This National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Materials Research award, under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), provides $392,000 in funding to Syracuse University from August 1, 2023 to July 31, 2026 to conduct theoretical and computational research on rigidity and shape transitions in living and non-living materials. The key objectives of the research are to: 1) study rigidity and convexity in disordered fiber networks, 2) develop a continuum theory to...
This $275,315 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports research at Purdue University to understand how the mechanical regulation of chromatin motion in the cell nucleus responds to external stimuli. The project aims to develop new imaging platforms and experimental methods to simultaneously quantify intracellular tension and chromatin dynamics under mechanical disturbance. This work has the potential to...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences Program (CFDA 47.049) provides $450,000 to Syracuse University over 3 years starting September 1, 2025. The project aims to develop new theoretical and computational tools to predict and program plasticity, flow, and arrest in dense active matter materials. The key focus is on designing disordered active materials that can reconfigure their shape and rheology on command to perform tasks like...
This $196,673 federal Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program, supports collaborative research at Yale University to develop a predictive framework for understanding how the physical microenvironment influences 3D genome organization and gene expression. The project will integrate super-resolution microscopy, genomics, biophysical modeling, and machine learning to decode the relationship between the...
This federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Integrative Activities program (CFDA 47.083) supports research to quantify the mechanical forces inside living cells and determine how changes in these forces impact cellular behavior. The $160,000 award to Boise State University, with a project period from February 1, 2025 to January 31, 2028, aims to develop predictive tools that use mechanical forces to control cell behavior, enabling advances in tissue engineering,...
Syracuse University was awarded a $579,303 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation on June 15, 2021 to complete work by May 31, 2024. The grant falls under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) to promote progress in these fields and enhance understanding of major problems. Specifically, the funding supports an integrated computational and experimental approach to reveal design principles for responsive nanomaterials derived from disordered proteins modified...
Syracuse University was awarded a $668,729 project grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041). The award will support research into the biomechanics and mechanobiology of vimentin intermediate filaments and their role in cell motility and nuclear stability. Specifically, the university will investigate how vimentin enables cells to sense and respond to mechanical stresses, and study...
Syracuse University has been awarded a $338,480 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to develop a 3D computational model of epithelial stratification and turnover in skin tissue. The three-year award beginning May 1, 2023 will support the university's research using biophysical modeling and collaboration with cell biology experiments to quantitatively predict the mechanical response of self-renewing stratified epithelia. Specifically, the...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program provides $200,000 in funding to The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to conduct collaborative research that aims to understand genomic organization in the cell nucleus. The research team will employ an integrated approach leveraging biophysical modeling, super-resolution imaging, and machine learning to develop predictive models of how chromatin structure and...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences awarded a $399,755 Project Grant to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049). The grant funds the development of new mathematical modeling paradigms and simulation software tools for investigating cell mechanics across multiple scales. This includes contributions from cell membranes and the cytoskeleton, and the roles of geometry,...
This $395,749 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) will enable researchers at Syracuse University to develop a comprehensive physics framework for understanding how cell nuclei and tissues adapt to extreme mechanical stress. The project aims to investigate the mechanisms by which cell nuclei deform and respond to compression, as well as how tissue-level forces impact chromatin organization. The researchers will build on their prior work across the cell nuclear, cell, and tissue scales to create predictive models of how cells and tissues maintain functionality under extreme mechanical loading. This interdisciplinary effort will also involve collaborations with creative writing faculty to engage biophysics students in cross-disciplinary activities, with the goal of improving communication skills and fostering creativity. The award period runs from August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2028.