University Of Washington

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

Abstract The US solid waste industry employed approximately 433,000 workers in 2022, in various roles including waste collection, sorting, recycling, processing, and disposal. These workers are exposed to a variety of hazardous chemicals that are components of solid waste, including heavy metals and flame retardants, and are potentially at risk for adverse health effects associated with these exposures. These workplaces hire a high percentage of immigrants and racial minorities and are ranked as one of the most dangerous jobs in the US in 2020. Previous studies have demonstrated elevated body burdens of certain flame retardants (e.g., PBDEs) in electronic waste workers and elevated exposure to lead and cadmium in solid waste workers overseas, however no studies to date have evaluated exposure to heavy metals and flame retardants for solid waste workers in US transfer stations and landfills. The goal of the current project is to evaluate exposure to and body burden of selected heavy metals and flame retardants for solid waste workers in transfer stations and landfills in Florida, USA. In a cohort of 40 solid waste workers, we plan to (i) Characterize levels of metals and flame retardants in blood and urine and (ii) Assess the inhalation exposures to metals and flame retardants, and the relationship between those exposures and levels in blood and urine. The expected outputs of this work include measurements of inhalation exposure and biological levels of heavy metals and flame retardants in US solid waste workers. The expected outcome of the proposed work is preliminary data and to motivate and inform the design of a more comprehensive exposure assessment and health study of solid waste workers and to study the effectiveness of interventions to reduce exposures for solid waste workers in landfills and sorting stations. The proposed research directly addresses strategic objective 3 for the NORA Services Sector (reduce injuries and illnesses among contingent workers); and addresses several cross-sector priorities including goals for the cancer, reproductive, cardiovascular, and other chronic disease prevention, the immune, infectious, and dermal disease prevention, as well as the respiratory health cross-sector agendas. The R2P aspects of this proposal lie in the identification of critical exposures and exposure pathways for solid waste workers, that can then be mitigated through industrial hygiene interventions.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

This NSF project aims to quantify the maximal amount of power that can be drawn from variations in temperature, or in chemical potentials, by systems that can either be engineered or exist already in the physical and biological world. Motivating paradigms include chemical concentration gradients in organisms that power biological engines as well as thermal gradients that may power nano-engines. A model gyrating engine is proposed to study theoretical limits to the maximal power and optimal efficiency that thermal engines can operate during finite-time cyclic operations. The sought quantitative theory to explain limits on how much power can be generated, and suggest ways to attain such, will have a broad range of applications in engineered systems and in gaining insights into biological ones. The intellectual merits of the project include contrasting the performance of model engines to that of naturally occurring biological processes, such as bacterial flagellar motors, and to derive theoretical bounds that limit the amount power that can be generated by physical processes. The broader impact of the project is to enable technological breakthroughs in nanoscale engines and in understanding biological processes, that in turn will bring economic and societal benefits, and inspire younger generations of students. The fundamental issue that the project aims to quantify is the tradeoff between work produced and dissipation generated by a process that operates in a cyclic manner, over a finite period, and in contact with heat baths of different temperature. Such a problem, to quantify the power that can be generated by exploiting thermal gradients has been a challenging one in classical thermodynamics, yet amenable to the tools of stochastic control that have been developed in recent years. The goal of the NSF project is to thereby advance the understanding, and develop computational tools for the analysis and synthesis of processes that act as thermodynamic gyrating engines generating power from their anisotropic thermal environment. 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 new generation of large radio telescopes are being developed to study how and when the first stars and galaxies formed, understand our evolving universe, and explain the behavior of our sun and solar system. These telescopes will have many more antennas than previous radio telescopes. A new technique has been developed to significantly reduce the data rates from such large telescopes. Under this grant, the investigators will add functionality to the open source pyFHD software package. The investigators will test this software with data collected from several radio telescopes including both traditional and direct imaging systems. These software enhancements will be made widely available to the entire radio astronomy community, facilitating and encouraging additional contributions to the package. In addition, this grant will support EPIC TV, giving the public a real-time view of the radio sky as seen by the Long Wavelength Array in New Mexico. This project will provide research experiences for non-traditional undergraduate students that are not well served by standard research opportunities. This will include enabling these students on a path to graduate school, with a goal to diversify the broader STEM workforce. Fast Holographic Deconvolution (FHD) was developed in the 21cm cosmology community that solves many of the analysis challenges encountered in that research area. It has been used in obtaining leading limits of the 21cm Epoch of Reionization power spectrum, demonstrating that it has the precision required for cosmology, as well as being used to make high-quality catalogs and polarized maps of galactic emission. FHD, originally written in IDL (the Interactive Data Language), shares a mathematical framework with direct imaging, making it well placed to help address the data analysis challenges for direct imaging telescopes. Recently, in a major development effort, the minimal set of FHD functionality required for a standard cosmology analysis was ported to python, resulting in the open source pyFHD package. The functionality the investigators will develop in pyFHD under this grant will enable the community to demonstrate the science performance of direct imaging radio telescopes with a full end-to-end pipeline. This will provide the community with a reference implementation of the software needed to perform science without interferometric visibilities and will facilitate evaluation for future proposals to construct direct imaging radio telescopes. 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

NONTECHNICAL SUMMARY Rapid progress in nanofabrication of quantum electronic devices enables unprecedented control and tunability as well as experimental realization of new collective states of electrons. The quantum motion of electrons in these states is correlated. In other words, electrons move not independently of each other but in a cohesive correlated fashion. Understanding the character of these correlations is crucial for characterizing charge transport in quantum electronic devices. Some correlations result in ordering of the electrons and thus change the symmetry of the system; an example is a formation of a charge density wave, in which the electron density in the system develops a wave-like periodic spatial modulation. There are more subtle quantum correlations of the electron liquid, which are called topological. These topological correlations cannot be changed by small changes of the system, and thus distinguish qualitatively different classes of electron systems. Importantly, they are immune to material imperfections and disorder, which are critically important for useful device creation. This award supports theoretical studies of charge transport and of the physical mechanisms of energy relaxation in correlated electron systems. A particular focus will be placed on studying charge density wave ordering in metals with topological correlations. Another part of research will be devoted to the study of current rectification in conductors the crystal structures of which lack inversion symmetry. Part of the research will be devoted to investigating the influence of energy relaxation on the charge transport in superconducting devices. The latter may prove useful for applications of superconducting devices to quantum computing, and also to quantum sensing (e.g. for superconductor-based photon detectors). The research program will be integrated with an education component. It will provide training to graduate students and enable engaging undergraduate students in research projects in quantum condensed matter theory. The PI will create and lead a problem-solving seminar in quantum mechanics that will help physics majors master advanced methods of quantum mechanics. TECHNICAL SUMMARY The project is stimulated by recent advances in the nanofabrication of quantum electronic devices, which enable unprecedented control and tunability of the electron systems and realization of new electronic phases and physical regimes. The proposed work is organized around three themes: 1) Topological surface and bulk effects in the excitonic insulator phase of Weyl semimetals: At low temperatures, Weyl semimetals (WSM) may become unstable towards the formation of an excitonic insulating phase. The project will investigate the nontrivial band topology of the parent WSM and distinct features in the bulk and surface electron response of this insulating phase, as well as the influence of topology on the bulk properties of the excitonic phase. 2) Theory of nonreciprocal electron transport in the hydrodynamic regime: Nonlinear electron response need not obey the Onsager reciprocity relations. Part of the project is devoted to the study of nonreciprocal transport in the nonlinear hydrodynamic regime, specifically the role of absence of Galilean invariance plays in the physical mechanism behind nonreciprocal hydrodynamic transport. 3) The third research direction is devoted to the study of dissipation mechanisms in superconducting systems. Although charge transport in normal conductors is not significantly affected by energy relaxation, in superconducting systems this is not the case. Part of the project will investigate the influence of energy relaxation on the charge transport in superconducting devices. The recently developed theory of Debye dissipation in superconductors will be extended to hybrid superconductor/semiconductors Josephson arrays. The research program will be integrated with an education component. It will provide training to graduate students and enable engaging undergraduate students in research projects in quantum condensed matter theory. The PI will create and lead a problem-solving seminar in quantum mechanics that will help physics majors master advanced methods of quantum mechanics. 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

Human activities have drastically changed the environment, including the introduction of noise, light, and chemicals – termed sensory pollutants – that can be detected and processed by an animals’ sensory systems. Over the last twenty years, studies have repeatedly demonstrated the adverse effects of noise and light pollution on animal behavior, and there is growing evidence that chemical pollutants, like nitrate radicals (NO3) and ozone, can have similar effects. However, few studies have examined how pollutant-enhanced degradation of scents affects the olfactory processing in the brain. Pollutants in the atmosphere, such as NO3, are thought to eliminate the ability of an insect, such as a pollinating bee or moth, to recognize the smell of a flower. Three-fourths of the world's flowering plants and about one-third of the world's food crops depend on animal pollinators for producing fruits, grains, and other crops. Unfortunately, little is known about how different chemical pollutants, such as ozone, NO3, or hydroxy radicals (OH), may degrade certain chemicals in the scent, and how that, in turn, may influence behavior in different insect pollinators. Furthermore, how the degraded scent is processed in the pollinator’s olfactory system to suppress behavior is unknown. Plant-pollinator systems are critical for ecosystem functioning and food security, and atmospheric pollutants give rise to smog and haze that severely impact human health. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this research will shed light on how these atmospheric processes affect olfactory and behavioral functions. The project will also introduce students to interdisciplinary research. High School students in the Upward Bound Program will participate in the project through summer seminars and lab experiences. Finally, the project includes training undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral associates and helps prepare them for independent scientific careers. In the project, two pollinators, the nocturnal moth (Manduca sexta) and diurnal honeybee (Apis mellifera) will be used to examine the effects of daytime (ozone, OH) and nighttime (NO3) pollutants on diverse floral scents and determine how scent degradation affects neural processing in the primary olfactory system, the antennal lobe (AL). Behavioral assays, multichannel recordings, and state-of-the-art mass spectrometric approaches will be used to study the processing of degraded scents in antennal lobe circuits. This will be accomplished with three Objectives: (1) Testing the hypothesis that daytime (OH, ozone) and night (NO3) atmospheric pollutants degrade diverse floral scents, and this chemistry affects specific compounds in the scents more so than others. (2) To test whether degraded scents influence the processing and balance of excitation and inhibition in the pollinator’s primary olfactory center, the antennal lobe (AL), and (3) using wind tunnel and common garden experiments with focal plant species, the hypothesis is that the degraded floral scents eliminate the pollinator’s ability to locate the flowers and reduce pollination. Together, these experiments may provide a basic framework for understanding the effects of scent oxidation and its processing in early olfactory circuits, and its effect on plant-pollinator interactions. This project is supported jointly by Division of Integrative Organismal Systems in the Directorate for Biological Sciences of NSF and the Kavli Foundation. 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

PROJECT SUMMARY In deadly and common familial hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathies, structural variation at the single protein level leads to adverse ventricular remodeling, systolic dysfunction, and diastolic dysfunction. Muscle contraction is driven by interactions among motor proteins, structural filaments, and regulatory proteins within sarcomeres. Structural perturbations to the contractile machinery disrupt the kinetics of these interactions and give rise to systems-level dysfunction in cardiac tissue. This project will investigate the mechanisms of cardiac contractile dysfunction across multiple biologically relevant spatial and temporal scales using a combined computational and experimental platform. The proposed work focuses specifically on structural perturbations that impact the essential interaction between actin and myosin. The overarching hypothesis of this work is that structural perturbations along a structural communication pathway within the upper and lower 50 kDa domains of myosin modulate the electrostatic potential and surface area of myosin’s actin binding surface and modulate the association of myosin heads onto thin filaments. Recent stopped flow kinetics and x-ray diffraction-based measurements have shown that cardiomyopathy mutations and the small molecule 2’-deoxy-ATP modulate actomyosin affinity. I have used computational simulations to show that these mutations and small molecules alter the structure and dynamics of the upper 50 kDa domain of myosin. However, a general description of the ‘rules’ by which mutations and/or small molecules modulate actomyosin interaction requires further study. These computational predictions also require rigorous testing using in vitro methods. The goals of this work are to establish a mechanistic framework that explains how structural perturbations to myosin affect its interaction with actin and to modify actin-myosin interactions with small molecules designed to modulate myosin structure. These goals will be accomplished by simulating the impact of mutations on myosin structure, myosin recruitment, and actomyosin interaction (Aim 1), testing computational predictions in single molecules and contractile organelles from stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (Aim 2), and developing small molecules designed to modulate actin-myosin interactions by targeting structural communication pathways in myosin (Aim 3). The project will utilize machine-learning infused computational workflows and state-of-the-art stem cell technologies to accelerate translational cardiomyopathy research with a combined computational/experimental platform. The proposed training program will provide me with new skills in stem cell biology, protein biochemistry, and muscle mechanics that increase the scope of my research. I will be mentored by a diverse team led by Dr. Michael Regnier, an accomplished researcher in muscle biology who has significant experience in leading collaborative, multiscale, and interdisciplinary research projects. Research and career development will leverage resources provided by the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine and Center for Translational Muscle Research at the University of Washington.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Stem cell (SC)-based replacement therapy is emerging as a promising cure for diabetes. However, the population-wide applicability of this approach remains constrained by the limited efficiency of current protocols in controlling the state of pluripotency and/or patient-specific propensity of SC lines to respond to morphogens and inductive factors, thereby yielding heterogenous islet cell preparations containing variable proportions of endocrine and immature cell types. In this RC2 project, we integrate knowledge from a team of Investigators with complementary expertise to exploit the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-designed mini-proteins (EpiBinders) in controlling SC's ability to more efficiently differentiate into functional islet cells. This approach is based on our recent work demonstrating that EpiBinders can erase repressive histone methylation marks and activate select genes of interest, thus fostering the activation of downstream developmental programs. Building on this preliminary work, we hypothesize that the newly discovered regulatory function of AI-designed EpiBinders on gene expression can be harnessed to drive a more efficient differentiation of multiple SC lines into functional islet tissue. For one year of support, our collaborative project will focus on the following specific aims: Aim 1: Develop and in-cell validate a toolbox of Al-designed mini-proteins, with a focus on targeting epigenetic regulators of DNA methylation in SC lines. Aim 2: Apply and optimize the use of select EpiBinders to regulate islet cell development at specific stages of SC differentiation. Aim 3: Characterize the state of differentiation and functional maturation of epigenetically manipulated SC-derived islet cells, in vitro and in vivo, in non-diabetic transplantation models. We anticipate that our interdisciplinary efforts will produce new knowledge and resources that will be readily shared with the scientific community and that will advance collective efforts to broaden the future therapeutic potential of SC-based treatments by developing a radically new approach to enhancing the efficiency of islet tissue derivation from SC.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Zoonotic diseases are diseases that animals give to humans. SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVD-19, is a zoonotic disease, and the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of both zoonotic diseases, and mutual trust between public health institutions and the public whose health they are intended to safeguard. To effectively control zoonoses, we need a better understanding of exactly how they are transmitted, and how trust—and its absence—influences that transmission. Brucellosis is a zoonosis caused by a bacteria that is present worldwide, including the US. The most serious form is caused by the bacteria Brucella melitensis, which is spread by sheep and goats when a person drinks or eats milk or cheese that hasn’t been pasteurized, or when people assist a sheep or goat who is giving birth. In animals, the disease causes pregnancy losses and reduced milk production. In humans, the disease also causes pregnancy losses, as well as fever, headaches, back pain, physical weakness, and fatigue that can last for months or even years. In some cases, severe neurological and heart effects can also be seen. The project leverages the strong US-Israel research collaboration to advance the knowledge of the more-than-bio-physical drivers of interspecies disease transmission, focusing on Brucella melitensis but generalizable to other zoonotic diseases. This project works with Bedouin communities in southern Israel, where Brucella burden is among the highest in the world, second only to Syria pre-war and likely worsening since. These communities exhibit extremely high levels of institutional distrust and experience ongoing urbanization. This provides a model setting for examining how distrust, urbanization, and zoonoses—a triad being replicated throughout the world—collectively impact humans, animals, and livelihoods. The research tests the hypothesis that institutional distrust and population displacement to urban centers increase the density of human-animal contact networks, facilitating the transmission of brucellosis. Objective 1 aims to measure human-animal contact networks among six Bedouin communities in southern Israel using qualitative data, quantitative data, and experience-based knowledge. These data support Objective 2 to model synthetic human-animal networks and develop a new method for generating Brucella genomes, applied to samples collected from humans, livestock, and environments. Subsequent tasks for Objective 3 include fitting and validating an epidemic network model using these synthetic networks and Brucella genomes and applying this model to test the research hypothesis by exploring counterfactual scenarios defined by distrust and urbanization, developed through participatory methods. These methods and insights afford broad applicability beyond this empirical setting, to other Brucella systems and zoonotic diseases throughout the world. 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 prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) and of internet of things (IoT) in our life has resulted in an exponential growth in the amount of data being transmitted at any second in a day at an unprecedented rate. The total bit rate for internet traffic already surpassed that of telephone traffic at the beginning of the 21st century and continued to grow at a rate of ~100 times per decade. While the total internet traffic is high, a decade ago it was already small compared to the data sent over shorter links in data centers which has been growing at an even higher rate. More recently, massively parallel computations that are critical for machine learning (ML) and data analysis have driven bandwidth requirement for ML supercomputers, which have become a major contributor for information data. The growth rate of global electricity usage by information processing and computing has surpassed that of electricity generation capacity for over a decade, with analysis showing it consumes the majority of global electricity on the horizon. This energy consumption has caused serious alarm to our environment. Without major reduction in energy per bit of information data, the bandwidth of information processing and computing cannot continue to grow. This demands innovations in technology hardware and infrastructure for computing and communication. Using light to carry information data has not only enabled long-haul high-capacity communication networks and revolutionized our communication technologies, but also offers a route to higher interconnect densities and reduced energy consumption in data centers and ML supercomputers. A key component in optical interconnects is the transmitter, which traditionally utilizes semiconductor lasers. They have high optical performance but face the challenge of high energy consumption and cost, in addition to difficult integration with their Si CMOS drive circuits which further leads to high system-level energy consumption. LEDs offer a promising alternative as low-cost photonic sources in optical interconnects. However, conventional LEDs cannot be easily integrated with Si CMOS either. Metal-halide perovskite semiconductors are solution-processable materials with high optoelectronic properties and facile integration compatibility with many platforms including Si CMOS. The objective of the proposed research is to achieve perovskite LEDs with high modulation bandwidth. Three research approaches, each carrying its own intellectual merit, will be conducted in synergy to achieve the goal. They are: (1) Engineering perovskite semiconductor materials and device design to minimize resistance and increase LED speed. (2) Optimizing modulation format for high-bandwidth operation using data-driven learning. (3) Developing a process for monolithic integration of perovskite micro-LEDs on Si to minimize overall parasitics, improve system-level modulation bandwidth and reduce energy consumption. 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

Project Summary/Abstract Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a highly heritable trait, where much of the phenotypic variation is explained by genetic variation. A significant proportion of AD risk is explained by ancestry and APOE genotype. We and others have shown that ancestry differences across the genome (global ancestry) and at the APOE locus (local ancestry) are significantly associated with risk of AD in admixed populations. African-derived APOE alleles are associated with reduced risk of AD after controlling for global ancestry and APOE ε2/ε3/ε4 genotype in African American, Caribbean Hispanic, and Puerto Rican samples. This local ancestry effect may be driven by variants on African-derived haplotypes, European-derived haplotypes, or both. The focus of this study is to determine which variants on these haplotypes may explain the association between African-derived APOE alleles and reduced risk of AD and to characterize their potential consequences at the cellular level. APOE is involved in many pathways relevant to AD, including lipid biosynthesis and two ends of the efferocytosis pathway: recognition/engulfment and adaptation. This may explain why the ε2 and ε4 alleles associated with AD risk are associated with many phenotypes, including peripheral lipid traits (lipids) and inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein (CRP). Both ε2 and ε4 are associated with unfavorable lipid and CRP profiles that are themselves associated with AD risk, AD biomarkers, and other causes of morbidity and mortality. As with AD, the strength of association between ε2 and ε4 and both lipids and CRP vary with ancestry. Joint consideration of AD with lipid and inflammation-related traits is expected to reveal additional pathophysiological information not identifiable in separate analyses. Therefore, we propose to investigate local ancestry effects at APOE and AD risk within the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) whole genome sequence (WGS) data, along with their effects on harmonized lipid traits and CRP levels paired with WGS data from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) project among admixed participants who were not ascertained for AD. We will estimate local ancestry probabilities, then test for association between global (across the genome) and local (at APOE) ancestry using two alternative approaches. Contrasting ancestry-specific APOE haplotypes within and between these studies will allow us to nominate variants with pleiotropic vs. trait-specific effects. Our bioinformatics pipeline will link variants to their potential consequences using gene expression and regulatory data tailored to AD, prioritizing the appropriate model systems for future studies. This work will facilitate therapeutic target selection that avoids negative effects on lipid and inflammatory phenotypes associated with significant morbidity and mortality.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Title: Metabolic response to contraction in a 3D engineered muscle tissue model of aging Decreased skeletal muscle mass, specific force, increased overall fatty infiltration in the skeletal muscle, frailty and depressed energy maintenance are all associated with increased oxidative stress decline in mitochondrial function and the development of sarcopenia with age. Mitochondrial response to exercise has been shown to be partially mediated through signaling control following muscle contraction. We have previously developed protocols to test mitochondrial function following high-intensity interval (HII) and low-intensity steady state (LISS) muscle contraction in vivo. Following HII, young skeletal muscle mitochondria increased fatty acid oxidation compared to non-stimulated control muscle; however, aged muscle mitochondria decreased fatty acid oxidation. In contrast, following LISS, young skeletal muscle decreased fatty acid oxidation, whereas aged muscle increased fatty acid oxidation. We also found that HII inhibits oxidation of glutamate in both stimulated and non- stimulated aged muscle, suggesting HII stimulates circulation of a factor capable of altering metabolism systemically. While longitudinal studies of skeletal muscle function in humans provide invaluable information on the complex biology of aging and the impact on metabolism, muscle force, and fatiguability, they are often limiting for mechanistic tests. We have partnered with the Study of Muscle, Mobility and Aging (R01 AG059416) to obtain primary human myoblasts from well phenotyped older adults to develop a three-dimensional tissue model of skeletal muscle aging. Developments in tissue engineering using primary cells purified directly from patients offer some of the best opportunities yet to link specific mechanistic tests of metabolic and muscle function to patient data. We will adapt our in vivo contraction protocols for in vitro use to test the hypothesis that aging impairs metabolic response following contraction in human three-dimensional engineered muscle tissue (3D-EMT). We will test this hypothesis with two specific aims: 1) Examine the mitochondrial mechanisms of decreased metabolic response to muscle contraction in aged human 3D-EMT and 2) we will characterize the effect of aging on adaptation to longitudinal contractile training of 3D-EMT in vitro. This proposal will capitalize on the stellar environment for aging and muscle research at University of Washington (UW). The UW houses a Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, the Center for Translational Muscle Research, Northwest Metabolomics Research Center, and the Institute for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine. The research team comprises experts in the fields of muscle mechanics, mitochondrial function, metabolism, and tissue engineering and uniquely places them in a position to implement the development of this in vitro model and to successfully test muscle and mitochondrial function.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-09

Project Summary/Abstract The cornea is the optically clear, curved tissue that provides the majority of refractive power in the eye. Improper healing of corneal wounds is a serious issue that can lead to blindness or permanent refractive visual complications. We have demonstrated that the cornea becomes intrinsically photoreceptive after injury, and it is able to entrain its circadian clock to light cycles in vitro. We have observed that the rate healing of wounded mouse corneas is accelerated by violet light both in vivo and ex vivo. We have identified a class of highly motile Opn5-expressing epithelial cells induced in the cornea after wounding. Opn5 is an opsin protein which is sensitive to short wavelength light. Mice which lack Opn5 show aberrant responses to corneal wounding, such as impaired re-epithelialization and stromal abnormalities. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that light modulates corneal wound healing via an Opn5-dependent mechanism. We have also found evidence of non-photic effects mediated by Opn5. The specific aims of this project include the following: (Aim 1) testing the light regimen necessary for photic healing acceleration in murine corneas, (Aim 2) characterizing the mechanism of signal transduction within Opn5-expressing cells, and (Aim 3) testing the hypothesis that diffusible factors function in the induction of Opn5 expression and its communication with the rest of the cornea. Our approach will be to utilize both in vivo and ex vivo experimentation with a number of mouse models in which the Opn5 cells can be visualized or have their molecular constituents isolated from whole corneal cell lysate. We will also use cultured cell lines to uncover the factor or factors necessary to induce Opn5. The innovation of this project lies in applying recently discovered extra-retinal photoreception to analyses of wound healing and the health of the corneal surface. Another aspect of this innovation will be to extend the results of mouse studies to corneal cells from human and non-human primates to analyze the translational potential of the observations made in mouse models. The potential impact of this work will be to harness the role light plays in corneal wound healing through opsin agonists/ antagonists to facilitate wound closure and the avoidance of scarring.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

The racial and ethnic diversity of the K-12 student population far exceeds the diversity of the current teacher workforce and teacher candidate pipeline. To address this gap, systemic changes in the structural and cultural dimensions of university teacher preparation programs are required. This project will leverage an existing consortium of STEM teacher preparation programs in Washington State to: (1) identify community assets and systemic barriers to recruiting and supporting STEM teacher candidates from historically underrepresented populations; (2) develop strategies for preparing STEM teacher candidates to enact culturally sustaining pedagogies; and (3) advance understanding of how universities can develop authentic partnerships with historically marginalized communities to support STEM teacher preparation. The significance of this project is that it aims to establish authentic partnerships with individuals and groups typically underrepresented in STEM and elevate the knowledge and leadership from marginalized communities to collaboratively address barriers and obstacles to becoming STEM teachers. This project will employ a descriptive multiple case study design to understand how institutes of higher education work with their local communities to dismantle systemic barriers to recruiting and supporting students from historically underrepresented groups in STEM teacher preparation. Further, the project will investigate how these teacher preparation programs leverage the knowledge of leaders from marginalized communities to develop and share strategies for preparing future STEM teachers to enact culturally sustaining pedagogies. With sites spanning urban, suburban, and rural settings, this research will enhance our collective knowledge about contextual factors that support or constrain efforts to address inequities in STEM teacher preparation. The community-led work at each region is grounded in the principles of Targeted Universalism and will utilize tools and frameworks from the Equity-Driven Systems Change Model to center the voices and experiences of marginalized communities. Anticipated impacts include new recruitment and retention models for diversifying STEM teaching, revised curricula to infuse culturally sustaining pedagogy into STEM teacher preparation, and new equity-minded structures and policies to guide teacher education program decisions. This collaborative project is funded by the EDU Racial Equity in STEM Education activity, which is supported by the Directorate for STEM Education (EDU). This activity supports research and practice projects that investigate how considerations of racial equity factor into the improvement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce. Awarded projects seek to center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of the individuals, communities, and institutions most impacted by systemic inequities within the STEM enterprise. Programs across EDU contribute funds to the Racial Equity activity in recognition of the alignment of its projects with the collective research and development thrusts of the four divisions of the directorate. 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

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Twenty-five percent of children with HIV-infection have childhood wasting (low weight-for-height or low mid-upper arm circumference, and HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) children are twice as likely to be underweight as comparable HIV-unexposed children. Wasting is known to promote morbidity, HIV-progression, and mortality among these children. Improving wasting prevention and treatment for children and in early infant diagnosis and HIV-care programs could not only improve the child health outcomes of these children, but also substantially lower the global burden of childhood wasting. This proposal will develop a novel two-way short message service (SMS) platform that targets key barriers to improving nutritional care for HEU and HIV-infected children. This intervention will combine a maternally administered malnutrition monitoring system (MAMMS) with infant and young child education (IYCF) delivered by SMS. After developing the intervention using participatory design methods, we will complete a proof-of- concept quasi-experimental trial of MAMMS-IYCF in the R21. If the R21 milestones are meet, we will use the R33 to conduct a randomized trial testing the effectiveness of MAMMS-IYCF at reduced the incidence wasting, and the duration of wasting treatment. During this trial we will also assess the cost and cost-effectiveness of MAMMS-IYCF, and to better understand which barriers are being successfully addressed by intervention we will measure its effect on key attitudinal and behavioral outcomes including trust in the healthcare system, intention to seek if a child becomes wasted, and IYCF knowledge. This trial will generate the evidence necessary to integrate MAMMS-IYCF interventions into existing HIV-mHealth programs across the globe, and improve the outcomes of children in early infant diagnosis and HIV-care services while also substantially lowering the global burden of childhood wasting.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-09

Project Summary Natural environments present numerous challenges to the visual system, including the presence of large and frequent changes in light intensity. Such changes occur when an animal moves from sunlight into shadow, or when it shifts its gaze from a bright to a darker area in a scene (e.g., sky versus shaded ground). These changes can occur frequently, e.g. many times per minute, and the intensity changes can be as large as 50-100-fold. These sudden, frequent, and large changes in light intensity present a challenge to the retina, which must transmit a reliable visual signal as it dynamically adapts to the new intensity: this adaptation is likely to be only partial, because the intensity is likely to change again within the next few seconds. Furthermore, adaptation mechanisms triggered by these changes in light intensity alter the spatial and temporal integration of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) receptive fields, which is tantamount to changing the neural code sent to downstream brain circuits. How can reliable visual signaling be achieved when the code is in perpetual flux? These dynamic lighting conditions differ substantially from those typically probed in laboratory experiments, where the mean and contrast of stimuli are often held approximately constant. The overarching goal of this proposal is to understand how naturalistic dynamic intensity conditions impact retinal function and visual signaling. We hypothesize that by examining retinal coding under these dynamic intensity conditions, we will learn how diverse adaptation mechanisms work in concert across multiple cell types to provide a reliable signal to downstream brain areas in natural environments. This work is significant because it will advance our understanding of how the visual system copes with rapid and naturalistic changes in light intensity. Aim 1 will determine the role of adaptation in phototransduction in shaping RGC responses. Aim 2 will probe the contribution of RGC spike generation. And Aim 3 will determine the impact of adaptation in intermediate circuitry, with a focus on the role of AII amacrine cells. These mechanisms will be linked using a CNN-based framework that permits study not only of how the individual mechanisms work, but how they interact and collectively shape RGC responses. These aims will reveal how adaptation in distinct loci of retinal processing (photoreceptors, interneurons and RGCs) shape the encoding of visual features in dynamic environments. Furthermore, they will reveal how key RGC types in the primate and rodent visual systems deal with naturalistic fluctuations in light intensity as they visually scan and move through the environment.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

Project Summary/Abstract Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can lead to a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and a lifetime of neurodevelopmental disabilities and problems of daily living. Early intervention during the first three years of life has the potential to mitigate the teratogenic effects of PAE at a time of critical brain development. Timely EI supports young children’s development, strengthens responsive parenting and the early parent-child relationship, and provides family resources that can reduce parenting stress. Early intervention by design aims to increase critical early life protective factors and reduce secondary disabilities associated with the cascade of complex learning and behavior problems commonly reported among children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). Yet there is a concerning lack of effective, evidence-based practices for this vulnerable group of young children at a crucial time of child development. Our research team has developed the Families Moving Forward (FMF) Bridges early intervention for infants and toddlers affected by PAE or with FASD and their caregivers. This innovative early intervention was adapted from the scientifically validated Families Moving Forward (FMF) Program originally designed and shown to be efficacious for preschool and school-aged children with FASD. FMF Bridges blends standard FMF approaches that are FASD-informed with the essential elements of early childhood intervention best practices that are relationship-based, strengths-based, and family-centered. This study aims to examine the feasibility of the FMF Bridges early intervention in two phases. In both Phases, the FMF Bridges intervention will be delivered by trained community early intervention providers in partnering community-based birth to three settings. Phase 1 will be a small trial to examine if the FMF Bridges early intervention is feasible to implement in the community settings for which it was designed. Participants will be 12 children, ages 6-36 months with PAE or FASD, and their caregivers. Phase 2 will examine the feasibility of a pilot randomized controlled trial using methods and intervention refinements informed by Phase 1 data. Thirty-six children, ages 6-36 months, and their caregivers will be enrolled across three participating early intervention sites. Eighteen families each will be randomized to either FMF Bridges or waitlist control conditions. Study results will inform a larger scale clinical trial of FMF Bridges as an FASD-informed early intervention that aims to enhance usual care in community birth to three settings for this very vulnerable group of young children.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

This award supports the 18th Graduate Climate Conference (GCC), planned for 1-3 November 2024 at the Pack Conference Center of the University of Washington. The conference is held annually and alternates between Woods Hole the University of Washington. The GCC is an interdisciplinary climate conference organized entirely by and for graduate students. It provides a discussion forum for students conducting research on climate in a variety of disciplines including atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, biogeochemical cycles, clouds and aerosols, and the cryosphere. The meeting is intended to help students familiarize themselves with the breadth of climate science, gain exposure to the enormous range of tools available to address climate-related questions, and understand how their research fits into the broader landscape of current climate science. The conference seeks to better prepare graduate students for scientific inquiry in a field that increasingly demands interdisciplinary approaches. Funds provided here support travel and subsistence for 120 students chosen through a competitive 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 · 2024-09

Predicting sea-level rise over the coming decades is one of the key problems of glaciology. The results of these predictions are important for hazard mitigation, urban planning, and coastal infrastructure development. Glaciologists use computer simulations of ice physics to make these predictions, but there are critical aspects of ice physics that are not adequately understood. The goal of this project is to develop new mathematical models and simulation tools for studying the breaking off or calving of icebergs from glaciers that terminate in the ocean. Calving makes up for half of the total mass loss from Antarctica and Greenland, but there is no widely agreed upon mathematical model that predicts how often icebergs break off and how large they are. The mathematical models developed by this project represent a substantial advance in the field of glaciology and will enable physical scientists to provide better predictions to policy makers and engineers. This project is also incorporated as part of the curriculum for the Juneau Icefield Research Program, a field program that takes undergraduates on a summer-long traverse of the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska where they learn about environmental science and glaciology from experts. The goal of this project is to develop new methods for simulating the calving of icebergs from tidewater glaciers and ice shelves. There is no mathematical model for calving event magnitude and frequency which reproduces observations of Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica. A substantial limiting factor in the development of such models is the difficulty of testing them using computer simulations. Calving makes the geometry of the problem evolve in time, and dynamic geometries are one of the hardest challenges in scientific computing. This project develops new approaches for simulating calving based on applying the principal of convex duality to the momentum balance equation of glacier flow, implements several common calving models and calibrates them to observational data, and compares and selects among these models. The key methods will be mathematical and numerical modeling of glacier flow; concretely, this will take the form of new features added to the software library Icepack, an open-source package for glacier modeling. This project will contribute to the broader goal of predicting how much and how fast global sea levels will rise in the coming decades, a question of broad societal relevance. Moreover, the methods developed in this project are used as instructional material for the Juneau Icefield Research Program, an educational field program for undergraduates where students conduct field work and learn from researchers in glaciology. 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. 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

ABSTRACT Cervical cancer is highly preventable with early detection and treatment, but due to lack of accessible early screening options, incidence and mortality are still very high in low-resource settings (LRS). High-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) is responsible for most cervical cancer cases, and the WHO recommends testing for hrHPV and preemptively treating all patients who are positive as the primary prevention strategy in LRS. Nearly all available tests look for hrHPV DNA, which can result in overtreatment because it cannot differentiate infections that will clear naturally. Detectable hrHPV mRNA, however, is strongly associated with higher grade cervical precancers, making it a more specific biomarker for cervical cancer risk. This proposal aims to address the need for more specific early cervical cancer detection technology by developing novel in vitro and in vivo methods for detecting hrHPV mRNA. In the F99 phase of this proposal, I will develop and pilot a sample-to-answer mRNA test for HPV16 and HPV18. I will first develop a minimally instrumented method for preparing mRNA for detection from both provider and self-collected cervical samples. I will then amplify this mRNA using an isothermal assay that produces a real-time fluorescent signal, which I will read using a low-cost fluorimeter. I will integrate the individual assay components into a workflow with minimal user steps, making a test that is deployable to LRS. I will work with my sponsor, Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, an established expert in the field of point-of-care cancer detection technologies to develop this test. I will then work with my co-sponsor, Dr. Kathleen Schmeler, the VP of Global Oncology at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center with extensive experience translating cancer detection technologies to LRS to pilot this test with clinical samples in both Houston and Brazil. This training plan will help me gain experience with technology development, scientific communication, and clinical collaborations both locally and globally, and is enhanced by the location of my training at Rice University in the Texas Medical Center, where I will have access to world-class equipment, resources, and clinical collaborators. In the K00 phase of this proposal, I will develop a technique for detecting hrHPV mRNA in vivo. This will permit real-time early cervical cancer detection and monitoring, which can help assess disease progression and inform treatment faster than repeated in vitro sampling and testing. In the proposed project, I will use a combination of sequence- specific fluorescent mRNA labeling, aptamer-mediated label delivery, and high-resolution fluorescence imaging to detect hrHPV mRNA sensitively and specifically in vivo. I will seek a mentor with experience in biomarker label design and delivery at an institution with robust imaging resources and clinical collaborations. The proposed work will prepare me for an academic career as a cancer researcher dedicated to improving global access to early cancer detection. In addition to technical experience, I will develop my scientific communication skills, build a network of collaborators, and mentor the next generation of cancer researchers, laying the foundation for a career developing and deploying novel cancer prevention technologies with clinical impact around the world.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT HIV infection rates in the U.S. military have doubled since 2003, yet no interventions targeting HIV transmission in this population have been tested in over 15 years. Eighty percent of new infections occur among active-duty men who have sex with men (AD-MSM) – a population that is critically understudied due to a long history of policies that prevented researchers from asking service members about sexual identity or same-sex behavior. Permitted since 2012, research on behavioral health among AD-MSM remains scarce. Initial evidence suggests that HIV prevention for AD-MSM should target alcohol-related sexual risk behavior (AR-SRB). The causal link between alcohol use and risky sex is well established. Heavy drinking is prevalent among service members, highest among AD-MSM, and driven by highly pro-drinking military social norms. Alcohol misuse and risky sex are also both link to traumatic stress, particularly sexual assault, and AD-MSM have over 5 times greater odds of military sexual trauma (MST) relative to their straight male peers. Pre- exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a common target of current civilian HIV prevention efforts, is less viable for AD- MSM due to significant social and structural barriers unique to the military – persistent stigma, absence of medical confidentiality, unavailability of PrEP at many installations, and prohibitions against its use by service members on deployment, shipboard, or in certain occupational specialties. Internet-based personalized feedback interventions (iPFI) are an ideal modality to address AR-SRB among AD-MSM. Delivered privately, iPFI has shown efficacy for reducing heavy drinking and related problems. The present 2-phase study seeks to develop a trauma-informed iPFI targeting both heavy drinking and sexual risk behavior among AD-MSM. Phase 1a: A survey of 160 AD-MSM will establish behavioral norms and provide data to test a novel behavioral framework describing traumatic stress and military culture as pathways to AR-SRB. Phase 1b: Qualitative interviews of 15 AD-MSM will contextualize AR-SRB and gather feedback on draft iPFI components. Phase 1c: We will finalize a novel iPFI based on findings and extant iPFI models. Phase 2: A randomized controlled trial (N=50) will provide data on intervention feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy. Pilot data will be used for an R01 application to NIAAA seeking to test the further-refined iPFI in a fully powered RCT. The training plan for this application will focus on growing expertise in intervention development, AR-SRB, behavioral responses to traumatic stress, AD-MSM health, and methodologies for research on stigmatized behaviors and hard-to-reach populations. A highly productive team of mentors is committed to Dr. Walton’s success and will each contribute unique expertise to his research and training plans. Support from this award is crucial to Dr. Walton’s development as an independent scientist, in the vanguard of scholarship on AD-MSM, who can conduct meaningful research on the prevention of both alcohol misuse and HIV.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

With the support of the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Forrest Michael of the University of Washington is studying the development of new catalysts (catalysts are chemical additives that help a reaction occur or proceed more rapidly) for the construction of organic molecules. Many commonly employed reactions utilize transition metal based catalysts as the key active component; however, the relative cost, abundance, and toxicity of these species is a cause for concern. It is vitally important that new, less expensive and more sustainable catalysts are developed. Because of their much greater abundance and lower cost, the Michael group is studying underexplored chalcogen (sulfur, selenium, and tellurium) catalysts. These catalysts offer novel reactivity and selectivity when compared to more traditional transition metal systems. In addition to its impact on catalysis, this work is more broadly relevant because it is allowing small molecules that have novel biological, pharmaceutical, and materials properties to be accessed more sustainably. In addition to the broader impacts of the science, Professor Michael is also impacting education, mentoring, and training through his work with the Center for Excellence in Education and the Research Science Institute. These endeavors largely involve exposing domestic and international high school students to cutting-edge research in chemistry. With the support of the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Forrest Michael of the University of Washington is studying the novel stoichiometric and catalytic properties of organochalcogen complexes for application in a variety of synthetic transformations. Structure-activity relationships, including investigations of the steric and electronic properties of ligated chalcogen species, are being evaluated. Through these efforts they are developing a much greater understanding of how ligand design can be used to influence key properties of a variety of potential catalytic intermediates. Several novel catalytic reactions are being developed in parallel with stoichiometric studies, including the introduction of simple basic amines into organic compounds via C-H activation and alkene addition reactions, as well as a new type of covalent phase transfer catalysis. Ultimately, this work will expand the range of catalytic activity enabled by organochalcogen species and allow for more sustainable synthesis of complex organic molecules. 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 Milky Way galaxy is home to possibly as many as 100,000,000 black holes (BH) and neutron stars (NS), known collectively as compact objects. However, by their very nature, compact objects are very difficult to detect. Most compact objects, particularly BHs, are detected through their close interaction with a normal star companion, a relatively rare situation. A research program at the University of Washington aims to expand the search for compact objects by looking for them in “detached” binary star systems, in which the star and compact object orbit each other but do not interact. They will do this using archival data from the NSF-supported Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), developing and applying novel methods for identifying gravitational self-lensing, in which light from the companion star is repeatedly gravitationally lensed as the compact object passes in front of it, creating a periodic brightening pulse. Student training integral to this work will involve undergraduate and graduate students in data-intensive discovery and position them competitively for a wide range of STEM careers. Citizen scientists will help vet candidate self-lensing systems, providing an opportunity for them to engage in leading-edge scientific research. The inventory of Galactic BH and NS binaries remains both highly incomplete and biased towards the most extreme interacting systems. In particular, poor observational constraints on the rate and spatial distribution of unseen but numerous non-accreting compact binaries currently limit our knowledge of stellar and binary evolution, including the effects of the initial mass function and supernova natal kicks. Drawing on the team’s experience with ZTF data, they will conduct a systematic search for Galactic self-lensing binaries among the more than 4.7 billion archival light curves provided by ZTF. They will employ multiple approaches to identify self-lensing signals at a wide range of binary orbital periods. These will include flare searches in ZTF continuous-cadence data, residual searches in ellipsoidal variables, and box-least-squares periodicity searches in sparsely sampled survey data. Follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations will enable confirmation of candidates and refinement of the derived system parameters. Population synthesis modeling of the resulting candidates will enable new constraints on the mass, orbital period, and spatial distribution of compact objects and reveal poorly-probed phases of binary evolution. Training a graduate student to use these tools will help advance the NSF objective to grow a diverse, globally-competitive STEM workforce. Mentorship of minoritized undergraduates through the University of Washington’s Pre-Major in Astronomy Program as well as in paid summer research will increase the involvement of communities under-represented in STEM. 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

Project Abstract RAS GTPase operates as a molecular switch toggling between GDP-bound (inactive) and GTP-bound forms (active), and orchestrates dynamic cellular processes such as proliferation, migration, survival, and T-cell development.1,2 Despite its binary nature, RAS exhibits sophisticated and dynamic signaling behavior influenced by cellular context and subcellular localization. The lack of a precise understanding of the roles of spatiotemporal compartmentalization in RAS hinders our understanding of fundamental signaling mechanisms and limits our ability to develop targeted therapies for RAS-driven cancers. To address this, we will leverage a chemical genetic tool called Chemically-Inducible Activator of RAS (CIAR) that allows the rapid and dose-dependent activation of wild-type RAS with bio-orthogonal small molecules.8-10 Aim 1 describes efforts to use transmembrane-tethered versions of NS3a-CIAR to dissect the impact of differential membrane localization on wild-type RAS activation and downstream signaling. This Aim also describes the development of chemical tools for quantitatively measuring the transmembrane localization of proteins and using a novel tool for probing RAS-GTP in its native cellular context. Aim 2 aims to investigate the role of oligomerization of signaling proteins at membranes. An engineered protein toolkit will be used to control the oligomeric state and study its impact on Ras-mediated signaling. Finally, Aim 3 explores efforts to dissect how the intracellular signaling environment affects the kinetics of magnitude of RAS activation and downstream signaling. This Aim also explores the development of a number of chemical genetic tools for enabling intracellular protein display at membranes. Overall, the studies described herein will offer new and important mechanistic insight into RAS signaling.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Dark matter is a ubiquitous yet invisible presence in our universe. It dictated how galaxies formed in the first place, and now moves their stars at puzzling speeds. From these and other colossal gravitational effects the dark matter mass in the universe is known to be five times that of ordinary matter and composed of unknown particles, which interact weakly with ordinary matter. This award will support the Dark MAtter In CCDs (DAMIC) experiment, which searches for dark matter particles with a novel detector technology. The nature of dark matter constitutes one of the most fundamental questions in science. Its discovery as a yet unknown particle would have profound implications in our understanding of the universe, and open new directions in particle physics and cosmology. This award will enable immersive research experiences for students, engagement of the local community and the general public, and innovative partnerships bringing science to formal and informal audiences. The DAMIC experiment is designed to detect nuclear and electronic recoils induced by dark matter in silicon charge coupled devices (CCDs). Scientific CCDs are commonly used in the focal plane of astronomical telescopes for the digital imaging of faint astrophysical objects. DAMIC has pioneered their unconventional use as dark matter detectors at the SNOLAB laboratory (located in a mine 2 km beneath Sudbury, Canada); with this award a several-hundred-gram detector - DAMIC-M - will be installed at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane in France. Single ionization charges produced by a dark matter interaction will be detected in DAMIC-M with high resolution thanks to non-destructive, repetitive measurements of the CCD pixel charge. With this novel technology DAMIC-M will have unprecedented sensitivity to light dark matter (≈ eV energies are enough to free an electron in silicon). This award will support the participation and leadership roles of the research groups at University of Chicago and University of Washington in the DAMIC experiment construction, installation and commissioning. The award scope includes collecting a data sample corresponding to a target exposure of few hundred g-year and performing a first search for dark matter. 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

With this award supported by the Office of the Chief of Research Security, Strategy & Policy (OCRSSP), the U.S. National Science Foundation establishes the SECURE (Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem) Center to help the research community mitigate foreign threats to the security and integrity of the U.S. research enterprise. International collaboration is a vital part of the culture and success of the US research enterprise and is highly valued by researchers. To support these researchers and their home institutions, and to foster a balanced approach to mitigating risk, the University of Washington (UW) will host the National SECURE Center. The National Center will support and be supported by experts from a dozen partner organizations in five regional centers across the country. Regional centers are better known by researchers in their region, which increases participation and trust. Participation will be critical to SECURE Center's success since it will use expert-guided participatory design to develop its services. In participatory design, community members work hand-in-hand with the Center's experts, designers & developers. Experts guide community members to identify tools & services that will help the community address pressing research security concerns. Designers and developers then create those tools for the community to use and refine. The SECURE Center will be "Community Designed, Community Used, Community Improved." In addition to tools, SECURE Center will gather or develop and share best practices, training, analyses, and more. Through these activities, SECURE Center will help researchers make risk-informed decisions to safeguard ongoing and future research activities. Research security is an ongoing concern. To support the research community in combating malign foreign influence, this project establishes a non-governmental research security organization, named the SECURE (Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem) Center. The SECURE Center will be a bridge between the research community and government funding agencies. Representatives from these agencies comprise the U.S. Government Steering Committee (USG SC), which is chaired by NSF. The USG SC will advise NSF on research security issues that may impact the work of SECURE Center, make NSF aware of new information that may be relevant to SECURE Center's mission, and coordinate the declassification of information to be shared by NSF with SECURE Center for ultimate dissemination to the U.S. research community. The research community will provide guidance on the Center's internal operations, policies, vision, and direction through the Advisory Board, which is chaired by a national security expert, and composed of community representatives from the spectrum of organizations that the SECURE Center will serve. The National SECURE Center is led by the University of Washington (UW)'s Center on Collaborative Systems for Security, Safety, and Resilience (CoSSAR) in collaboration with nine additional institutions of higher education (IHEs) & three private sector organizations. Six IHEs will lead five regional centers: - SECURE Northeast -- Northeastern University - SECURE Southeast -- Emory University - SECURE Midwest -- University of Missouri - SECURE Southwest -- University of Texas San Antonio and Texas A&M University - SECURE West -- University of Washington Mississippi State University, the University of Michigan, and Stanford's Hoover Institution will provide critical subject matter expertise on sensitive research, threat types, geopolitical analysis, and international cooperation. The College of Charleston will lead efforts to include emerging and minority-serving institutions (ERIs & MSIs) in SECURE's activities; the University of Michigan will ensure that SECURE's services balance the need for collaboration with the need for protection. Impulsion Consulting, Insight Global, and MindCette will provide additional expertise to the Center as it undertakes a powerful, proven, participatory design process to co-create the SECURE Shared Virtual Environment (SVE) and its suite of offerings. As the first of its kind, SECURE SVE will link members of the U.S. research community from IHEs, non-profits, and small- & medium-sized businesses in a safe, trustworthy platform to share ideas, needs, and information on research security. Trust will also be fostered through five regional centers, which will facilitate co-creation under the guidance of the National Center. This approach ensures that co-creation is relevant to organizations that may exist in vastly different geographic, administrative, and socioeconomic contexts while simultaneously leveraging the design and development capabilities of UW's CoSSAR. This structure also elevates regional concerns to a national level where organizations may discover that their challenges are similar in unexpected ways, paving the way for solutions that might not otherwise be conceived. The SECURE Center will be "Community Designed, Community Used, Community Improved," designing a suite of solutions will include but is not limited to shared tools, best practices, training, analyses, and other information, all delivered through SECURE SVE to assist the research community in making decisions regarding their research activities in the context of malign foreign threats. Additionally, the SECURE Center will build capacity in participatory design that may have the power to transform the way other challenging issues, such as administrative capacity to secure and manage federal research funding at ERIs & MSIs, are addressed. 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.