Grant News

Marty Baylor, Associate Professor of Physics, has been awarded an SPIE (The international society for optics and photonics) Education Outreach Grant for her project, “Understanding Interferometry with LEGO.” The funds, enabling purchase of a travel-ready interferometer, support outreach to middle and high school students underrepresented in STEM. The new interferometer along with simple landscapes made from LEGO will be used to teach about how light can be used to make precision measurements at BLAST (Northfield), STEAM (Faribault), and TORCH (Northfield).

Lori Pearson, Professor of Religion, is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend for her project, “Marianne Weber and the Origins of Religious Studies.” Prof. Pearson’s book, Sexuality and Secularization, uses the work of Marianne Weber (wife of Max Weber) to explore how debates about women’s rights informed early 20th-century theories of religion, and this grant will support her summer work to draft the final book chapter.

Layla Oesper, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has been awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER grant for her project, “Algorithmic Approaches for Phylogenetic Analysis of Tumor Evolution.” Her work will contribute to computational genomics and cancer research through the development of methods for comparison, summarization, and communication of clonal trees that reveal how tumors acquire mutations leading to uncontrolled cell growth. Additionally, Prof. Oesper’s research involves undergraduate researchers in computational biology through workshops, innovative classroom experiences, and cutting-edge research. CAREER grants are NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty and support those with the “potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.”

Michael McNally, John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies, has been awarded a fellowship from the Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs. This prestigious program aims to deepen public understanding of religion by advancing innovative scholarship on religion in international contexts and by equipping individual scholars and institutions of higher education with the capacities to connect their work to journalism and the media and to engage audiences beyond the academy. This support will enable Professor McNally to complete a book exploring Native American religions through the lens of their engagement with contested sacred lands and other current issues, rethinking the definitional conundrum of Native “religion” with the international possibilities of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Andrea Mazzariello, Assistant Professor of Music, is the recipient of a Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council (SEMAC) Artistic Support for Individuals grant for his project Music for Bridging. SEMAC’s funding will support the participation of Northfield musicians JC Sanford and Brady Lenzen in the improvisation, collaboration, and recording processes.

Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments, is the recipient of a Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council (SEMAC) Artistic Support for Culture Bearers grant for her new work.

Asuka Sango, Associate Professor of Religion and Director of Asian Studies, organized two transdisciplinary workshops with the support of a grant from the Japan Foundation, New York. Held in January and February, the online workshops featured presentations by professors, independent researchers, and curators from Japan, Europe, and North America.

Jake Morton, Assistant Professor of Classics, has been awarded a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year. This grant will support work on his upcoming monograph, “The First Roman Invasion of Greece: Where they went, who they were, and why it matters,” which explores a groundbreaking interpretation of Roman actions in Greece between Rome’s initial invasion in 200 BC and the peace terms imposed in 167 BC. Novel methodology – a combination of topographic study, philology, and comparative history and anthropology – will be employed to argue for a new understanding of both Rome’s shifting foreign policy and developing cultural identity in this key period in Mediterranean history.

Noboru Tomonari, Professor of Japanese and Chair of Asian Languages and Literature, received a grant from the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, to purchase Japanese-language teaching materials. The grant enabled the purchase of 54 volumes, which are now available to students and faculty.

Julie Neiworth, Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of Natural Sciences and Psychology, was awarded an NIH AREA grant (2R15AG051940-02) entitled “Longitudinal Cognitive Behavioral Testing and Immunohistochemical Assessment of Alzheimer’s Disease Markers, Immune Response, Neurogenesis, and Cell Loss in a Natural Aging Primate Model.” This is a renewal of the former funded grant which examined how beta amyloid plaques and neural loss corresponded to failures in tasks testing working memory, rule shifting, and visual attention in cotton top tamarins as a natural process of aging. In this current renewal, Neiworth is adding a number of immune response measures, including the state of astrocytes and microglia in the brain and hyperphosphorylated tau, as well as signs of neurogenesis in aging tamarins. These are correlated with their tracked cognitive decline in life and indicate patterns related to natural aging, dementia, or Alzheimer’s disease like symptoms. This is Neiworth’s fifth NIH award, all involving undergraduate student collaborators.