Summary of 2020–2021 Awards
22 grants to 19 individual awardees: $1,502,561 total
- $232,065 for 11 arts & literature and humanities grants
- $1,270,496 for 11 science, social science, and math grants
Rika Anderson, Assistant Professor of Biology
Global Fellowship
Funder: University of St Andrews, UK
Award date: 7/15/20
Award amount: $2,500
Project period: 8/1/20-8/31/21
This Global Fellowship enables scholars to work within the academic community at St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. She will work in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences on projects related to the early evolution of microbial metabolisms on Earth.
Susannah Ottaway, Professor of History
Developing an Irish Castle in Virtual Reality
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Award date: 7/29/20
Award amount: $7,283
Project period: 9/1/20-12/1/21
A Digital Humanities Advancement Grant supports the team of Prof. Ottaway and Thomas Herron at East Carolina University, who will design and test teaching modules built in virtual reality for an existing 3-D digital model of Kilcolman Castle, Ireland, home of English poet Edmund Spencer.
Ryan Terrien, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Collaborative Research: An Agile Electro-Optic Frequency Comb for Precision Near-Infrared Radial Velocity Spectroscopy with the Habitable Zone Planet Finder
Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Award date: 8/13/20
Award amount: $68,529
Project period: 9/1/20-8/30/23
As part of collaborative research with partners at UC Boulder, U Arizona, Pennsylvania St U, Prof. Terrien and the team will upgrade the Habitable Zone Planet Finder spectrograph with new functionality and improved performance that will accelerate US exoplanet science and astrophysics and demonstrate technology for the future generation of astronomical instruments.
Amna Khalid, Associate Professor of History
John Stuart Mill Faculty Fellowship
Funder: Heterodox Academy (HxA)
Award date: 9/1/20
Award amount: $86,882
Project period: 9/1/20-2/28/21
Prof. Khalid’s inaugural year-long fellowship will enable her to give her undivided attention to issues that she is passionate about and that align with the mission of HxA: increasing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in higher education.
Melanie Freeze, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science
“Up to Us Voting Modules” mini-grant
Funder: Project Pericles
Award date: 9/1/20
Award amount: $500
Project period: 9/1/20-6/1/21
Incorporating “How to Vote” civic engagement in Prof. Freeze’s fall 2020 ACE course Polarization, Parties, and Power, students completed voting plans and participated in voting outreach to elementary students and others in the community. The grant will also fund a political psychology class research project during the Spring 2021 term that examines people’s response to public health messaging from Republican and Democrat governors, with a focus on vaccinations.
Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments
Creative Support for Individuals grant for pipa composition and performance
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB)
Award date: 11/10/20
Award amount: $6,000
Project period: 11/10/20-11/9/21
Gao will compose a pipa concerto that she will premier in her debut performance with the Minnesota Orchestra and present lecture demonstrations remotely for Minnesotans.
Andrea Mazzariello, Assistant Professor of Music
Creative Support for Individuals grant for “War Footing”
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB)
Award date: 11/10/20
Award amount: $5,500
Project period: 11/10/20-11/9/21
Prof. Mazzariello’s “War Footing” is a large-scale work facilitates collaboration and co-creation between local musicians, in response to a framework of original songs and pieces.
Cecilia Cornejo, Instructor in Cinema and Media Studies
Creative Support for Individuals grant for The Wandering House
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB)
Award date: 11/10/20
Award amount: $5,400
Project period: 11/10/20-11/9/21
The funds will allow her to expand her ongoing The Wandering House project over the course during 2021. Through virtual visits to The Wandering House, Cecilia will reconnect with Lanesboro and Northfield residents to explore how notions of “home” have transformed in light of the global pandemic and the uprising that followed the killing of George Floyd.
JC Sanford, Instructor in Trombone/Euphonium and Tuba
Creative Support for Individuals grant for jazz recordings
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB)
Award date: 12/2/20
Award amount: $6,000
Project period: 12/1/20-11/30/21
JC will produce a CD and digital jazz recording with his Imminent Standards Trio to take the place of their usual monthly performances at Imminent Brewing in Northfield which has been halted by COVID-19.
Dan Maxbauer, Assistant Professor of Geology
Carbon sequestration by enhanced silicate weathering in agricultural soils
Funder: Keck Geology Consortium and National Science Foundation (NSF)
Award date: 12/31/20
Award amount: $34,600
Project period: 5/1/21-6/30/22
Funding from the Keck Geology Consortium, supported by NSF EAR, will support a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) project in summer 2021 at the Carleton campus. Prof. Maxbauer will mentor four students in conducting an agricultural field trial to test the efficacy of rock dust amendments with a focus on evaluating carbon sequestration, crop yields, and soil health.
Mike Nishizaki, Assistant Professor of Biology
Collaborative Research: RUI: Microscale interactions of foundation species with their fluid environment: biological feedbacks alter ecological interactions of mussels
Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Award date: 1/12/21
Award amount: $97,891
Project period: 2/1/21-1/31/24
Working with Emily Carringon at U. of Washington and Matthew Reidenbach at U. of Virginia, Prof. Nishizaki and his students will investigate mussel behavior and physiology using a combination of lab, field, and computational fluid dynamic model experiments.
Anya Vostinar, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Subaward: CAREER: Uncovering the strange biology of elusive Shigella phages and their roles in horizontal gene transfer
Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Award date: 1/12/21
Award amount: $73,413
Project period: 1/12/21-12/31/22
As a subaward from Michigan State University. Prof. Vostinar’s work supports lead PI Kristin Parent’s CAREER project that explores Shigella phage-mediated genetic transfer effect on microbiome evolution. Vostinar and her undergraduates will assist with computational development and analysis of a simulation of the bacteria-phage dynamics with intent toward development of a predictive tool that can ultimately be applied to other bacteria-phage interactions.
Julie Neiworth, Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of Natural Sciences and Psychology
Longitudinal Cognitive-Behavioral Testing and Immunohistochemical Assessment of Alzheimer’s Disease Markers, Immune Response, Neurogenesis, and Cell Loss in a Natural Aging Primate Model
Funder: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Award date: 2/10/21
Award amount: $438,067
Project period: 2/15/21-1/31/24
This NIH AREA grant 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 7th federal grant obtained at Carleton, with 2 NSF grants for equipment and renovation of courses, and a total of 5 from NIH on research with undergraduate student collaborators studying cognition in birds and primates. Neiworth’s research and teaching has been funded by NIH and NSF for 24 of the 34 years she has been a faculty member at Carleton, with a total of $1.7 million in funding.
Jake Morton, Assistant Professor of Classics
Fellowship: The First Roman Invasion of Greece: Where they went, who they were, and why it matters
Funder: Loeb Classical Library Foundation
Award date: 2/26/21
Award amount: $40,000
Project period: 7/1/21-6/30/22
This grant supports Prof. Morton’s work on an upcoming monograph exploring 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.
Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments
Artistic Support for Culture Bearers, Afro-Puerto Rican-Chinese Fusion
Funder: Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council (SEMAC)
Award date: 3/19/21
Award amount: $3,000
Project period: 4/1/21-3/31/22
Support for Culture Bearers funds individuals trained by traditional elders or master artists, whose artistic practice reflects the cultural life of a community with a common ethnicity, geographic or regional identity, occupation, language, or tribal affiliation.
Andrea Mazzariello, Assistant Professor of Music
Artistic Support for Individuals grant, Music for Bridging
Funder: Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council (SEMAC)
Award date: 3/19/21
Award amount: $3,000
Project period: 4/1/21-3/31/22
Prof. Mazzariello’s Music for Bridging work begins with the creation of original song-poems that get spun into structures that might be improvised upon or otherwise engaged by musicians from a wide range of traditions in innovative ways, and upon which visual elements will be built. SEMAC’s funding will support the participation of Northfield musicians JC Sanford and Brady Lenzen in the improvisation, collaboration, and recording processes.
Michael McNally, John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies
Religion as Peoplehood: Native Americans, the Environment, and the Sacred
Funder: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Henry Luce Foundation
Award date: 3/23/21
Award amount: $63,000
Project period: 9/1/2021-5/30/2022
This Luce/ACLS Fellowship in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs, during the 2021-2022 academic year, supports Prof. McNally in completing a book exploring Native American religions through the lens of their engagement with contested scared lands and other current issues, rethinking the definitional conundrum of Native “religion” with the international possibilities of the U.N.
Layla Oesper, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
CAREER: Algorithmic Approaches for Phylogenetic Analysis of Tumor Evolution
Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Award date: 3/31/21
Award amount: $536,321
Project period: 6/1/2021-5/31/2026
Prof. Oesper’s project 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 her 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.”
Lori Pearson, Professor of Religion
Marianne Weber and the Origins of Religious Studies
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Award date: 4/14/21
Award amount: $6,000
Project period: 6/1/2021-8/31/2021
This NEH Summer Stipend supports Prof. Pearson’s writing of a chapter of her book Sexuality and Secularization that uses the work of Marianne Weber’s (wife of Max Weber) to explore how debates about women’s rights informed early 20th-century theories of religion. This grant will support her summer work to draft the final book chapter.
Marty Baylor, Associate Professor of Physics
Understanding Interferometry with LEGO
Funder: SPIE (The international society for optics and photonics)
Award date: 4/20/21
Award amount: $4,900
Project period: 7/1/2021-7/1/2022
An SPIE Education Outreach Grant enables Prof. Baylor to purchase a travel-ready interferometer, in support of 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).
Ryan Terrien, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Evaluating stellar variability mitigation strategies using NEID Sun-as-a-Star observations
Funder: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Award date: 4/23/21
Award amount: $12,775
Project period: 5/1/2021-8/31/2022
This subaward research support from NASA to work with Eric Ford at Penn State advances knowledge of the effectiveness of multiple strategies for mitigating the effects of stellar variability and instrumental effects on the measurement of extremely precise radial velocities (EPRVs) in the search for extrasolar planets. Prof. Terrien’s contribution involves diagnosing instrumental effects, and analyzing the effects of magnetic fields on Solar spectra obtained with the NEID spectrograph.
Joe Chihade, Professor of Chemistry
2021 ASBMB Undergraduate Research Award
Funder: American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB)
Award date: 5/6/21
Award amount: $1,000
Project period: 6/15/2021-8/31/2021
An Undergraduate Research Award supports purchase of reagents and supplies used by Prof. Chihade’s student David Wilson during summer 2021.