University Of Arizona

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

Project Summary/Abstract Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been studied for only one decade but have been implicated in many different disease settings such as cancer, neurological, and cardiovascular disease. CircRNAs are endogenous RNAs with a covalently closed loop originating from back-splicing events of pre-mRNA, which can be detected from raw sequencing data. Moreover, they are seen as powerful biomarkers for major human diseases due to their stability. However, while there have been advances in computational circRNA analysis, in general, circRNA research faces computational challenges, specifically the requirement for bioinformatics expertise, the need for suitable infrastructure, and the location of auspicious datasets. This accessibility gap impedes researchers to perform critical analyses and contribute to the emerging and exciting field of circRNA research. Existing methods for circRNA detection from RNA-seq data have been in development for several years, but common to all of them is the requirement for advanced bioinformatics expertise. Moreover, preprocessing as well as the actual circRNA detection require considerable bioinformatics infrastructure. Each of these barriers are significant hurdles for researchers. This proposal is the result of 8 years of circRNA research and algorithm development. The laboratory of the PI has developed and maintains circRNA software tools that are actively used by many researchers around the world and has analyzed hundreds of circRNA datasets. The goals of this proposal are to substantially improve the accessibility and usability of computational circRNA research to all researchers, independent of computational expertise, infrastructure requirements, or source of data, addressed in three aims: 1) Develop innovative circtools modules with support for emerging approaches. New modules will significantly enhance the capabilities of the circtools core application with a specific focus on novel approaches, such as full-length circRNA sequencing. 2) Create a modular, multi-tool circRNA analysis pipeline providing functional insights. We will add multiple innovative features to the circtools pipeline that will allow for increased circRNA detection sensitivity using multiple circRNA detection tools and add functional insights using external data sources. 3) Design circtools.cloud, a user-friendly web portal to perform comprehensive circRNA analyses. Building on the expertise of this research team in creating R and Python-based software, the first dedicated circRNA web application will be created to process raw and processed data. This project will unlock computational circRNA tools for easy use by researchers who are currently unable to perform circRNA analyses due to missing infrastructure or computational expertise. Successful completion of this project will have an immediate and broad impact on circRNA research in human disease studies (as well as other species) involving circRNAs.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Nontechnical The energy consumption associated with computing has increased dramatically in the past decade due to rapid development of new technologies, where a substantial amount of energy is wasted in the standby state of modern transistors. In this project, the team explores a novel class of devices based on a special quantum mechanical property of electrons called spin. Information stored by spins can last even after the power is turned off, enabling development of highly efficient memory or logic devices. This team studies devices where the spins in magnetic materials point in different directions, resulting in a zero net magnetization. In these so-called antiferromagnetic devices, very interesting properties such as large on/off ratio and energy efficient operation have been predicted. This project combines theoretical research to identify the best antiferromagnetic systems and unveil new physical mechanisms with experimental fabrication and characterization of their unique properties and implementation in computer memory systems. This project supports at least six Ph.D. students and offers research experiences to undergraduate students in all three participating universities. The workforce development and outreach plans include development of new degree programs and hosting teachers from Title I high schools. Technical An emerging class of magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) based on antiferromagnets (AF-MTJ) is explored in this project. The principal investigators study novel AF-MTJs with a holistic codesign approach, where physics, materials, device and system-level research are synergistically integrated. Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) - compatible processes are employed to fabricate AF-MTJs on (earth-abundant) Si wafers, making results of this project ready to be transferred to industry. In addition to the investigation of the new tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) phenomenon based on momentum-dependent spin polarization, the PIs investigate spin-transfer torques (STT) and voltage controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) effects in AF-MTJs. This project focuses on antiferromagnetic materials with noncollinear spin configurations, where large TMR ratios have already been predicted by the team through first-principles calculations. Combinatorial growth of films and wafer-level structural and magnetic characterization are employed to enable rapid identification of the best materials. In addition, TMR, STT and VCMA effects with direct currents are probed by a unique method based on conducting atomic force microscopy in sub-100nm devices that can be rapidly fabricated, providing very useful insight for the subsequent RF characterization of fully patterned devices in the dynamic region down to 100ps. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2026 · 2024-09

Project Summary: Obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus accelerate aging shortening the duration of healthspan. Conversely, chronic calorie restriction extends healthspan. Most research aimed at understanding the mechanism by which calorie restriction slows aging has focused on insulin and downstream signaling cascades. Similarly, the accelerated aging in type 2 diabetes is largely attributed to dysfunctional insulin signaling. Glucagon, a hormone that counter-regulates insulin, is commonly affected by these same interventions. We have shown that glucagon receptor deletion decreases median lifespan by 35% in normal weight mice. Glucagon receptor deletion shortens lifespan to a greater degree in diet induced obese mice and prevents the extension in lifespan resulting from calorie restriction. This proposes that the hyperglucagonemia in obesity may be protective against obesity accelerated aging and that glucagon is essential for calorie restriction to extend lifespan. Although the role of glucagon receptor signaling in aging has not been heavily investigated, the rigor of this work is supported by known effects of glucagon on downstream messengers that extend healthspan. Both AMPK activity and cyclic AMP are established mediators that extend healthspan. Glucagon activates AMPK and increases cAMP. Highlighting the significance of this proposal, Glucagon receptor agonists are entering the market for the treatment of diabetes and obesity. To understand the potential impact of these agonists, we propose to study the role of glucagon receptor signaling in normal aging, the accelerated aging in obesity, and the slowed aging resulting from calorie restriction. We propose 2 aims that focus on genetic (Aim 1) and pharmacological (Aim 2) manipulation to increase glucagon receptor signaling. We will combine these models with dietary models of obesity and calorie restriction and with genetic models of normal glucagon receptor signaling and glucagon receptor knockout to better understand the role of glucagon receptor signaling in normal aging, obesity accelerated aging, and the slowed aging resulting from calorie restriction. We have established that glucagon is integral in extending lifespan in calorie restriction and maintaining lifespan in obesity. We appreciate that insulin plays a key role in aging, but also recognize that pharmacologically targeting insulin signaling is limited because of the key role of insulin in glucose homeostasis. Conversely, glucagon receptor agonists are safe. In turn, this research provides a unique opportunity to identify a new, therapeutically viable target to extend healthspan and lifespan.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

ABSTRACT Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), an emerging risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), disproportionately impacts the Mexican-origin (MO) population. This is of particular concern as liver disease and liver cancer are among the leading causes of death for MO adults. While disparities of NAFLD prevalence have been attributed to the interplay of genetic, behavioral, and socioenvironmental factors, limited scientific efforts have been undertaken to characterize the underlying mechanisms driving the well documented NAFLD disparities in MO communities. Further, despite MO adults increased risk of experiencing acculturative stress, it has rarely been considered in the context of NAFLD. This is a significant gap in knowledge given acculturative stress has been linked to poor lifestyle behaviors (e.g., diet) and stress-related inflammation; thereby driving aberrant liver pathologies and ultimately cancer carcinogenesis. In fact, it has been hypothesized that elevated levels of pro-inflammatory markers may be the primary pathophysiological pathway linking acculturative stress and NAFLD. However, this remains to be determined. Thus, the proposed project will combine complementary quantitative and qualitative approaches in a mixed-methods project to (1) investigate the relationship between acculturative stress and NAFLD severity among a sample of 150 MO adults with known NAFLD; (2) the relationship between acculturative stress and pro-inflammatory markers among a sample of 150 MO adults with known NAFLD; and (3) qualitatively assess the impact of acculturative stress on MO adults’ modifiable behaviors that drive inflammatory response and are central to NAFLD management. The proposed project, led by an experienced multidisciplinary team of investigators, is a critical step to develop effective stress management strategies to reduce NAFLD and liver cancer risk among MO individuals.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

PROJECT SUMMARY Asthma contributes to chronic absenteeism and learning loss in U.S. school children and respiratory distress is the leading cause of 9-1-1 calls from schools. When students with asthma experience respiratory distress, an essential aspect of symptom management is the administration of albuterol sulfate, a short-acting beta agonist. Despite laws allowing students to self-carry albuterol inhalers in all 50 U.S. states, access to life-saving medications for emergency respiratory distress during school hours remains limited. This issue has far- reaching consequences, contributing to chronic absenteeism and increased healthcare utilization. However, a stock inhaler program that allows schools to maintain a single inhaler for use by any student who experiences respiratory distress is a low-cost solution. The Stock Albuterol for Every “SAFE” School Program is a school- based stock albuterol program in the state of Arizona. Although the program has shown effectiveness, challenges in its implementation persist, particularly in rural areas. The innovation here lies in exploring three implementation strategies that vary in their intensity and resource requirements to support program adoption, maintenance potential, implementation fidelity, student reach and effectiveness. The first two of these implementation strategies (toolkit, toolkit+nurse coach) have been widely used in Arizona schools and the third (toolkit+practice facilitation+nurse coach), which includes practice facilitation, is hypothesized to increase program adoption and implementation maintenance. We aim to adapt the nursing principles of practice facilitation to a school-based stock albuterol program. By conducting a Hybrid Effectiveness Implementation (HEI) Type 3 Design, this research aims to provide evidence-based recommendations, including relative cost-effectiveness of the individual and combined strategies that can be applied in the other 17 additional U.S. states with stock inhaler laws. The proposed research represents a significant opportunity to empower policymakers, healthcare providers, and educators to improve student health and safety, ultimately bridging the gap in access to life-saving medications and safeguarding the well-being of our youth.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Many languages are endangered, including numerous Indigenous languages. Because endangered languages have strong linguistic and cultural significance, as well as scientific value as a component of linguistic infrastructure, it is important to support and inform documentation and revitalization efforts for these languages. Modern technologies, including infrastructure to archive large-scale collections of recordings and computer-based analysis tools, have strong potential to facilitate documentation efforts. However, not all stakeholders have access to these technologies. This project advances knowledge concerning the necessary training and resources required to support effective and inclusive use of technology in the context of endangered Indigenous languages. This work is timely because many language communities are faced with urgent needs to develop language technology to support documentation efforts. This project provides education for students and community members. It also benefits society by expanding language technology development to include Indigenous language community members, a significantly underserved population. Sustainable language technology development must be consistent with the needs, practices, and values of the communities undertaking the work, and, in many cases, is best done within the communities themselves. This community-based project addresses problems that stem from difficulties in access to technology infrastructure in Indigenous communities and linguistic biases built into existing computational technologies. In doing so, it incorporates communities' needs, practices, and values regarding data sovereignty and appropriate access to language materials. Using a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional approach, the project builds capacity and infrastructure to support the development of effective, durable, and appropriate language related technologies by Indigenous communities. The project creates a network of diverse individuals who share expertise, resources, and tools for capacity development in addition to resources needed to create and maintain language-related technologies (e.g., applications, websites, keyboard inputs, dictionaries) and natural language processing and AI technologies (e.g., speech-to-text, text-to-speech, predictive text, machine translation). This project yields a sustainable set of technological supports that integrate with community values and advance ongoing Indigenous language revitalization. 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

As the challenges facing society grow more complex, there is increasing recognition that engineers must consider the social and environmental contexts in which their designs will exist in order to create effective products, systems, and processes that improve global quality of life. However, engineering curricula often focuses on technical design performance, and provides little training on how to contend with environmental and social challenges, leaving students ill-equipped to address sustainability during design. In support of the goals of the Research in the Formation of Engineers program and the NSF-Lemelson Initiative on Environmental and Social Sustainability in Engineering Education, this project will advance understanding of how to support engineering students’ preparation to address global social and environmental sustainability challenges. Specifically, this project will advance an educational approach focusing on priming that is adaptable across engineering disciplines and provide guidance for implementing this approach to emphasize social and environmental sustainability within existing curricula. Emphasizing sustainability in engineering may particularly resonate with and attract individuals from diverse and minoritized backgrounds drawn to impact-driven careers. Therefore, this project can contribute to creating a more inclusive and representative engineering workforce ready to address socio-technical challenges. This project seeks to develop, implement, and assess priming as an educational strategy to promote sustainable engineering design decision-making at the University of Michigan and the University of Arizona. Priming involves explicitly introducing a stimulus to students and assessing the subsequent response. Multiple prior studies have shown that, in controlled behavioral experiments, explicit sustainability language in problem statements results in better consideration of sustainability in subsequent design decisions. Additionally, supporting students to handle socio-technical complexity has been hypothesized to promote students’ sense of engineering agency beliefs and self efficacy. In this project, the team will adopt a mixed methods approach to investigate (1) the potential to scale up priming for sustainability as an engineering education intervention, (2) the role of priming on sustainable engineering design, (3) the impact of priming for sustainability on engineering students’ sense of agency and self-efficacy. The project team will first develop a range of sustainability primes, informed by literature on engineering education, design processes, sustainability competencies, and the Lemelson Initiative’s Engineering for One Planet Framework. The team will work with engineering instructors to tailor sustainability primes to fit within existing engineering design courses. The team will then collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data from engineering instructors and students. Initial interviews will be conducted with engineering instructors to understand their course and learning objectives and to identify opportunities to add in priming for sustainability. After the sustainability primes are implemented in courses, interviews will be conducted with students to garner detailed insights into their experiences in engineering design courses, the design artifacts resulting from their courses, and their perspectives on sustainability in engineering. Validated tools will be used to measure changes in students’ engineering agency beliefs and self-efficacy before and after exposure to sustainability primes within engineering design courses. The expected contributions of this project are multifaceted. First, this project will provide guidance for integrating sustainability into engineering design curricula, resulting in more sustainable design decisions by students. By creating adaptable priming interventions, the project will provide a scalable tool for use by a broad set of engineering institutions and disciplines to emphasize sustainability. Additionally, this project will enhance an understanding of the relationship between students' beliefs about their engineering capabilities and their consideration of sustainability, an area that remains underexplored yet has potential to broaden participation and retention in engineering education. 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: The number of Native Americans (NA) entering the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce is the smallest proportion of any ethnicity. At the same time, this group faces tremendous health disparities, with many directly linked to brain health. Education in, and awareness of, neuroscience-related health issues in NA communities involves three inter-related challenges: lack of a workforce culturally attuned to NA communities, systemic lack of capacity for on-site biomedical research, and significant mistrust of western scientific research and researchers. The proposed program focuses on developing NA health professionals and academic researchers who possess both cultural competence and trust from their communities, elements critical to eliminating health disparities and minority representation in STEM fields. In addressing these challenges, we first recognize that many NA students approach the world and the means to investigate it from fundamentally different philosophical perspectives. In contrast to highly reductionist Western models, traditional NA epistemological models are more holistic and narrative-based. Importantly, these models, in which animate and inanimate entities are connected and interdependent, should not be seen as pedagogic deficits, but rather as an innate strength that may allow these students to construct and expand upon sophisticated mental models of current scientific knowledge. We have developed an educational program that integrates established best pedagogical practices with neuroscience research learning experience. By integrating the holistic perspectives of NA cultures with the scientific problem-based approach of neuroscience, we will advance and enrich both perspectives. The training program proposed herein is designed to create a pipeline of NA students to advance from their undergraduate programs to post-baccalaureate neuroscience programs at top tier research universities, creating a model of culturally grounded STEM education while bolstering NIH workforce and cultural diversity. We will accomplish this goal through a series of interrelated aims. Our first specific aim is to develop and institute a recruitment plan to attract NA students interested in neuroscience. Our second specific aim is to develop a research experience and scientific training that integrates established best pedagogical practices with neuroscience research. Specifically, we will focus on developing the scientific literacy of the students, providing them with professional development opportunities and a sense of belonging within the academic community. Our third specific aim is focused on providing a mentoring and retention system for NA students to successfully transition into neuroscience graduate programs.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2024 · 2024-09

ABSTRACT/SUMMARY Homicide is a leading cause of death among women who are pregnant and within 1 year postpartum in the US. A majority of cases involve intimate partner violence (IPV), which is known to escalate during pregnancy. Our overall objective is to understand, from the perspective of health care providers and survivors of violence, barriers and preferences for increasing IPV screening and supports in maternity care settings. This information will inform the future development and implementation of a multi-level intervention to build capacity and improve provider and system-level responses in the care of pregnant and postpartum women experiencing IPV. Our specific aims are (1) To identify specific barriers to and preferences for IPV screening and responding as perceived by health care providers, and (2) To obtain in-depth understanding of the preferences around screening and responses to IPV as perceived survivors of violence during pregnancy and postpartum. Our approach involves the convening of focus groups comprised of health care providers who may come in contact with pregnant and postpartum patients (including OB/GYNs, advanced practice registered nurses, pediatricians, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, and emergency department practitioners) as well as women who experienced violence during pregnancy or the postpartum period. We will use Nominal Group Technique, a structured idea-generating process that produces quantitative weights to a breadth of issues that were obtained through a qualitative, discussion-based approach. Findings from this work will include a comprehensive view of reasons underlying the consistently low rates of identification and responding to IPV among pregnant and partum women among providers who are mostly likely to encounter this population. Of critical importance, this work will center the voice of those with lived experience and provide a detailed characterization of how best to identify and support pregnant IPV survivors in health care settings, by their own account.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

Abstract. Physiological and psychological factors, such as homeostatic needs or emotional state, underlie the decisions we make. A growing body of evidences suggests that these factors shift the baseline firing rate of neurons across the brain, thereby changing the initial conditions that inform our decisions. The goal of the proposed research is to understand how internal states, a term that encompass these factors, are represented in the brain and how they may alter decision making. In the remainder of my graduate training under Prof. Katalin Gothard (the F99 portion of this application), I will evaluate the role of interoceptive afferent signals signals originating in the body and communicated to the brain via the vagus nerve and spinal cord, in driving baseline firing rate in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during an approach-avoidance conflict task. To do this, I will selectively manipulate the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic tone in the viscera using glycopyrrolate, a pharmacological agent that does not cross the blood-brain barrier but blocks parasympathetic muscarinic receptors in the body. I will record neurons from the ACC of rhesus macaques while they perform an approach-avoidance conflict task before and after glycopyrrolate administration. Preliminary results indicate that this manipulation increases avoidance behavior. I hypothesize that the sympathetic-dominated visceral state induced by glycopyrrolate will significantly alter the baseline firing rate of ACC neurons, and that the new baseline firing rate will be predictive of increased avoidant decisions. Through this project, I will receive training in the behavioral training of animals, neurophysiological techniques, and computational approaches to data analyses. My co-sponsor, Dr. Aaron Batista at the University of Pittsburgh, will help me use the “computation through dynamics” framework for the analysis of my data. For my postdoctoral training (the K00 portion of this application), I propose to evaluate the role of the ACC in driving prosocial decision making and generating other- oriented value representations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). I will record neurons from the dlPFC and optogenetically inhibit projection neurons in the ACC while marmoset monkeys perform a social decision- making task. I hypothesize that inhibiting the ACC, which has been shown to respond more when conspecifics are rewarded than when the monkey itself receives a reward, will reduce prosocial behavior and shift the baseline firing rate of dlPFC neurons toward firing rates that are predictive of antisocial decisions. This project will evaluate the neural circuits that underlie prosocial behavior in marmosets and provide me with critical training in the use of causal genetic manipulations in non-human primates. Overall, the training I will attain by performing these experiments will prepare me for a career as an independent researcher where I will continue to study how internal and external signals affect social and cognitive decision-making.

NIH Research Projects · FY 2025 · 2024-09

Emergency medical services (EMS) represent a critical facet of the public health infrastructure that could be impacted by short-term variations in air pollution and temperature, but the U.S.- wide burden on EMS systems associated with these exposures remains unknown. Due to inherent limitations of the administrative health data, prior works examining short-term effects of environmental exposures have assumed constant exposures over delineated locations (such as census tracts) and times (usually a day), which could lead to exposure significant misclassification and bias in the risk estimates. In this study, we will leverage a national database of 911 calls, the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS), to test the hypothesis that short-term air pollution and temperature exposures are associated with EMS transports. NEMSIS has information on the patient demographics as well as the location and times of EMS activations across all 50 states. This detail, size, and nationwide coverage of NEMSIS make the dataset uniquely suitable for characterizing the exposure- response relationships across multiple populations in the U.S. at varying geographic and temporal scales. Our aims are to: 1) construct a highly resolved spatiotemporal data architecture linking 911 calls with environmental exposures (fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, temperature average, temperature variability), built environment, and neighborhood characteristics for years 2017-2022+; 2) evaluate the U.S.-wide short-term associations between air pollution/temperature exposures and cause-specific EMS transports (all-cause, cardiovascular, respiratory, temperature-related, and injuries); and 3) examine the associations between exposures and EMS outcomes in select urban areas incorporating spatiotemporally dynamic exposure estimates derived from low- cost sensors and population mobility datasets. This proposed project evaluates the nationwide risks for EMS transports associated with air pollution and temperature exposures for the first time. This work will also allow us to measure the impact of exposure misclassification by leveraging recent advancements in exposure assessment tools and unique information in EMS data on event locations and times.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Convection is one of the most fundamental processes in planetary atmospheres. While often imperceptible on Earth, this boiling motion — where warm air rises and cool air subsides — helps to control a wide range of atmospheric properties, from temperature to cloudiness. Despite its central importance, convection and its impacts on how worlds cool over time are thoroughly understudied for gas giant planets. To make novel scientific progress in our understanding of how convective mixing impacts the nature of giant planet atmospheres, the project will develop computational simulation tools aimed at investigating the physical, evolutionary, and observational consequences of convection for gas giant worlds. These simulations will both reveal elements of how our own Solar System has evolved over billions of years and empower observations of distant exoplanets from ground- and space-based platforms. Alongside these novel studies, efforts will also be dedicated to enhancing STEM research experiences for undergraduate researchers from historically marginalized groups. Evidence indicates that convective mixing significantly influences the atmospheric structure of giant exoplanets and brown dwarfs. This is especially true for clement giants experiencing water condensation, due to the large latent heat of condensation and molecular abundance for water. This project will bridge the divide between one-dimensional radiative-convective models and three-dimensional general circulation models through a novel application of convection-resolving fluid dynamics. Outcomes from these simulations will include spectral observables related to convective processes as well as novel models for how gas giant worlds cool over time. The project also includes the design, implementation, sharing, and study of a rapid Python training camp for undergraduate space science researchers from historically marginalized groups. The central goal of this training is to accelerate and improve results from undergraduate faculty-led research experiences. 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

Non-Technical Abstract: Cell membranes are sophisticated soft material assemblies that are crucial to biological function and technological applications. They exhibit diverse functionalities that are shaped by the molecular architectures of their lipid and sterol building blocks. To understand membrane functions and design related technologies, it is essential to determine how variations in molecular compositions govern membrane behavior across different functional scales. In this project, a team of researchers combine experimental and computational methods to determine how molecular forces – dictated by lipid and sterol chemistries – control the material properties of membranes on various scales of size and time. The broad aim is to simplify the complex relations between membrane structure and behavior by discovering physical laws that capture non-intuitive and often contradictory observations. This research has important implementations in understanding the role of membrane properties in health and disease and driving new innovations in artificial cells, biosensors, and drug delivery methods. Technical Abstract: Replicating the multifunctionality of cell membranes is a significant focus in synthetic biology, artificial cell technologies, and biosensing applications. To achieve this goal requires knowledge of how lipid and sterol variations – such as modifications in sterol structures and changes in lipid headgroups or acyl chains – affect molecular interactions and membrane dynamics. In addressing such pressing scientific needs, the project aims to uncover the physical principles underlying structure-property relationships in biomimetic cell membranes across multiple spatiotemporal scales. It integrates experimental methods including neutron spectroscopy, solid-state deuterium NMR relaxometry, and Flicker spectroscopy with molecular dynamics simulations to establish the connection between structural descriptors, emergent dynamics, and viscoelastic properties on molecular, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels. By specifically focusing on mesoscopic dynamics, which remain poorly understood, the project fills a critical information gap in membrane biophysics. Quantifying how various dynamic modes are affected by lipid architecture or sterol content is directly relevant to biological functions and bioengineering. These findings promise to enrich our understanding of membrane evolution, guide the design of lipidic materials with tailored functionalities, and advance computational biophysics by providing training data sets for simulation tools and machine-learning algorithms. 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

Climate change and biodiversity loss are among the most pressing challenges facing our planet, with over one million species at risk of extinction. These crises have far-reaching consequences for all life, given the interconnectedness of animal, plant, human, and environmental systems—an interdependence known as One Health. The CAMBIUM (Climate change Adaptation and Mitigation through Biodiversity Informatics edUcation and Mentoring) program at the University of Arizona addresses these challenges by training a new generation of scientists in biodiversity informatics. CAMBIUM equips students with the skills to analyze, integrate, and utilize large-scale biodiversity data, what is often referred to as “big data”. This innovative program fills existing gaps in graduate education by combining biodiversity data science, policy training, and transdisciplinary team science. Over five years, CAMBIUM will engage 268 students, awarding fellowships to 18 and involving an additional 250 students, including 150 PhD and 100 MS candidates. The CAMBIUM program advances three central hypotheses: predicting the impacts of extreme climate events, identifying changing infectious disease risks through forecasting non-human hosts and vector dynamics, and improving policymaker guidance with biodiversity-based model outputs. By fostering collaboration among academia, industry, and government, CAMBIUM aims to develop innovative solutions to these grand challenges while preparing students for diverse careers. The program will enhance public engagement and transform graduate education at the University of Arizona by integrating data science, policy, and governance education, while providing students with formal team-science training and opportunities for collaboration with community partners. CAMBIUM will transform how we understand and address the intertwined issues of climate change and biodiversity loss. By training scientists to leverage big data and work across disciplines, CAMBIUM aims to create a platform for biodiversity education that enables students to address the complex challenges of creating a sustainable future where ecosystems and human societies can thrive together. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs. 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

Exploding stars, called supernovae, have an outsized impact on the Universe, seeding the next generations of stars and planets with newly-forged chemical elements, and shaping galaxies. Important clues about what exploded and how arrives only in the first hours and days after these explosions, so it is important to have telescopes that can promptly identify and study new supernovae. This research team will enhance its rapid survey for the nearest and brightest supernovae in the sky. They will incorporate new infrastructure to find even younger nearby. As part of this work, three graduate students will learn and contribute to supernova science and develop skills in technical software, data analysis, and scientific presentation and publication. The team will also communicate research results and technical expertise to the public, running a software bootcamp at Pima Community College, using supernova science examples, and contributing to planetarium shows at the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. The team will search for supernova in galaxies within 40 Mpc of Earth, taking advantage of four small telescopes in the PROMPT network. The survey employs a real-time machine learning algorithm that can automatically trigger other telescopes once a strong supernova candidate is found; further improvements to this algorithm will be made, incorporating new telescopes and instruments. Combining this active search with the data streams of other supernova searches will yield 30 very young nearby supernovae over three years – the predict the discovery of 12 thermonuclear, type Ia supernovae; 12 core collapse supernovae and 6 stripped envelope supernovae. Early spectroscopy that displays narrow emission lines will probe the composition of the circumstellar medium and thus the final years of the progenitor star’s life. For all types of supernovae, densely time-sampled spectroscopy will measure the composition and distribution of the ejecta. 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 Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is an array of twelve radio antennas spread across the globe. These antennas are combined to form an earth-size telescope whose spatial resolution is set by the observing wavelength and the largest telescope. Observing at a radio wavelength of 1.3 mm, the EHT has made the first images of black hole event horizons. The event horizon marks the boundary around a black hole beyond which no radiation can escape. To improve on these results, the EHT will observe at a wavelength of 0.9 mm to get 40% better resolution. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a critical station for EHT. The investigators will build an upgraded receiver for the SPT - the Advanced South Pole Integrated Receiver for EHT (ASPIRE). The process of building ASPIRE will create opportunities for comprehensive training in scientific instrumentation for graduate and undergraduate students, with the latter selected from existing University of Arizona programs that support underrepresented STEM students through their college careers. The ASPIRE receiver will incorporate new state-of-the-art sideband-separating 0.9 mm (345 GHz) mixers currently being developed for another NSF-funded receiver at University of Arizona. The simultaneous operation in two bands, 1.3 mm and 0.9 mm, will maximize the resolution of the EHT array and enable atmospheric delay correction through frequency-phase transfer, which will improve sensitivity and provide phase-referenced astrometry between bands. A novel wideband digitizer system will see its first astronomical use and become available for many other applications. A new optics design will use a dichroic beam splitter to enable simultaneous observing in both bands and enable quick swapping between illuminating the ASPIRE receiver and illuminating the main SPT-3G camera. Together, these changes will make the best possible use of the SPT as an EHT site and open the door to new science, including measurements of the magnetic structure of the accretion flow and jets, millimeter-wave follow-up of multiwavelength and multi-messenger transients, time-variability studies, and the lensed photon ring. 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 We propose to develop and disseminate an advanced 2p Bessel beam light sheet (2pBLS) microscopy instrument for high-speed sub-micron-resolution volumetric imaging in deep tissue. The proposed instrument will have a significantly higher volume imaging speed over a large field of view, maintain a sub-micron diffraction- limited resolution in deep tissue despite the presence of tissue scatter and aberration, and perform simultaneous lifetime imaging with FRET sensors and high-speed light sheet imaging of dynamics intensity-modulated sensors for dual functional imaging in deep tissue. The system will be tested with two imaging studies in zebrafish and mouse respectively. In zebrafish, we will demonstrate live FLIM imaging of genetically encoded FRET sensors in zebrafish kidney and perform an imaging study of Ca2+ and cAMP activities in zebrafish renal cells. In mice, we will demonstrate imaging of neural and glial activities genetically labeled with activity sensors (Ca2+ and GEVI), FLIM-FRET sensors (PKA) and structural markers ex vivo and in vivo.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

A 3-year research program led by investigators at the University of Arizona will extend the reach of ground-based astronomy into the near-ultraviolet (NUV) by utilizing an ultraviolet-optimized camera located at a top astronomy site to observe supernovae, the cataclysmic deaths of massive stars. Long the exclusive domain of costly and competitive space missions, the UV has had limited contributions to the study of the explosive deaths of stars. The UV emission from supernovae is a sensitive probe of the density and types of metals in the debris of stellar explosions. The team will support existing space UV telescopes, most notably the NASA Swift mission, but will also extend the science by being devoted to following transients and providing critical NUV follow-up. In the interest of maximizing scientific output and guaranteeing maximum inclusiveness, the team will freely accept targets from the entire astronomy community, as well as provide analyzed data products to all astronomers. By providing undergraduate students with hands-on experience in commissioning a UV camera on a robotic telescope, the program will be training the next generation of instrumental astronomers. Transient astronomy has grown considerably with the development of wide field-of-view detectors and the advent of true multi-messenger triggers of new events. The NUV wavelength range provides important information for transient science, as it reaches closer to the peak emission from these energetic explosions and disruptions. Additionally, the NUV is a wavelength range highly affected by absorption from iron-peak elements, so key information about the event is encoded in the evolution of the UV brightness. There is a need for new systems to observe transients in the NUV during the post-Swift era. Space-based missions are expensive and competitive. The team is adapting an existing telescope to be the first of a ground-based network of telescopes (NUTRANS) that could accomplish a large fraction of NUV science for orders of magnitude less cost. The key components of these telescopes will be a NUV CCD camera that reaches 200nm without a drop-off in transmission combined with filters sensitive to 300nm. This program will regularly add NUV information to multi-wavelength studies of transients. The system will accept sources from the worldwide transient surveys and provide real-time photometry of targets. 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

Our solar system contains only one star, but most systems contain two or more stars. The number of stars in a system depends on the conditions when those stars were born. The team will study the formation of multi-star systems using computer models. These models including physics like gravity, turbulence, radiation and feedback from the stars themselves, such as winds and heating. The investigators will analyze the models to study the different ways multi-star systems form. Studying the origin of stars enables a better understanding of the origin of our own solar system and how common Earth-like planets. They will create summary movies, targeted for the public, by creating visually appealing moves for planetarium shows. The team will help train the next generation of scientists and the technical workforce. They will build an inclusive environment for students and provide practical hands-on computer training that will allow the students to work in industry or academia. Binary star formation occurs during the earliest stages of star formation, when star-forming cores and disks are highly obscured and difficult to probe at high resolution. The proposal addresses a fundamental question: Why do some filaments, cores, and disks produce multiple gravitationally bound stars, while others produce only single stars? To address this question, the proposers will study the physics responsible for stellar multiplicity, with a specific focus on determining the incidence of each channel for multiple formation and on disentangling the impact of the initial gas conditions (nature) from the influence of dynamical interactions (nurture). The team will analyze a series of magnetohydrodynamic simulations of star cluster formation that include all major physical processes in order to explore the relationship between multiple protostellar systems, gas properties and dynamical interactions. 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

Water is a critical national resource for drinking, growing food, and industry. Computer simulation, or modeling, is a key way that the amount, movement, and future availability of water is calculated. The United States has a relative abundance of hydrologic observations, but they are collected and managed in diverse ways that hinder comprehensive understanding. Major components of the hydrologic cycle are observed by different agencies, and the data are stored in different locations and formats. This makes it difficult to take advantage of the observations in a holistic way. There are a growing number of hydrologic models that need to be compared to these observations. Those without the time or expertise to invest in data gathering and processing are left with an incomplete picture of watershed conditions, and water managers often do not have meaningful ways to evaluate the performance of water models. This project is developing a national watershed evaluation framework over the United States. It brings together water managers, experts in modeling and data, and federal agencies to provide a better picture of the state of watersheds and the models used to manage them. Watersheds are rapidly evolving, and it is more important than ever to have agile ways to explore and diagnose changing conditions considering many variables at once. This project will develop the first Integrated Watershed Evaluation Framework for the United States. This cyberinfrastructure framework will bring together a wide array of hydrologic datasets covering everything from point observations such as groundwater depth and streamflow, to remote sensing of all manner of landscape variables, to human operations data such as reservoir releases and diversions. Much more than a data portal, this framework will provide tools for model evaluation and benchmarking, and a web-based user interface for easy watershed exploration by experts and non-experts alike. Both the framework and portal are community-driven, and a diverse community will be engaged throughout every step of the project. This engagement will start early through a user-centered design process and continue with hackathons, modeling residencies, user testing, and outreach events. 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.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) is the premier source of information regarding plant and animal phenology, the timing of life-cycle events such as leaf budburst, flowering, and fruiting or insect adult emergence, in the United States. Phenology observations maintained by USA-NPN are contributed by professional and volunteer observers at tens of thousands of locations across the country, and these data are used widely in science, science communication, and management. However, critical limitations in the USA-NPN’s data collection and access infrastructure currently limit public engagement and research use from reaching their fullest potential. This work will result in major improvements to the USA-NPN’s data collection mobile app and to data access tools. These enhancements are expected to lead to substantial growth in volunteer participation, especially from locations and communities of people that do not yet participate. Engaging a larger and more diverse community in data collection will result in a more robust, balanced, and representative phenology dataset, which will contribute to societal well-being through the provision of better ecological data to inform decision-making. The full set of activities directly links to our ability to understand planetary resilience. The USA National Phenology Network is a national-scale program focused on the collection, provisioning and use of plant and animal phenology data. In this study, the researchers will make major improvements to the USA-NPN’s technical infrastructure in order to lower barriers to entry for new and continuing public participants who collect phenology data and increase engagement and connections among participants. In particular, we will develop observing challenges, in-app badges, enhanced, tailored user notifications and multilingual support for the USA-NPN mobile app. This work will also support science and management use by ensuring data quality through the addition of photo storage, computer-aided identifications, and enhanced discoverability. In particular, the researchers will improve tools to access data, and periodically publish the dataset to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. These participation and user-focused improvements will lead to a redesigned, easier-to-use set of access points for the research community, and integration into global ecological data-sharing initiatives with a focus on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data. Finally, this work will support training and new opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students interested in the public participation in science. 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

Numerous small organisms that swim, fly, smell, or feed in flows at scales in which inertial and viscous forces are nearly balanced rely on using branched, bristled, and hairy body structures. Such structures have significant biological implications. In coral, they determine the success rate of catching prey through particle capture, and there are many other organisms which similarly rely on the transition of their body structures from solid surfaces to leaky/porous “rakes.” Active particles (e.g. swimming plankton and microorganisms) can also enhance or reduce capture through their own behaviors. Although flows around such organisms have been studied before, the fluid dynamic mechanisms underlying the leaky-rake to solid-plate transition and how it affects particle capture remain unclear. The goal of this project is the development of open-source numerical software to elucidate the fluid dynamics of such biological and bioinspired filtering arrays, including how the individual and collective behavior of the active particles affects filtering outcomes. In addition, the Investigators will design software training materials and complementary classroom modules. The Investigators will engage in public outreach for all ages through targeted modalities for different age demographics such as participating in the Skype A Scientist program for younger children and coral reef conservation courses aimed at older retirees which will incorporate math and physics. The natural world is replete with mesoscale filters that are significant to biological and biomedical applications. These are, however, challenging multiscale problems that require high accuracy to resolve the flow through complex structures that are sensitive to small perturbations. To understand these problems, the research team aims to 1) develop a Method of Regularized Oseenlets that can be employed as a gridless method to resolve flows through filtering structures for Reynolds numbers near unity, 2) develop and test force spreading operators that are independent of the grid size for the immersed boundary method, 3) develop and implement numerical techniques to efficiently describe the interactions of agents in flow with moving, complex 3D boundaries, and 4) implement tools from sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification to reveal which parameters are important for particle capture and to guide the development of more detailed agent and flow models. Upon doing so, the project will focus on the filter feeding of plankton by Cnidarians and will address the following (i) identifying small-scale flow patterns within rigid and flexible filtering structures at the leaky-to-solid transition, (ii) understanding how small-scale flow patterns affect the capture of Brownian swimmers, and (iii) determining the collective effect of fundamental behaviors in small organisms for capture and targeting in the presence of flow. The frameworks developed here can be broadly applied to other biological systems where mesoscale exchange occurs, e.g. the filtering structures of fish or the chemical sensors of insects and crabs. 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

Rocky planets orbiting stars other than the Sun (exoplanets) are common, and cutting-edge space- and ground-based telescopes are now observing their atmospheres through their spectroscopic features. By analogy to Earth, the atmospheres of these planets are expected to be shaped by release of gases from their hot interiors, termed “outgassing”. Drawing connections between studies of Earth and studies of exoplanets, researchers at the University of Arizona will model the geochemistry and observational signposts of magmatic outgassing on temperate, Earth-like exoplanets. They will integrate this exoplanet research with a science enrichment program conducted at Flandrau Planetarium, targeting grades 3-6 from the diverse Tucson school system, reaching thousands of students. Atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets are now becoming observable, and the first hints of atmospheric detections have begun to emerge. Some of these exoplanets are predicted to have enhanced magmatic outgassing of volatile species due to strong tidal heating, which might detectably modify their atmospheres. This is significant because magmatic volcanism is invoked as both a habitability indicator and as a potential source of abiotic false positives for biosignature gases. The investigators will produce theoretical models of exoplanet volcanism, accounting for magmatic outgassing of volatiles, their atmospheric photochemical processing, and radiative transfer simulations of the resultant planetary spectra. They will determine the best spectral signatures of magmatic outgassing and how those signatures may be used to determine the properties of the underlying planet. They will also develop a new Astronomy Discovery Program at Flandrau Science Center & Planetarium, consisting of hands-on inquiry-based activities. The goal is to enhance science literacy and recruitment to STEM and college and to broaden the demographical participation in science. The program will include exoplanet themes, leveraging the expertise of the researchers; it addresses state and national science standards, meeting community needs. 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

This award combines novel detections of gravity waves and particles with traditional astronomy observations to better understand the physics of merging black holes and neutron stars. This way of exploring the universe is powerful but presents challenges. Often the direction and origin of the merger is uncertain, and astronomers must search large areas of the sky to identify any explosions that may be related. Response time is also important, as any astronomical signal may only last for hours and may be confused with many unrelated sources in the night sky. To address this challenge, a team led by the University of Arizona and Northwestern University will develop a tool that uses data archives and real-time observations to help astronomers assess incoming candidate counterparts to gravity wave and neutrino events. This product will lower the barrier to enter this exciting field and bring together communities including high schools, smaller institutions and amateur astronomers. This award will fund scholarships for high school students to conduct related research. The team will build the Treasure TROVE (a Tool for Rapid Object Vetting and Examination), which will use the vast stores of information in astronomical archives and real-time searches for supernovae to help multi-messenger astronomers assess and prioritize incoming candidate counterparts to gravitational wave events and neutrinos. For each candidate transient counterpart to a gravitational wave or particle messenger, the Treasure TROVE will crossmatch it with galaxy catalogs, archival imaging, and other public archives to determine whether the distance, variability, and association with other types of transients is consistent with the messenger. This will allow for ~50% of candidates to be discarded without any further need of follow-up, and for the most promising candidates to be prioritized. This program will involve community engagement, providing workshops, tutorials, and public workspaces that will ensure the broadest possible community can use the Treasure TROVE and participate in multi-messenger astronomy. Multi-messenger event localizations can span 1-1000s square degrees on the sky, and follow-up electromagnetic observations can uncover tens to hundreds of transients within that region - only one of which can be related to the gravitational wave, neutrino, or high-energy particle alert. The Treasure TROVE tool will take basic information of recent transients and automatically place each object in context using historical light curves and host galaxy identification, along with cross-matching with image archives and multiple point source, variable, and quasar catalogs. The Treasure TROVE will simplify this task with an easy-to-use software and web interface, optimizing follow-up telescope resources and speeding discovery. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-09

A major goal of modern astronomy is the detection of Earth-like exoplanets. To do this, it is necessary to block the light from the central star so that any planets are not lost in the glare. Blocking out this central bright star is a significant challenge that must be met in order to find and study faint Earth-like planets. This investigation will contribute toward this goal by developing a new type of coronagraph, a special device for blocking the starlight, for mid-infrared instruments. The investigators will demonstrate this new technology through a first-of-its-kind observation of a nearby star that could lead to the discovery of new exoplanets. This program will more broadly impact society through student research and education opportunities. In addition, the investigators will help to develop a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce by hosting a workshop on the technique of coronagraphy, and promoting the full participation of women, disabled persons, and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields through teaching and inclusive educational programs. This project will result in the manufacture and commissioning of a new type of coronagraph for mid-infrared exoplanet imaging observations: the Quadruple Annular Groove Phase Mask (Q-AGPM). The Q-AGPM builds on the successful design of the classical AGPM. The quadruple-etched design in a single unit will enable the nulling power of the typical AGPM design to be combined with multiple beams and/or multiple beam positions to mitigate the mid-IR background through differential imaging. The investigators anticipate a Q-AGPM equipped 8m telescope to be two and a half times more sensitive–covering an estimated ~60% of the current gap between imaging warm sub-Neptunes and super-Earths around the closest stars. They will demonstrate this gain in sensitivity by conducting a test observation. In a one week campaign (approximately three to six nights, depending on weather), the team will demonstrate the sensitivity of a single-target long exposure, which could lead to the discovery of new exoplanets. This program will more broadly impact the community by creating student research opportunities and by hosting a workshop for advanced undergraduate and graduate students that will focus on the history, modern designs, and important scientific results of coronagraphy. 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.