College of Health Sciences
Mark Lusk, Ed.D., and Eva Moya, Ph.D., each received a grant from UTEP’s Hispanic Health Disparities Research Center (HHDRC). Lusk, professor of social work, is studying the link between secondary trauma among caregivers and their exposure to migrants who have been severely traumatized as a result of violence and crime in Mexico. Moya, assistant professor of social work, is investigating the health and social consequences of intimate partner violence.
College of Education
Judith Munter, Ph.D., associate dean of the College of Education and associate professor of teacher education, received a grant from the University of California, Berkeley, to support “Bridging Worlds,” a binational project based at UTEP that links the University with the University of Yucatan in Merida, Mexico, and a community-based center in San Francisco that offers health care to a Mayan immigrant community. The goal is to develop binational approaches to health education through health promotion for the Mayan-speaking health care workers.
College of Engineering
Christopher Kiekintveld, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science, was awarded a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study ways to improve the robustness of decision-making in the face of challenging problems. Potential applications for the research include guiding security and defense strategies for such institutions as the Federal Air Marshals Service and the U.S.
Border Patrol. Other applications include trading strategies in auctions, and improving security in computer networks.
Chintalapalle Ramana, Ph.D., assistant professor of mechanical engineering, received a grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration through the University of California, Berkeley to investigate more efficient structural materials for nuclear reactors. Choosing nuclear structural materials is challenging since materials are exposed to extreme conditions of temperature, pressure and nuclear irradiation that induce damage and diffusion. The goal of this study is to achieve higher temperature tolerance, materials’ strength, and superior physiochemical compatibility to develop next-generation structural materials for nuclear reactors. Ramana’s team will collaborate with scientists and engineers at the McClellan Nuclear Research Center in McClellan, Calif.
Soheil Nazarian, Ph.D., director of the Center for Transportation Infrastructure Systems and professor of civil engineering, received funding from the Federal Railroad Administration in partnership with the University of Illinois to help develop a practical tool for railroad personnel to quickly and non-destructively asses the condition of track substructure using seismic wave propagation principles. The team hopes to advance understanding of using seismic techniques to assess soil deposits, pavements and bridge structures to improve safety and minimize derailment.
Patricia Teller, Ph.D., professor of computer science, received a grant from The University of Texas at Austin to participate in its National Science Foundation-funded project “Stampede,” a world-class supercomputer with comprehensive computing and visualization capabilities for the national open science community. Teller and her research team will bring special expertise to the project and will work with the operations team to ensure successful support of computer science research.
Roger V. Gonzalez, Ph.D., professor of mechanical engineering, received funding from the National Science Foundation to study and quantify knee stability and instability, in particular for those who have suffered ACL injuries and no longer have the ligament. Gonzalez hopes to quantify the involvement of ACL injuries in knee stability, an important topic within musculoskeletal biomechanics.
College of Liberal Arts
Zita Arocha, senior lecturer in the Department of Communication, received a grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation covering a three-day training workshop for 15 journalists from small to mid-size newspapers to teach them how to report and write about immigration in their local communities, including how to analyze U.S. Census and immigration data and employ visualization and social media tools for effective storytelling.
Carol Brochin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of English, was awarded a West Texas Writing Project Seed Grant Program grant from the National Writing Project. These funds may be used for program work, stipends, local travel, and any other expenses relevant to re-establishing her research site. In addition, a speaker will be invited to work with teachers in a three-day institute on campus to develop research projects related to writing and literacy.
Stephen Crites, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Psychology, received a National Science Foundation grant award for his research on “A Priming Paradigm for Eliciting Neural Correlates of Concealed Attitudes,” which aims to extend and strengthen previous studies on time-specific brainwaves as a psychophysiological alternative for detecting deceit when people lie. These new studies will demonstrate that response conflict and cognitive complexity can be indexed by time-specific brainwaves when people are deceptive.
Theodore Curry, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology and anthropology, received an award from the National Science Foundation for a grant titled “Why Are Immigrant Neighborhoods Low Crime Neighborhoods?” A growing body of research shows that crime is much lower than expected in immigrant neighborhoods. Curry’s co-PIs are Cristina Morales, Ph.D., department of sociology and anthropology associate professor and Harmon Hosch, Ph.D., interim director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior.
Keith Erekson, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of History, was awarded a Humanities Texas Summer Teacher Institute grant from Humanities Texas for the Summer Teacher Institute exploring topics in U.S. history central to the state’s 11th grade U.S. history curriculum. Humanities Texas and The University of Texas at El Paso presented the three-and-a-half day institute in June.
Laura O’Dell, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, was awarded a minority internship grant for her project “Diabetes Enhances Susceptibility to the Rewarding Effects of Nicotine.” The grant will fund an undergraduate internship for student Jesus Jurado to work approximately 20 hours a week on studies involving nicotine self-administration in diabetic and control rats across a range of nicotine doses as well as whether a normalization of glucose levels via insulin replacement returns nicotine intake back to control levels.
College of Science
Xiujun (James) Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, received a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to study and develop a more rapid, low-cost and highly sensitive diagnosis of meningitis. Li plans to use a small paper-based ‘lab-on-a-chip’ – a device that integrates multiple laboratory functions onto a tiny microchip – as the new diagnosis method, which he expects will be as simple to use as a pregnancy test strip.
Jerry Johnson, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences, and co-principal investigator Michael Moody, Ph.D., assistant professor of biological sciences, received a grant from the National Science Foundation to start a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) summer program at UTEP to study Chihuahuan Desert biodiversity. Research topics will include conservation, ecology, parasite-host relationships and biomedical issues related to the ecosystem. Field trips to the surrounding desert habitats, such as the Indio Mountains Research Station, will take place for students to collect data.
Laura Serpa, Ph.D., professor and chair of geological sciences, and co-principal investigator Olga Kosheleva, Ph.D., associate professor of teacher education, received a two-year grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to provide professional development to middle school mathematics and Earth science teachers with the goal of increasing student success and interest in the disciplines.
Helmut Knaust, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematical sciences, received a grant from the Mathematical Association of America to fund five undergraduates within the department during an intensive six-week summer research experience. Students investigated discrete wavelet transformation applications, such as whether FBI fingerprint algorithms can be modified to other images like facial portraits.
Renato Aguilera, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences, received a four-year grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to further study and characterize novel compounds discovered in his lab that are toxic to B- and T-cell lymphomas. B- and T-lymphomas are blood cancers that affect Hispanics and African-Americans at a higher proportion than the rest of the population, and some of these cancers are incurable. The research may lead to the development of a new drug that targets the specific cancer.
College of Nursing
Holly Mata, a research associate in UTEP’s Hispanic Health Disparities Research Center (HHDRC), received a grant from the HHDRC to fund a project that promotes health equity to reduce Hispanic health disparities. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the HHDRC is an ongoing collaboration between the School of Nursing, the College of Health Sciences and The University of Texas at Houston School of Public Health.
Elias Provencio-Vasquez, Ph.D., School of Nursing dean, received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing to award 12 scholarships to students in the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing Fast Track Program during the 2013-14 academic year. The RWJF New Careers in Nursing Scholarship Program provides scholarships directly to students from groups underrepresented in nursing or from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Guillermina Solis, Ph.D., assistant clinical professor in the School of Nursing, and co-principal investigator Katherine Lawson, Ph.D., a lecturer in the College of Health Sciences’ Occupational Therapy Program, received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health to implement a fall prevention program for women ages 55 and older in El Paso County.