November 15, 2022 Newsletter

November 15, 2022

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Research News

Iowa State One of Three Universities to Receive National Award

Iowa State won an Innovation and Economic Prosperity University Award for the fourth time since 2017 from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. Iowa State received first place in the “Innovation” category. These APLU annual awards are intended to honor institutions performing exemplary work to advance the economic wellbeing of their states, regions, and the nation. Read more…

2022 Bridging the Divide Grant Awarded to Iowa State Researchers Investigating Forced Labor in Supply Chains

Iowa State Dean’s professor of supply chain management Frank Montabon and associate professor of aerospace engineering Kristin Rozier have been selected to receive funding from the 2022 Bridging the Divide seed grant program to explore ways to detect and eliminate the use of forced and slave labor in supply-chain networks. Read more…

New Study led by Iowa State Mines Blood Cell Data to Improve Swine Health

Iowa State scientists are leading a new study to mine the intricate content of pigs’ blood cells to improve selection for disease resilience. Christopher Tuggle, professor of animal science, is the lead investigator on a new $650,000 grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). The new grant grew out of the Functional Annotation of the Animal Genome (FAANG) project. Read more…

ISU Paper Shows High-end Hotels Manipulate Reviews When Competing With Airbnb

Cheng Nie, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics at Iowa State, recently co-authored a paper published in MIS Quarterly that found high-end hotels often inflate their ratings when they face greater competition from Airbnb. Nie and his team focused on the eight-year period following Airbnb’s launch in 2008 to see if this new form of competition changed how hotels manipulated reviews. Read more…

Ikuma Receives $3.2 Million EPA Grant to Accelerate Environmental Equality

Engineers at Iowa State are starting a project to normalize and accelerate water reuse for rural communities. The Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering just received a $3.2 million grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency for this project, led by associate professor Kaoru Ikuma. The team is also working with the University of Rhode Island and the University of California Berkeley. Read more…

Announcements

Register Now for Climate Smart Research & Innovation Roundtable

The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) encourages all Iowa State faculty with Climate Smart areas of focus – from new technologies for combatting climate change to climate change’s effects on communities and societies, among many others – to participate in the first Research & Innovation Roundtable (RIR) of the 2023 fiscal and academic year. Register here by end of day tomorrow, Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

New Proposal Development and Routing System on the Way

The Iowa State Research Enterprise will discontinue use of the GoldSheet and Cardinal Sheet in June 2023 after more than 20 years of service. These internal routing forms and related systems will be replaced with Streamlyne, an enhanced “one-stop shop” proposal development and routing system that will offer campus faculty and administrators an abundance of new features and functionalities. Streamlyne proposal development dashboards will deliver increased visibility and transparency of process and content at all stages. Budget development will be included in the system and Streamlyne has a system-to-system (S2S) portal for Grants.gov submissions that eliminates the duplicate entries required by use of Cayuse. Introductory demonstrations will be held starting in December and user training will begin in Spring 2023. The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) and Office of Sponsored Programs Administration (OSPA) will share more details in the weeks ahead.

Applications Open for ISU Startup Factory Incubator Program

The ISU Startup Factory Incubator program is recruiting for the spring semester cohort. The ISU Startup Factory is for researchers, inventors, and founders looking to validate their scalable startup idea. Entrepreneurs receive training, resources, guidance, and access to a network of mentors, alumni, and advisors. During the 18-week program, innovators will develop their business acumen, enhance their communication skills, and learn deeply about their customers. This curriculum will prepare them to pursue non-dilutive funding as they continue developing their technology and commercialization plans. Questions can be directed to Peter Hong (petehong@iastate.edu). Applications are due December 2. Apply here.

Internal Funding Opportunities

Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics Innovation Fellowships

Applications are currently sought for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics Innovation Fellowships, which provide resources to allow active pursuit of technology licensing, commercial partnerships, or new venture formation by research-focused entrepreneurs who have motivation to identify and commercialize novel technologies. Applicants should have a suitable technical knowledge and a strong interest in developing entrepreneurial talents to form a successful new venture or actively support technological commercialization in the vaccines and immunotherapeutics field. Applications are due December 2, 2022.

Presidential Interdisciplinary Research Initiative (PIRI)

Proposals are now being accepted for the Presidential Interdisciplinary Research Initiative (PIRI), designed to proactively invest in initiatives that promote a culture of interdisciplinary research, help to secure new large-scale research grants and contracts, and build the university’s reputation for innovation. PIRI projects are expected to lead directly to the advancement of significant interdisciplinary research strengths that generate a transformational impact at the university, across sectors, and throughout the state and nation. Teams of researchers will be supported to prepare and submit proposals, compete successfully for significant external funding, and bring to campus multiple large-scale flagship research programs in strategic areas of scholarship and expertise. White papers are due January 13, 2023, followed by an invitation for full proposals on February 1, 2023.

Brown Graduate Fellowship Program

Applications are being accepted for the Brown Graduate Fellowship Program, used to strategically advance Iowa State research in the areas of study that are governed by the Valentine Hammes Family and Leopold Hammes Brown Family Trust. The areas of study include science, agriculture, and space science. Fellowship funds may be used as partial funding for a fellowship or used to enhance an existing fellowship. Funds can be used to assist current graduate students or by graduate programs in the recruitment of new graduate students. The preference is to fund Ph.D. students, although exceptional M.S. students will be considered. There is a limit of one application per graduate program. Applications are due January 15, 2023.

Training & Development

IRB Special Topics: Secondary Research
December 1 — 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. — Virtual

This event will be an in-depth discussion about secondary data and is most useful for attendees who have completed IRB 101 or have basic knowledge of IRB principles and processes. Register here.

OVPR PIRI Lunch & Learn
December 8 — 12 p.m. – 1 p.m.

Researchers interested in learning more or considering submitting proposals to the Presidential Interdisciplinary Research Initiative (PIRI) are encouraged to attend this session, hosted by the Office of the Vice President for Research. Associate vice presidents for research Jim Reecy and Surya Mallapragada will be available to share their perspectives and answer questions. Register here.

Voices in Research

“This is a new way to measure urban areas. Now we can answer some questions we couldn’t answer before about city development and building a more equitable and sustainable future. A 30-times difference is huge, and that’s important in understanding inequality. With this data, we can significantly improve large-scale climate modeling in urban areas.”

Yuyu Zhou, associate professor, Geological and Atmospheric Sciences

“Most models don’t take into consideration that geographic locations are linked in  through trade and migration and that people may change jobs. Our model shows that these linkages matter when trying to think about the economic impacts of climate change, and we shouldn’t ignore them. Florida is predicted to get unbearably hot in 100 years, but people don’t have to stay there. They can move, which is a form of adaptation.”

Gary Lyn, assistant professor, Economics

“The derecho of 2020 resulted in long and widespread outages that adversely impacted many Iowans, especially those from vulnerable and low-income communities. After the derecho, we started to talk with different rural utilities and discuss their perspectives on the extent of damage and potential solutions. One of the main questions for utilities was whether they had access to planning tools required to assess the risk of failure considering hazards in Iowa. Many simply did not.”

Alice Alipour, associate professor, Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering