Boston College

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-07

Chaotic systems exhibit the "butterfly effect": the future path depends sensitively on their starting points, so that a butterfly flapping its wings can set off a tornado on the other side of the world. How can we quantify this sensitivity? This project will develop new notions of how chaotic systems expand and stretch in different directions. Broader impacts of the project are through mentoring of student research, with the project's particular emphasis on concrete, physical models of the resulting fractal geometry, with its surprising and intriguing patterns. In more detail, the project will develop the theory of "topological Lyapunov exponents", a spectrum of rates of expansion for expanding topological dynamical systems. Unlike the older entropy, these new rates control how fast nearby points diverge, measuring distance growth rather than volume growth. Unlike the original Lyapunov exponents, the new rates are defined for topological systems without reference to a smooth structure or notion of differentiation. Nevertheless the topological Lyapunov exponents are interesting and new for smooth systems as well, for instance recovering core entropy for polynomials in the Mandelbrot set. 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 · 2025-07

Project Summary/Abstract One of RNA’s chief biological functions is control of gene expression. However, unlike RNA’s roles in information transfer (e.g., mRNA, rRNA, tRNA), the mechanisms by which RNA functions to regulate gene expression are diverse across the tree of life and show evidence of recent and ongoing evolution. Despite the important role played by RNA in gene regulation, very little is known about how such mechanisms arise, the selective pressures that maintain them in genomes, or the biophysical constraints that underly their functional evolution. Bacterial cis-regulatory RNAs provide a platform to examine the parameters influencing the evolution of regulatory RNA. Such RNAs consist of complex structural domains that induce ligand-dependent RNA folding changes, which in turn alter downstream gene expression. Furthermore, bacterial RNA regulators employ diverse mechanisms of action, and display evidence of diverse evolutionary histories. In the study of protein evolution, computational, theoretical, and experimental studies have connected biophysical understanding with observations from comparative genomics and laboratory experimentation, yet these have only been applied in limited contexts to the study of RNA. The goal of my research program is to understand how concepts developed in the context of protein evolution such as robustness, plasticity, promiscuity and epistasis apply to the evolution of RNA regulators. We recently published a study quantifying the impact of a series of RNA cis-regulators on S. pneumoniae fitness in culture and in vivo. In the next five years we will leverage this series of regulators to map the relationships between RNA sequence, regulatory functionality (including expression level and dynamic range, as well as ligand sensitivity and specificity) and organism fitness both in vitro and within mouse infection models. In particular, we anticipate separating the sequence à function relationship into its component sequence à function and function à fitness mappings in order to understand both biophysical constraints of the RNA, as well as those that originate from the robustness of the organism’s homeostatic mechanisms. We also plan to go beyond characterization of the sequence à fitness mapping to probe natural mechanisms for the creation, and adaptation, of RNA regulators in S. pneumoniae. Our work will enable connection of biophysical models of RNA folding with functional regulatory parameters, as well as a provide an appreciation for the degree to which fitness is sensitive or robust to regulatory changes, and how organisms adapt to deleterious regulatory changes. By understanding both the sequence à function and functionà fitness mappings, we will not only start to understand the constraints on RNA regulator evolution by providing large datasets for training and testing biophysical models, but also inform development of therapeutics that target such RNAs, the creation of synthetic RNA regulatory systems for biotechnological applications.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-06

The Pombe2025 meeting, scheduled to be held at Boston College in Boston, MA, from August 3-8, 2025, will bring together researchers who focus on Schizosaccharomyces pombe and other fission yeasts. This international conference will cover a wide range of topics, including cell cycle regulation, genome stability, gene expression, metabolism, and cell polarity—key areas for understanding cellular processes and their connection to human diseases. The meeting will feature keynote talks by prominent scientists, interactive panel discussions, and poster presentations. Graduate students and early-career researchers will have the chance to showcase their work and engage with both peers and senior scientists. This meeting will contribute to our understanding of essential cellular and molecular processes that are conserved across different species. Research on fission yeast frequently has far-reaching implications for the field of biology. The meeting's interdisciplinary nature will encourage connections across various fields of study. The International Fission Yeast Meeting influences more than just Schizosaccharomyces pombe research. Major discoveries in areas such as cell division, DNA repair, and chromosome segregation have significant implications for our understanding of fundamental biology and human diseases, including cancer and genetic disorders. By bringing together experts from a range of fields—such as genetics, molecular biology, cancer research, and systems biology—the meeting promotes interdisciplinary collaboration. This exchange of knowledge often leads to innovative approaches that benefit not only fission yeast research but also broader biological and medical advancements. Furthermore, the meeting plays a critical role in the development and mentorship of young scientists. It offers students and postdoctoral researchers a platform to present their work, interact with established experts in the field, and gain insights that will shape their future contributions to molecular and cellular biology. The event will foster collaborations that lead to scientific breakthroughs and long-term progress within the broader scientific community by strengthening global research networks. Funding will be allocated to provide travel awards for domestic trainees, promoting broad participation in the event. This award is cofunded by the Cellular Dynamics and Function program and the Genetic Mechanisms program in the Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Division 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 · 2025-06

Cooperative behaviors are a cornerstone of human interaction. It is well known that external factors are important in driving cooperative behaviors: people cooperate to avoid punishment and to maintain positive reputations. However, these external factors do not provide a full account of the variables influencing cooperative behaviors. This project tests the hypothesis that cooperative decisions are also driven by internal motives and that childhood represents an important period during which these internal motives are acquired. Broader impacts of this project include new insights into fostering cooperative behaviors, research training for early-career scholars, and wide dissemination of research products with the research community and broader public. The central idea guiding this research is that the norms that govern cooperative behaviors become integrated into children’s developing sense of self. As part of this process, children become motivated to cooperate because they come to view cooperative behaviors as valuable in and of themselves, and increasingly central to their identities. In a series of studies with 5- to 10-year children as well as adult participants, the research team uses longitudinal behavioral methods, computational modeling, and trajectory tracking of participants’ motor movements to examine developmental changes in cooperative norms and behaviors. Results of this project hold potential for both theoretical advancements and practical insights into cooperative behaviors. 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 · 2025-05

ABSTRACT The suppression of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV-1) from infected individuals is the ultimate goal of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Major advances have been made towards this end with the advent of ART regimens. However, despite the sustained suppression of viremia below detectable limits in infected patients for many years on ART regimens, intact replication-competent virus can still be recovered from a variety of hidden subterfuges within the host, and most notably from long-lived quiescent memory CD4+ T lymphocytes. This viral reservoir represents the final impediment to the eradication and clearance of HIV infection or to a sustained virologic remission in the absence of ART. Currently, our understanding of HIV reservoirs in patients living with HIV (PLWH) is incomplete. Knowledge of early reservoir formation and dynamics in the setting of early ART initiation is limited, particularly in anatomic tissues. My laboratory has shown that persistent viral reservoirs are established very early- within the first few days after SIV infection (Whitney et al., Nature 2014). While early ART can limit the seeding and expansion of cellular reservoirs of HIV, conventional understanding is that latent HIV-1 persists primarily in memory CD4+ T cells. However, studies from my laboratory (Whitney et al., Nat Commun., 2018) suggest that the contribution of long-lived naïve T cell populations to the intact were among the first to viral reservoir is greatly underestimated, particularly in early seeding and reservoir formation. Similarly, recent work from other groups have shown that naïve CD4+ T cells contribute to the maintenance of viral reservoir by harboring inducible proviruses. Thus, infected naïve CD4+ T cells harboring intact virus serve as an important “proto”-reservoir with an extended half-life, high proliferative capacity and intrinsic resistance to CTL killing. These observations underscore the potential of this cell population to renew and maintain the intact reservoir. Combined, these studies suggest that naïve CD4+ T cells harbor an important and functionally distinct reservoir that is needful of further investigation for its role in reservoir establishment, persistence and rebound after cessation of ART.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-05

The notion of an L-function lies at the core of modern number theory and arithmetic geometry. With origins in the 19th century study of prime numbers by Riemann and Dirichlet, this rich family of functions often serve as a bridge connecting several areas of mathematics including Diophantine equations, geometry, representation theory, and analysis. Examples arise both in the study of solutions to polynomial equations and in the theory of highly symmetric functions known as automorphic forms. The paradigm of the Langlands program indicates that the rich symmetry properties of automorphic forms may be used to prove properties of arithmetic L-functions, which have a wide array of applications. In the modern relative Langlands program, we now have a conjectural framework to make this relationship precise in terms of a duality between L-functions and certain invariants of automorphic forms known as "periods". In this context, the relative trace formula (RTF) provides a powerful tool from harmonic analysis to decompose an automorphic period into its "irreducible components or modes" which are often directly related to special values of L-functions. While such a formula is often the only tool available to establish the relationship alluded to above, the theory of the relative trace formula is still incomplete. In this project, the PI will explore several problems in the relative Langlands program using recently developed tools. In addition to providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate student projects in this rapidly developing field, this project also supports several educational goals including the organization of seminars and the founding of a graduate student workshop designed to foster interaction among the area's graduate students in automorphic forms and offer opportunities to develop skill in giving professional presentations. This project will complete the PI's theory of endoscopy in the relative setting and establish the stabilization of a large family of RTFs by developing a theory of twisted relative endoscopy, transfer factors, and variants of Ngo's geometric stabilization in the context of symmetric varieties. Each step will be informed by the connection between relative endoscopy and the duality conjectures of Ben-Zvi, Sakellaridis, and Venkatesh, with a secondary goal of better understanding these conjectures in the arithmetic setting via the geometric aspects of the relative trace formula. The PI will apply these tools to applications in arithmetic geometry and the relative Langlands conjectures. This includes the case of generalized unitary Friedberg-Jacquet periods, with applications to the arithmetic geometry of certain Shimura varieties. A novel component of this project is to combine these two branches and develop a novel "arithmetic" theory of endoscopy, and to prove new endoscopic arithmetic fundamental lemmas. 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

With support from the Chemical Structure and Dynamics (CSD) program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Matthias Waegele of Boston College is investigating how the distribution of organic and inorganic cations in the electrochemical double layer (EDL) is influenced by the bulk composition of the electrolyte and how this distribution affects electrocatalytic reactions, including carbon dioxide reduction and hydrogen evolution. Efficient and selective electrocatalytic processes for converting electrical energy to chemical energy are essential for a sustainable economy. However, many processes still lack the necessary energy efficiency and product selectivity for practical use. Recent studies indicate that catalytic activity can be enhanced by choosing the appropriate electrolyte cation. To advance this strategy, detailed knowledge of the impact of the supporting electrolyte’s cation on the EDL structure is required but is largely missing. Professor Waegele and his students will use vibrational spectroscopy to examine the distributions of cations and the resulting EDL electric fields as a function of electrode potential. Their studies could provide insights into the key factors influencing the EDL structure and resulting catalytic activity for carbon dioxide reduction, hydrogen evolution, and other technologically relevant reactions. Additionally, Professor Waegele’s team will offer educational opportunities for high school students. The project team will employ surface-enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy (SEIRAS) to probe the potential-dependent structure of the EDL. To this end, Professor Waegele’s group will use multiple vibrational reporters. Briefly, the team will measure how the accumulation of organic cations in the EDL is controlled by their properties, anion identity, and electrode material and characterize the emergent electric field with vibrational Stark spectroscopy. The team will further develop and apply vibrational reporters as quantitative measures of the accumulation of inorganic cations. Lastly, the team will investigate the EDL environment that is experienced by key reaction intermediates in carbon dioxide reduction. The work could provide fundamental insights into the structure of the EDL by unraveling the relationships between cation distribution in the EDL and interfacial electrostatics during electrocatalysis. Results will likely advance the understanding of the EDL under reaction conditions, where application of classical EDL theories is often inadequate. Further, the project could establish how the structure of the micro-environment influences catalysis. This information is essential for designing electrocatalytic interfaces that selectively and efficiently catalyze many technologically relevant reactions. The project will provide training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students and engage non-academic communities, particularly high school students. 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 · 2025-02

Project Summary Background/Objective: Transgender adolescents experience significant mental health inequities identified as a critical health concern by the NIH, IOM, and CDC. These inequities are largely attributable to transgender adolescents’ exposure to discrimination in multiple places, including at school. Gender-affirming school practices, which supportively address the needs and experiences of transgender students (e.g., teachers using students’ affirmed name/pronouns), have been shown to mitigate mental health problems (e.g., depression, anxiety) for transgender adolescents. Despite calls from the US Department of Education to increase gender-affirming practice implementation in schools, few if any evidence-based resources exist to support practice adoption. To address this need, this study will refine and evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of a primary prevention intervention called “Gender-Affirming School Practices (GASP),” designed to promote healthy emotional and behavioral development in transgender adolescents. Aim 1: Refine the GASP online training to enhance its usability and acceptability using human-centered design methods, specifically usability testing, with target users (i.e., school staff). Aim 2: Develop a scalable implementation blueprint for GASP, defined as a comprehensive plan including implementation strategies (i.e., beyond the online training) and other key elements (e.g., goals, timeframe) needed for GASP adoption. Aim 3: Pilot the GASP intervention and GASP implementation blueprint in a randomized hybrid effectiveness-implementation type 2 trial in 6 large public high schools. School staff changes in knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy using GASP (hypothesized implementation mechanisms) and increased GASP adoption (implementation outcome) will be examined. Effectiveness of GASP will be assessed by examining whether GASP adoption by school staff (implementation outcome) is associated with improvements in transgender adolescents’ internalized transphobia, negative expectations for future events & non-affirmation experiences (effectiveness mechanisms) and mental health (effectiveness outcomes; e.g., depression, anxiety). School- and county-level factors (e.g., structural transphobia) will be explored as potential moderators of GASP implementation and effectiveness. Results will inform a fully-powered hybrid type 2 trial. Public Health Impact: GASP represents a feasible and scalable prevention program for improving the mental health of transgender adolescents. Identified implementation strategies and associated mechanisms may be generalizable to school-based interventions for other populations facing mental health inequities.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

This three-year RET Site: Researching Cellular Agriculture: Bridging Engineering and Plant Science to Cultivate Future Engineering Teachers is hosted by Boston College. The project draws upon emerging trends in cellular agriculture and STEM education and prepares high school teachers to teach engineering. Engineering teachers at the high school level may often have no or limited backgrounds in engineering and are understandably hesitant to teach concepts in which they lack fluency. The field of cellular agriculture can offer opportunities for teachers and their students to engage in cutting-edge research while working on sustainability-related projects. STEM educators will work with researchers and educators at Boston College to conduct research in cellular agriculture while developing enhanced pedagogical skills related to making, building, and engineering design that are also applicable to the contexts in which they teach. These kinds of activities and ways of teaching have proven to be helpful in learning engineering and STEM more broadly at the K-12 level. This project focuses on working with public school systems that serve students of all backgrounds in STEM. High school teachers will conduct research in cellular agriculture, which offers a unique opportunity to explore cutting-edge bioengineering technology. Participants will work directly with researchers in the Human-Centered Engineering program at Boston College. The teachers will be immersed in pioneering research in a transdisciplinary learning environment where they will apply concepts from engineering, science, and learning science to co-design and test engineering lessons for their students. The researchers will also have opportunities to conduct collaborative research and curriculum development with the teachers. This kind of collaborative effort will help researchers better understand teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward cellular agriculture, concepts of sustainability, and STEM careers, which will, in turn, support their future work in cellular agriculture. The stakeholders, partnerships, and evaluation activities will help the project and participants develop new knowledge about K-12-university-industry partnerships, especially for newly emerging STEM research fields. 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 · 2025-01

This proposal seeks to enhance our understanding of new-onset diabetes in individuals following infection. This study will investigate 1) the prevalence of new-onset diabetes post-infection 2) how individual and external factors influence the development of new-onset diabetes. Study findings will identify populations at risk, assess potential shifts in disease burden, and inform prevention and early intervention strategies. A systematic review and meta-analysis will be conducted to determine the true prevalence of new-onset diabetes in individuals post-infection. In addition, the study will utilize the All of Us database, a real-world data platform that encompasses one of the largest, multifaceted collections of biomedical data. The proposed study will use prospective survey data from the All of Us database to investigate individual and external factors related to new-onset diabetes. To inform risk of new-onset diabetes related to individual factors, genome wide association studies will be conducted by using data collected from the All of Us database. The training plan for this fellowship will provide opportunities to develop and apply knowledge on how individual and external factors influence health outcomes and disease prevalence, as well as advanced data analysis techniques. In addition, the fellow will partake in professional development activities aimed at nurturing a well-rounded nurse scientist. Such training opportunities include structured and experiential learning activities to develop substantive and methodological knowledge. Interdisciplinary team-based research experiences and mentorship will complement formal and experiential learning opportunities. A strong mentoring team has been assembled with experts in endocrinology and diabetes, health informatics and data science, and statistical methodology. The proposed study and study sponsors are supported by the institutional environment of Boston College Connell School of Nursing which has significant resources to support the proposed project. The mentoring team and institutional environment are well-suited for the successful completion of the proposed project and training plan for this fellowship. This study addresses the NIH priorities through leveraging real-world data to address chronic disease development (i.e., diabetes) with a replicable, methodologically rigorous approach, using clearly measurable health outcomes (i.e., new-onset diabetes). This strongly aligns with NIH priorities on real-world data platforms, reproducible science, training the future biomedical workforce, chronic disease research, and solution-oriented approaches to improving population health. Findings will identify populations at risk and guide the development of targeted interventions, enable earlier detection and prevention, while optimizing public health strategies to address the broader burden of the chronic disease crisis.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

One of the interesting features of the Earth’s ionospheric F-region is the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA), which is characterized by low electron densities over the geomagnetic equator, while enhancements on either side of the equator. The presence and variability of the EIA significantly influences radio communication and navigation/positioning at low and middle latitudes, which are crucial to public safety and national security. Importantly, the EIA peaks often exhibit pronounced interhemispheric asymmetry (IHA), which can vary significantly over solar cycles or on a day-to-day basis. However, understanding the characteristics, formation mechanisms, and potential space weather effects of the variations in the IHA of the EIA across different timescales remains a poorly understood area. Addressing this knowledge gap is the primary goal of this project, aiming to enhance the predictions of the EIA variation and mitigations of the impacts on global communication and navigation systems. The project provides vital support and training for an early career researcher. Additionally, the research project will also serve as a cornerstone for the thesis work of a physics graduate student. This project aims to (a) to explore the variability of the IHA of the EIA in the American Sector across different solar cycles and elucidate its physical mechanisms, and (b) unravel the mechanisms driving the significant IHA of the post-sunset EIA in the American Sector and its correlation with scintillation activity during SSW events The methodology involves analyzing total electron content (TEC) data obtained from ground-based GNSS receivers distributed across the American Sector to examine the IHA's variability over multiple solar cycles. Additionally, the team will investigate the influence of lower atmospheric forcing on the IHA variations using NCAR TIEGCM simulations. The latter will be employed to investigate the formation of the significant IHA in the post- sunset EIA, while the GNSS measurements will be utilized to study the relationship between post-sunset IHA and scintillation occurrences. This project will significantly advance our understanding of the variability of the IHA of the EIA in the American Sector across different solar cycles. Moreover, it will shed light on the impact of the lower atmospheric forcings on the IHA of the EIA and its variability over solar cycles. Additionally, the study will provide valuable insights into the formation of the significant IHA of the post-sunset EIA and its linkage to the L-band scintillations during SSW events. 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 · 2024-11

The objective of this project is to characterize quiet-time equatorial plasma bubbles that induce scintillation on radio signals. Radio signal scintillation poses a significant space weather threat, impacting various agencies reliant on GNSS and VHF/HF radio signal applications. These include government entities such as the DoD (e.g., for RF surveillance and first responders), the FAA’s wide-area augmentations system (WAAS) that is currently in use by commercial air travel, the DoA (e.g., for precision farming), the DoT (e.g., for land surveying, mining, and highway maintenance), and many others. The successful completion of the project will contribute improving ionospheric specification and forecasting, thereby bolstering the reliability of communication and navigation systems operating across a wide spectrum of frequencies, from HF to L-band. This is critically important for numerous societal applications that necessitate continuous access to ultra-precise location data. Furthermore, the project aims to support students in STEM fields, and facilitate training of early career scientists and summer students. This aligns well with one of NSF’s missions: “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; or to secure the national defense”. The occurrence of equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) that causes scintillation in the low-latitude region is not solely dictated by storm-time conditions or the presence of a significant pre-reversal enhancement (PRE) vertical drift. Recent observations indicate that the forcing from below, such as gravity waves (GWs), propagates upward, seeding the bottom side ionosphere and triggering sequences of EPBs during magnetically quiet periods, affecting radio signal operations at low latitudes. The scope of the project is to characterize magnetically quiet time EPBs, investigate their driving mechanisms, and address three fundamental questions: (SQ1) What drives the quiet time EPBs? Is it due to the bottom side seeding initiated by the forcing from a lower atmosphere or to RTI triggered by strong vertical drift? (SQ2) Which driving mechanism primarily governs the pronounced longitudinal, day-to-day, and seasonal dependences of the quiet time EPBs? (SQ3) What specific parameters control the dynamics and lifetime of EPBs, as well as the scale and intensity of scintillations during their presence? The project will encompass various case studies at different locations and local times, as well as statistical analyses based on measurements carried out since 2008. The project will leverage data from a multitude of instruments, including GNSS receivers, instruments onboard various LEO satellites, VIPIR ionosonde networks, and GOLD UV images, TIMED datasets. Utilization of SAMI3 model is planned with inputs informed through observations is envisioned to comprehend and advance the scientific knowledge about EPB evolution process. 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

Computational thinking (CT) is a set of processes to identify and solve problems using algorithms or steps, and can be applied not only in computer science but in other disciplines. This project will develop and study a curriculum and app that support CT in a high school biology unit. Through a month-long neural engineering unit, approximately 500 students in 18 classes will measure their own muscle and brain activity with a low-cost, portable, wearable technology. Students will then analyze the data and design a brain-computer interface to turn neural signals into real-world output (e.g., a mechanical claw controlled by brain activity). The curriculum will be supported by: (1) a web-based instructional application that will guide students through the neural engineering design process; (2) neuroscience and engineering Ph.D. students and postdocs acting as STEM mentors; and (3) a professional development program for teachers and mentors. The goal is to increase the students’ knowledge and interest regarding neurobiology, engineering, and computational thinking. This can contribute to their long-term capacity to pursue STEM careers. By integrating CT education into high school science, this expands the accessibility of the engineering and computing experiences beyond other efforts that focus primarily on programming and computer science courses. The project will engage students in rich data practices by gathering, manipulating, analyzing, simulating, and visualizing data of bioelectrical signals from neural sensors, and in so doing give the students opportunities to apply computational thinking principles. The project will produce curriculum materials for the neural sensors and associated data practices. It will develop an app to help students design and construct a brain-computer interface, including computational elements like coding blocks, sensor and data simulation, and connecting to external devices. The five proposed research questions of the study are: How does students’ CT change throughout their participation in the neural engineering design process? What is the cross-cultural validity of two CT scales in a sample of high school students in the US? How does the process of collecting and analyzing real-world data relate to students’ experience of he engineering design process? How do students’ attitudes toward STEM change over the course of their participation in a neural engineering design process? How does teachers’ self-efficacy for fostering CT in their students via engineering design change through their participation in professional development and in implementation of the proposed curriculum? The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. 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

Computer-based intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) provide students with a personalized learning experience that is tailored to their prior knowledge and learning progression. ITSs have been shown to support student learning and are implemented widely in classrooms, but not all students engage effectively with ITSs, leading to varying learning outcomes. Prior research primarily relied on data that is automatically collected by tutors (e.g., How many errors a student makes, how fast students answer a question posed by the tutor), but this data cannot provide sufficiently detailed information about learner engagement. For example, students might be slow in responding to a question either because they are distracted or because they are thinking deeply about the problem. In this proposed project, log-data will be complemented with an array of physiological measures, consisting of eye gaze, Electroencephalography (EEG), and heart rate, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of when and why students get disengaged with ITSs. Neurophysiological data is typically acquired in controlled laboratory environments, but this project will leverage recent technological developments in portable and wearable technologies to study student engagement with ITS in school environments. Additionally, the investigators will experimentally manipulate the level of tutor assistance (e.g., whether hints are provided automatically or on-demand) and measure its impact on student engagement. The proposed studies will be conducted concurrently in two countries - the U.S. and Israel – which will contribute to the ability to generalize results to a wider range of students. The results of this project will support the design of more engaging and effective tutors, which could improve the learning experience of tens of thousands of students each year. The optimal level of assistance provided to students by ITSs is a much-debated topic in learning and instruction since both too much and too little assistance can be detrimental to student engagement and learning (the “assistance dilemma”). Prior research primarily relied on log-data, which cannot capture the multi-dimensional nature of learner engagement. This project will investigate the mediating role of behavioral, cognitive, and affective components of learner engagement in the relation between tutor assistance and learning outcomes. This goal will be achieved using a multimodal approach to study student engagement with log-data, eye gaze, EEG, heart rate, galvanic skin response, and self-reported measures. Additionally, the investigators will experimentally manipulate two key features of tutor assistance - the level of information provided by hints (principle-based vs. problem-specific hints) and their mode of presentation (proactive vs. on-demand) - and measure their impact on learner engagement. This research will be conducted in high school-based laboratories in both the U.S. and Israel using a well-tested intelligent tutor for learning chemistry concepts, the StoichTutor. The project findings will contribute to the Interactive-Constructive- Active-Passive (ICAP) theoretical framework and to the design of more engaging and effective tutors. 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 · 2024-09

In 2022, 29.7% of married women of reproductive age had an unmet need for family planning in Uganda, meaning they wanted to avoid pregnancy but were not using a modern contraceptive method. Filling the unmet need for family planning has important public health implications, including reductions in pregnancy-related health risks and deaths, and infant mortality. On the supply-side, community platforms to deliver family planning, as well as provider capacity to provide effective methods, need to be strengthened, but such efforts will not be optimized without addressing multilevel demand-side barriers to contraceptive use. Fear of side-effects, relationship dynamics, peer and family influence, and broader community norms promoting large family size and traditional societal roles influence family planning. We propose to test the Family Health=Family Wealth (FH=FW) multi-level, community-based intervention, which employs health system strengthening efforts alongside community dialogues to alter individual knowledge and the perception of community norms that discourage family planning. Community dialogues are delivered to groups of couples over 5-sessions enhanced to simultaneously address individual and interpersonal-level determinants of family planning and serve as a platform for community-based family planning and linkage to facility-based family planning services. The study aims are to: (1) In a cluster randomized trial, compare the efficacy of the FH=FW intervention vs. a time/attention matched comparator intervention at increasing modern contraceptive use and reducing unintended pregnancy among couples with an unmet need for family planning through 24-months, and identify potential mediators of the intervention effect. (2) Determine the intervention’s effect on, and determinants of, contraceptive continuation. (3) Through a mixed-methods process evaluation, explore factors affecting the implementation of the intervention in order to improve feasibility, acceptability, and the likelihood of future adoption and sustainment.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Secure storage of firearms is a critical strategy to prevent suicide, unintentional injury, intimate partner homicide, and gun theft. Forty percent of American households own at least one firearm, and the majority store at least one firearm unlocked. Health systems can promote secure storage through counseling and education, and efforts are most successful when they include distribution of a no-cost secure locking device. Most secure storage programs distribute cable locks, which are inexpensive and convenient for distribution. However, the most common reason for firearm ownership in the U.S. is protection from other people, and firearm owners who value protection also prioritize speed and ease of access to their firearm during a potential emergency. Firearm owners with these priorities are less likely to store their firearms securely, and when offered a choice, prefer to use a lock box over a cable lock. To date, no randomized trials have tested the comparative effectiveness of distributing cable locks vs. providing the firearm owner’s preferred device. Furthermore, little research exists on the effectiveness of secure storage promotion among the range firearm owners, which is especially important as firearm ownership has risen among many demographic groups. This proposal aims to address these gaps in the literature through a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation trial with these specific aims: 1) Compare the effectiveness of distributing cable lock(s) (usual practice) vs. a choice of a lock box and/or cable locks (choice of preferred devices) on participants’ self-reported firearm storage practices; (2) Compare program uptake and storage outcomes across participant demographic, neighborhood socioeconomic, and behavioral and firearm ownership characteristics; and 3) Measure feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness and identify barriers and facilitators to implementing and scaling the interventions in the study arm among community health sites participating in the trial. The findings will provide insights into factors associated with successful program engagement and secure storage practices and will guide the design and tailoring of future interventions to optimize effectiveness and improve health for all. This study will provide health system and community health stakeholders and policy makers crucial evidence to inform the adoption of secure storage promotion strategies in a range of contexts with high potential for reducing firearm injury morbidity and mortality.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

Project Summary/Abstract The generation of chemical space and its translation into new functions is one of the main goals of synthetic chemistry. The BN/CC isosterism (i.e., replacement of a carbon-carbon bond with a boron-nitrogen bond) has emerged as a viable strategy to increase the chemical space of compounds relevant to biomedical research. We seek to develop enabling tools that are provided by the new expanded chemical space through BN/CC isosterism of arenes: a) In the field of synthetic organic chemistry, we aim to 1) explore novel reactivity and selectivity that are unattainable by using “conventional” non-boron-containing organic compounds, and 2) discover and exploit new mechanistic principles for synthesis/catalysis, both as a consequence of the unique electronic structure created by BN heterocycles. When addressed, synthetic chemists will enjoy · new ligands that support metal-catalyzed reactions with distinct reactivity/selectivity, and · a versatile 4C+1N+1B synthon for synthesis. b) In the field of chemical biology, we aim to utilize BN-indole and its corresponding amino acid BN- tryptophan to 1) create novel BN-alloproteins in both bacterial and mammalian cells, 2) develop a novel bioconjugation platform that is rapid, catalyst-free, chemoselective, and orthogonal to existing bioconjugation methods, 3) develop a novel isosteric intrinsic fluorophore for characterizing protein interactions. Completion of the proposed aims will yield new fundamental knowledge related to boron in the context of synthetic organic and biological chemistry. It will generate new synthetic methods and research tools for the investigation of biological processes and inspire the design and development of new boron-containing molecules for biomedical applications.

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

Symmetries play an important role in mathematics and in physics. This research project concerns functions that are invariant under a collection of symmetries, called automorphic forms, that are connected to number theory, representation theory, harmonic analysis and string theory. The Langlands and relative Langlands programs predict subtle relations between different spaces of automorphic forms, a structure that is closely related to many questions in number theory and analysis. In this project the PIs will work together to study the Langlands and relative Langlands programs and to extend them to new situations. The PIs will also systematically collaborate on the training of PhD students and in developing graduate-student-centered seminars for them. This project concerns functoriality and the study of periods in the Langlands and relative Langlands programs and for covering groups. The PIs, working jointly, will establish a new Shimura correspondence which is detected by a period involving a theta function. To do so, they will develop a suitable relative trace formula. Also, working jointly with Ginzburg, the PIs will study periods for the discrete, non-cuspidal spectrum, and study endoscopic lifts and periods. These projects will give new information about periods of automorphic forms and will add to the understanding of relative trace formulas. They naturally complement recent advances for reductive groups and the relative Langlands program and by including covering groups they will broaden our understanding of these topics. The PIs will also contribute to graduate training and to the nation’s development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce. 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 recent years there has been a growing understanding of microbes’ potentials to address societal challenges, from ecosystem sustainability to public health to industrial production. Microbial functions often happen in communities of multiple microbial types, and to assemble and maintain such communities, it is important to know how to add a microbe of interest to an existing community and how to protect a community from invaders. However, developing this know-how is hard because of the complexity of natural communities: there are often many microbial types and how they affect each other is often poorly understood. In this project, a simplified microbial community of microbes usually present in the human nose is used as a laboratory model to study what allows a microbe to establish into an existing community. For this, mathematical models of biological communities along with quantitative microbiology experiments will be used to clarify how microbial interactions determine whether newcomers into an existing community succeed or fail. Insights developed in this project teach us more about how microbial communities work and allow us to design and control such communities for a wide range of applications, including recycling waste products, preventing human diseases, and producing valuable compounds using microbes. Biological invasion—a new organism colonizing a resident community—can be a major driving force for community restructuring and can be desired (e.g. when introducing probiotic/biocontrol strains) or undesired (e.g. when encountering pathogens). An improved understanding of how underlying processes such as species interaction can determine the invasion outcomes will enable us to implement biocontrol strategies in ecosystem sustainability, industrial bioproduction, and human health. Despite many previous studies of invasion, the know-how of designing effective interventions to alter invasion outcomes is still missing. The goal of this project is to investigate how invasion outcomes are influenced by species interactions such as competition for resources or facilitation/inhibition via metabolic byproducts. Through a combination of mathematical modeling and experimental validation using laboratory communities of nasal bacteria, three fundamental questions will be investigated: (1) Can changing the overall nutrient availability influence invasion outcomes? (2) Is estimating ecological interactions from community dynamics sufficient to predict invasion outcomes? (3) Are there critical interactions that control invasion outcomes? In addition to these scientific discoveries, the project contributes to training interdisciplinary researchers, developing community resources such as public blogs and databases, and raising awareness in the general public about the power of harnessing microbial potentials. This project is supported by the Systems and Synthetic Biology Cluster of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences. 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

Determining processes that cause a fault to slip slowly (i.e., aseismically without earthquakes) or rapidly (i.e., seismically causing an earthquake) is a long-standing goal of the earth and ocean sciences. Oceanic transform faults offer a unique opportunity to study these underlying processes as transform faults accommodate plate motion through a combination of both aseismic and seismic slip. Several modeling studies and field-scale observations indicate that spatially variable material properties are correlated to differences in the slip behavior of oceanic transform faults. However, it is difficult to link these large-scale observations to experimentally derived rock material properties. This project will advance our understanding of the underlying controls on the slip behavior of oceanic transform faults by elucidating the links between material properties determined in the field and in laboratory settings. This project will also train an early career scientist and conduct outreach through a multi-institution virtual course on marine geology and geophysics. Oceanic transform faults accommodate 85% of their slip aseismically, with earthquakes accommodating the remaining slip on discrete, localized fault patches. This project will determine how fault zone material properties control this variable slip behavior by analyzing crustal and upper mantle lithologies dredged from two oceanic transform faults: the slow-slipping Chain transform fault and the fast-slipping Gofar transform fault. Data on the petrophysical properties of these samples will be determined using various methods, including petrography, electron backscatter diffraction, micro-CT analysis, high-temperature pressure experiments, and effective medium modeling. Together, the results will provide insight into the petrophysical and elastic properties of fault zone materials, several at in-situ conditions, and address the following goals: ● Elucidate the compositional controls, including the role of hydrothermal alteration, on slip behavior. ● Decipher the role of fluids on slip behavior and the plausibility of dilatancy strengthening as a mechanism to prevent seismic slip. ● Determine how strain is accommodated in different fault lithologies. ● Characterize the geophysical signatures of crustal and upper mantle lithologies to aid in the interpretation of field-scale seismic data. A major societal benefit of this project will be an improved understanding of fault zone materials and their role in the complex dynamics of strike-slip fault systems. 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 · 2024-09

Proposal Summary The long-term goal of this research training plan is to enhance our understanding of the neurobiology underlying behavioral responses to danger signals and provide translatable findings that will contribute to the development of novel therapeutics and treatments for anxiety-related disorders. This research proposal was crafted to build a foundation for becoming a fully independent scientist through developing technical expertise in systems neuroscience techniques, increasing my knowledge base, learning programming and data analysis skills, and refining my professional development skills. Boston College was selected as the environment for me to carry out this proposal and achieve my training goals due to its accessible and expert behavioral neuroscience faculty, wide range of available techniques and equipment, and access to the large neuroscience network within the greater Boston area. The research objective is to identify and describe a dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) to insula tract responsible for responding to danger signals and executing appropriate behavioral responses in males and females. Hyperactivity of the DRN and effects of 5-HT released in the forebrain are closely related to anxiety-related behaviors. Similarly, the insula integrates interoceptive and exteroceptive cues and contributes to motivated behaviors that are influenced by anxiety. Although both the DRN and insula have been implicated separately in anxiety-related behaviors, it is not yet known how 5-HT influences this system. The aims of this proposal are designed to describe how insular 5-HT modulates the appropriate behavioral responses to danger signals. Aim 1 will utilize a viral-genetic anterograde tracing method to describe and compare insular DRN projections and serotonergic receptors colocalizations between insular rostral-caudal subregions, insular subregions, and laminar layers. It is expected that DRN projections will target both inhibitory and excitatory neurons in all insula subregions and colocalize on 5-HT2C receptors expressing neurons in the insula. Aim 2 will next seek to visualize insular serotonergic activity in response to a social and directly experienced danger cue using GRAB5-HT, a sensor for 5-HT activity, and in vivo fiber photometry. It is expected that there will be greater insular 5-HT activity in response to a stressed conspecific and danger cue than a naive conspecific and safety cue, respectively. Finally, Aim 3 uses a chemogenetic approach to inhibit or stimulate insula-projecting DRN neurons to determine if the DRN-insula tract is necessary and sufficient for the appropriate behavioral response to a social and directly experienced danger cue. Inhibiting the DRN-insula tract should increase sociability while decreasing fear, while stimulating the DRN-insula tract should trigger 5-HT release, therefore decreasing sociability but increasing fear. Completion of these three complementary aims will result in the most thorough understanding of this circuitry’s composition and function in response to danger signals to date and inform development of more effective treatments for anxiety-related disorders.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-08

PROJECT SUMMARY Down syndrome is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability (Hawli et al., 2009), associated with significant developmental delays (Carr, 1988) and a disproportionate deficit in hippocampally- dependent memory (Godfrey & Lee, 2018; Pennington et al., 2003). Due to this memory impairment, individuals with Down syndrome may have a difficulty remembering specific details from past events, a pattern known as overgeneral autobiographical memory. This overgeneral memory makes it difficult for individuals with Down syndrome to share their past, can interfere with attempts to becoming more independent (Holland et al., 2016; Sheldon et al., 2011), and leads to increases in anxiety and depression (Waters 2014; King et al., 2019; Latorre et al., 2013). Although widespread advances in medical and behavioral research have dramatically increased the expected lifespan and quality of life for individuals with Down syndrome (Patterns & Costa, 2005), research examining ways to mitigate these substantial memory impairments has not capitalized on recent developments in the understanding of human memory. In the current research, the investigators test whether a new, user- friendly smartphone application—HippoCamera—can enhance specific autobiographical memory in individuals with Down syndrome. In HippoCamera, users are asked to record and replay events from their daily lives. This replay is curated by a research-based algorithm in HippoCamera that optimizes consolidation of memories over time and targets the specific memory details that are often lacking in individuals with hippocampal disfunction. The current project focuses on two potential benefits of HippoCamera in Down syndrome: 1) Increased memory specificity of daily events that are recorded and replayed by the participant using HippoCamera, and 2) Global enhancements in memory specificity for all autobiographical memories following a 12-week HippoCamera intervention. Prior research in older adults with and without cognitive decline has shown significant increases in memory specificity following a HippoCamera intervention (Martin et al., 2022). It is, therefore, likely that similar enhancements in autobiographical memory specificity will be identified in individuals with Down syndrome, highlighting the benefits of the application in this population. Exploratory analyses will further explore whether HippoCamera may also support increased positive sentiment for recorded memories (Martin et al., 2022) or more general increases in participant well-being and autonomy.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-08

A topological surface is a space which is allowed to change its shape by stretching but without tearing. Understanding the geometry of the collection of these possible shapes, called the moduli space of the surface, has applications in a number of subfields of math and physics. Expanding on previous work, the PI will investigate properties of a particular flow on the moduli space that minimizes the distortions in a controllable way. This work is at the intersection of math and physics and is expected to lead to new connections between the two fields. The project will also introduce a new tool called the ghost algebra which allows one to track and extract properties of variations of quantities such as lengths. This grant will support graduate students in their research and travel, as well as the PI’s mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. The PI will also co-organize conferences and workshops to support the career development of junior researchers. The findings from this research will be shared widely through conferences and seminars, fostering new connections between mathematics and physics. This project has two main areas of study 1) the ghost algebra for correlation functions of Anosov representations and 2) the Weil Petersson gradient flow for renormalized volume. In the first, the PI and collaborators will study the symplectic structure of Higher Teichmüller spaces via the Hamiltonian flows of correlation functions by introducing a new combinatorial object called the ghost bracket on the ghost algebra of ghost polygons that allows one to compute Poisson brackets of correlation functions. In renormalized volume, the PI and collaborators will continue their program to use the Weil-Petersson gradient flow of renormalized volume to study the structure of hyperbolic three-manifolds. This program has been very successful culminating in recently completely describing the flow for acylindrical manifolds and relatively acylindrical manifolds. This sets the stage to attack the general case which will occupy the majority of this part of the research program. 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 · 2024-08

Over the past decade, youth reports of poor mental health, sadness, hopelessness, and suicide ideation have significantly increased. Suicide ideation is a risk factor for suicide attempts and death by suicide. Key risk factors include depression symptoms, low sense of belonging, and feeling like a burden. Structural factors, such as limited access to care and mistrust of the mental health system, exacerbate these risks. Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents (IPT-A; 12-16 sessions) is an effective, evidence-based intervention that improves interpersonal functioning, reduces depressive symptoms, and decreases suicide ideation. Brief IPT-A (BIPT-A; 6-8 sessions), integrated into community settings and delivered by lay providers (task-shifting), offers a promising upstream approach to suicide prevention and closing the youth mental health access gap. However, research is needed to examine the feasibility and acceptability of BIPT-A when task-shifted to youth community centers, where youth are. This K23 proposal outlines a comprehensive career development plan to enable the candidate to become an independent clinical investigator with expertise in implementation science and a recognized leader in community capacity-building for youth suicide prevention. The training goals are to: 1) Develop expertise in systematically adapting interventions, 2) Gain expertise in task-shifting for suicide prevention, and 3) Acquire skills in conducting pragmatic, randomized trials to test implementation strategies and youth suicide ideation mechanisms of change. Leveraging partnerships with three youth community centers, the proposed study aims to: (1) Adapt BIPT-A for use by lay providers (youth mentors) in community centers to decrease depression symptoms, increase belongingness, and reduce burdensomeness among youth with subthreshold depression (Aim 1). (2) Train youth mentors in the adapted BIPT-A (Aim 2). (3) Conduct a pilot pragmatic randomized trial to test the feasibility, acceptability, and mechanisms of change of BIPT-A task-shifted to youth mentors (Aim 3). This K23 addresses NIMH's strategic plan by investigating the adaptation and implementation of an evidence-based mental health intervention in real-world settings for youth populations, aiming to prevent suicide, enhance community capacity, and increase access to evidence-based interventions.