This $240,000 National Science Foundation Project Grant under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) federal grant program will fund research and outreach from June 2023 through May 2026. The fellow will synthesize data on phylogenetic history, functional traits, and assemblage composition for freshwater mussels to predict how animal traits govern effects on stream carbon cycles. Specifically, the fellow will determine the relationship between mussel trait phenotypes and phylogeny, calculate...
This $1,016,000.00 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program will fund the development and application of a low-cost, portable biosensing platform for detecting and monitoring waterborne pathogens in aquaculture and coastal environments. The University of Massachusetts Lowell, as the prime awardee, will lead the effort to adapt its patented biosensing technology to enable real-time pathogen detection and...
This Project Grant award of $270,000.00 was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program. The award will fund a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2025 to investigate how the blue mussel Mytilus edulis and its gut microbiome interact to break down the toxic pharmaceutical pollutant carbamazepine. The research will assess the tolerance of the mussel "holobiont" (mussel and gut microbiome) to varying carbamazepine...
This $650,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) supports the development of engineered microbial sensors for assessing water quality. The primary objective is to create new low-cost sensing systems that can detect chemicals in water throughout the water cycle, including wastewater treatment, drinking water, industrial use, and stormwater discharges. The project employs a convergence research...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant award to Northwestern University, under the Biological Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.074), provides $3,000,000 over 5 years to develop rapid, in-home water quality biosensors to address global water security challenges. The project will leverage insights from the study of natural microbial water contaminant detection to create a synthetic biology biotechnology platform for detecting lead, copper, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances...
This $200,000 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems aims to develop a novel water quality monitoring system based on plasmonic sensing with metal-insulator-metal (MIM) nanosensors embedded in soft hydrogel matrices. The key research activities include: 1) modeling and designing the Au-SiO2-Au MIM nanosensors using finite element analysis, 2) synthesizing and testing these nanosensors to optimize plasmonic...
This $290,422 federal project grant was awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program to Washington State University (WSU). The grant will support research exploring how environmental stress, specifically changes in body temperature, can alter the physiological functional diversity of individuals within animal populations over time. The research team will combine experiments on California mussels with comprehensive protein expression...
This $301,751 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Integrative Activities program (CFDA 47.083) supports a collaborative research project to develop new sensor technologies for detecting and measuring phosphorus in the environment. The key objectives are to: Design and develop molecular "receptor" elements that can selectively bind to various phosphorus compounds; Integrate these receptor elements with semiconductor technologies to...
This $313,727 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Activities program funds a 5-year collaborative research effort to develop low-cost, portable sensors capable of accurately measuring phosphorus levels in agricultural, environmental, and marine settings. The project brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in areas such as supramolecular and inorganic chemistry, polymer science, soft-matter electronics, and environmental...
This $2,495,019 project grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070), will support the development and deployment of a smart, cloud-connected electrochemical sensor network to monitor drinking water quality in several socioeconomically diverse Massachusetts communities. The University of Massachusetts Lowell will work with community stakeholders and sub-awardees Loyola University Chicago, the Young Women's...