develop and provide multiple training support activities for scientists, with focused workshops for early career researchers (ECRs) and scientists from underserved regions, multi-lingual support for workshops and online resources, publicly posted training videos, and model workflows for data handling. Neotoma developers will reduce barriers to access and support artificial intelligence and machine-learning applications by deepening Neotoma’s metadata provisioning to Science-on-Schema and DataCite. Lastly, Neotoma stewards will create custom-tailored training and leadership opportunities for ECRs by designing workshops, videos, and code vignettes to address ECR-identified challenges. 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 · 2024-07

Harnessing the power of data has been a driving force for computing, especially in recent years when breakthroughs in data science enable computers to perform tasks never seen before. However, as the data becomes more and more complex, there is also a growing need for more advanced techniques to uncover the hidden structures of data. Using tools in a branch of mathematics, namely topology, Topological Data Analysis (TDA) aims at revealing the 'shape' of data that are otherwise not easily captured by traditional methods. However, the computational complexity of some important data descriptors proposed in TDA is not very well-understood, which is a major obstacle to their wider applications. This project aims at devising efficient algorithms for computing these important data descriptors. Efficient software for the computation will be developed, which is a necessary step for promoting applications. Efforts of the project will help train undergraduate or graduate students by enabling them to cultivate mathematical and algorithmic thinking through the software development process. Two foci of this project are the following descriptors revolving around persistent homology (a cornerstone of TDA) and its extension zigzag persistence: (i) representatives for topological persistence; (ii) vines and vineyard from updating the standard and zigzag persistence. Novel data structures dedicated to the computation will be devised. From the study, a deeper connection between the mathematical objects and their algorithmic interpretation can be established, which can have further implications on the computational front of TDA. 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 · 2024-06

The 2024 SIGCOMM conference will take place from August 4, 2024 to August 8, 2024 in Sydney, Australia. This proposal seeks funding to support 12 US-based graduate students for attending this conference and associate workshops. Participation in conferences such as SIGCOMM forms a central part of the graduate school experience as it provides students with an opportunity to interact with senior researchers from academia and industry and exposes them to leading-edge research in the field. In particular, students will be exposed to new ideas in emerging areas of networking, thereby broadening their intellectual horizons. In particular, the mentorship program and topic preview sessions help ensure students are engaged and get the maximum benefit from attending the conference. This project integrates research and education of students through exposure to a premier technical meeting in computer networks and communications. Students will have the opportunity to observe high-quality presentations and interact with senior researchers in the field both in the main conference and the associated workshops. The proposed student participation will have a positive impact on the quality of their research. The travel grant co-chairs are committed to encouraging the participation of women and under-represented. The SIGCOMM conference has developed into a top-tier international conference, presenting a tremendous opportunity for students to expand their breadth of ideas, research skills, and technical perspective. 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 · 2024-05

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving institutional capacity to support students of color in the pursuit of careers as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teachers in K-12 settings. There is a national shortage of K-12 teachers across the United States, and this shortage is particularly severe for those teaching in STEM disciplines. The lack of qualified STEM educators in the United States impacts socio-economic stability and threatens the Nation's capacity for global competitiveness. Importantly, research indicates that all students benefit from having teachers of color, and this benefit is even more pronounced for students of color. The lack of diversity of STEM K-12 educators is both a result and potential cause of significant inequitable outcomes for underrepresented students in undergraduate STEM programs and majors. This IUSE: EDU ICT level 2 research project will take a holistic approach to identifying factors that contribute to the attrition and retention of students of color in STEM teaching career pathways. The research will result in case studies that help sensitize university professionals who support this population of students and develop policies to that end. Previous research documents the institutional and structural barriers leading to the attrition of diverse students in education and STEM fields alike. The goal of this project is to better understand the qualities of the educational ecosystems pre-service STEM educators experience in their undergraduate programs of study, and how these ecosystems may contribute to the attrition of students from underrepresented groups. The study will employ a critical cartographic case study methodology, a process of careful observation of the institutional and discursive influences on student experience, identity, and subjectivity and careful listening to students who are living and learning in those pathways. The study expands the scope of presumed causes of student retention/attrition by examining multiple, contextual, and often overdetermined influences on student experience. To document the complex but consequential contextual influences on student experience, the study will employ multiple modalities of observation (student shadowing, participant observation in classes and other settings) and multiple interview formats (post-observation debriefs, peer interviews, and student focus groups). Case study reporting methods, which are especially well suited for documenting and communicating complex causal relations that are highly context dependent in nature, will be used to analyze this data and represent findings. Findings will be disseminated in STEM education academic journals, STEM education policy and practitioner publications, and through a series of pilot workshops using the produced case studies as core curricula. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation (ICT) track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. 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.