Category: Stories

Dani Kohen, Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant (#1900590) for a three-year project entitled “RUI: Molecular Insight into Cation Motion within Zeolites.” NSF funding will enable Prof. Kohen and her team of undergraduate researchers to conduct an in-depth computational study of the design and identification of zeolites – porous minerals commonly used as commercial adsorbents and catalysts – in a variety of industrial processes.

Rou-Jia Sung, Assistant Professor of Biology, has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant (#1841992) for her project, “Development of Novel Augmented Reality Tool for Teaching Molecular Visualization in Biochemistry.” Prof. Sung will work with coPI Dr. Andrew Wilson, Academic Technologist for Digital Scholarship, to develop a freely available AR-based application that can be installed on mobile smartphone and tablet devices and will contain virtual 3D objects representing the molecular structures of three fundamental molecules central to biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, and genetics curricula. Each molecule will be associated with a set of learning materials, developed by the project team, to facilitate use in the classroom. The three-year project involves 5 Carleton undergraduate researchers, Prof. Jane Liu at Pomona, and Prof. Thom Bussey and a graduate student at UCSD. Prof. Sung’s and Dr. Wilson’s application was recently covered the magazine The Scientist, which published a short article on its development and use so far.

Laska Jimsen, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, is one of 60 inaugural recipients of the Jerome Foundation’s Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships. In collaboration with Prof. Jason Coyle at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Prof. Jimsen creates experimental nonfiction film and video work that foregrounds acts of observation in sustained investigations of human-animal relationships, systems of management and classification, and representations of the everyday. Prof. Jimsen and Prof. Coyle are developing new projects that draw on the history of automation and pose questions about contemporary labor and workplace transformations.

Alex Knodell, Assistant Professor of Classics and Co-Director of Archaeology, has been awarded a 2019 New Research Grant from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) for the Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP). The INSTAP grant will advance a multidisciplinary archaeological project focused on several small, uninhabited islands in the Cyclades, an archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Such places have played many roles at various points in history – for example as cemeteries, stepping stones, sanctuaries, refuges, and “goat islands.” SCIP will investigate the archaeological and environmental history of these islands from prehistory to the present, focused especially on questions of maritime connectivity, island communities, and an archaeology of uninhabited spaces and in-between places.

Cindy Blaha, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, has just received an NSF grant to work with four collaborators to institutionalize a mentoring program for female physics faculty. Operating under the auspices of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and directed by a team that also includes lead PI Beth Cunningham and co-PIs Anne Cox from Eckerd College, Barbara Whitten from Colorado College, and Idalia Ramos from the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, the “Mutual Mentoring to Combat Isolation in Physics” project will use a combination of face-to-face meetings and electronic connections to reduce the isolation of participating physicists and to support their career development. As many as 50 women physics faculty members will participate in the mutual mentoring alliances supported by this project.