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Research, Scholarly and Creative Activities, and Discovery (RSCAD) News

May 4, 2017

The weekly RSCAD newsletter provides the latest research news, funding opportunities, and academic trends. 

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Senior Associate Vice President for Research Beth Montelone writes about the recent Early Career Faculty D.C. Trip.

 

The 2017 Early Career Faculty trip to Washington, D.C. to visit funding agencies took place April 25–27. Twenty-nine early career faculty members from seven K-State colleges, including one from K-State Libraries, took part in pre-trip activities coordinated by the trip leadership team. The leadership team included the Associate Deans for Research from Agriculture, Engineering, and Human Ecology, as well as staff from the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. Pre-trip activities were designed to familiarize faculty with the missions and scope of the various funding agencies that they might visit, as well as strategies for talking with program officers to optimize their visits. Sessions were scheduled for 2017 travelers to meet with faculty who had participated in the trip in previous years. The experienced faculty shared their approaches to contacting and preparing for their visit with program officers at the agencies and the outcomes of these visits.

The agenda in D.C. featured a morning for the whole group with officials from the National Science Foundation, including a welcome from Chief Operating Officer Joan Ferrini-Mundy. Other NSF programs described were the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR); the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER); Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water (INFEWS); and the Directorate for Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBE). We also heard from the Group Leader of the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs about NSF's efforts to broadly disseminate the results and impact of the research it sponsors and what award recipients can do to help.

A large group visited the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA), where those with interests in agriculture, food safety, consumer sciences, and related topics had an orientation to the agency's programs followed by meetings with individual national program leaders. Another large group with engineering interests participated in a similar session at the NSF with leaders of the Engineering Directorate.

The K-State group reassembled for a reception at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) organized by K-State alumna Wendy Fink, Director of Food, Agriculture, and National Resources for APLU.

All early career faculty travelers had the responsibility of scheduling at least one individual meeting with a program officer at an agency likely to fund their RSCAD work in the future. Some had several such meetings.

The trip leadership team will collect both formal and informal feedback from travelers in an ongoing effort to assess the effectiveness of the trip and find ways for its improvement in future years. Early career faculty who have interest in attending a future version of this trip should discuss this with their department head and associate dean for research (or other college equivalent).

— Beth

  

Announcements and Events icon

Announcements and Events

Don't miss training opportunities, resources, or other events or news for K-State researchers.

Don't miss our Broader Impacts exhibition, today's meeting for science communicators, and a KCALSI series.
Workshops and Training

Info sessions, training opportunities, and workshops are listed on our events calendar. We have one event left this semester, and it's a great one!

  • Broader Impacts info session and exhibition: May 10
SciComm Group

Interested in science and research communication? Join a meeting TODAY, 2:30-3:30, in Union 206.

Collaborate2Cure: Mitochondrial Dysfunction

The Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute offers a weekly series of brief presentations with audience participation. Register to join the Monday meetings (4 to 6 p.m.) either via Zoom or in person at the KUMC Fairway Campus.

FDA and USRG Awardees Announced

 

Faculty Development Awards and University Small Research Grants are awarded each fall and spring by the Office of the Vice President for Research through the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. Congratulations to spring 2017 awardees, and thanks to all who served on review panels. Read a list of awardees or find out more about these internal grant programs

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RSCAD Results

ORSP awards Faculty Development Awards and University Small Research Grants each semester. Find out how K-State faculty used the funds to jump-start their projects. 

Nicholas Wallace presents at 31st International Papillomavirus Conference. 

 

Nicholas Wallace, assistant professor of biology, chaired a session, served on a discussion panel, and delivered an oral presentation at the 31st International Papillomavirus Conference in Cape Town, South Africa earlier this year. The annual meeting is attended by both scientists and medical doctors with the goal of sharing research to improve outcomes for patients affected by human papillomavirus, or HPV.

"Because HPV kills someone every 2 to 3 minutes, the impact of contributing to the world's efforts to mitigate these deaths is hard to understate," said Wallace.

Wallace's presentation, "β-HPV E6 Inhibits the Hippo Pathway In A P300-Dependent Manner," was well attended and generated lively discussion that paved the way to sharing reagents with a colleague in Germany as Wallace furthers his work on HPV and skin cancer. He also discussed his research with Ian Frazier, who was named a National Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia for his work successfully promoting HPV vaccination in Australia, and met another colleague from the University of Oregon who subsequently interviewed Wallace for his book on HPV's role in head and neck cancers.

"The workshop on HPV pathogenesis and oncogenes was a success. The session was attended by over 100 people and provided excellent exposure for my newly independent career," Wallace said.

Wallace also had one-on-one meetings with multiple leaders in his field and met with scientists who are members of the National Institutes of Health study section that reviews his grants.

Wallace's travel was supported by the Division of Biology and a Faculty Development Award from the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs in fall of 2016. He said he is thankful for the support that allowed him to have a highly productive trip.

"The exposure that this trip provided me was extended to K-State. We are both becoming known as players in this critical area of scientific exploration," Wallace said.

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Funding Highlights

The Funding Connection is a weekly publication of the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs.

The National Science Foundation seeks proposals for its Perception, Action & Cognition Program.  

 

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Perception, Action & Cognition (PAC) Program funds theoretically motivated research on a wide-range of topic areas focused on typical human behavior. The aim is to enhance the fundamental understanding of perceptual, motor, and cognitive processes and their interactions. Central research topics for consideration by the program include (but are not limited to) vision, audition, haptics, attention, memory, reasoning, written and spoken language, motor control, categorization, and spatial cognition. Of particular interest are emerging areas, such as the interaction of sleep or emotion with cognitive or perceptual processes and the epigenetics of cognition. The program welcomes a wide range of perspectives, such as individual differences, symbolic computation, connectionism, ecological, genetics and epigenetics, nonlinear dynamics and complex systems, and a variety of methodologies including both experimental studies and modeling.

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Agency News and Trending Topics

Keep abreast of funding agency updates and trending RSCAD topics that are in the news. 

Science and economic growth, the new federal spending agreement, NIH updates, and more.
The Science Coalition: American-Made Innovation Sparking Economic Growth

This website accompanies The Science Coalition’s Sparking Economic Growth reports. Each of the three reports highlights a different set of companies created from federally funded university research, totaling 302 companies to date. Each company is an example of how the federal government’s investment in basic scientific research fuels U.S. innovation, job creation and economic growth.

Focus on Reproducibility

The reviews, perspectives and commentaries of this special collection were commissioned by the editors and produced by the authors independently of any sponsorship,  and Lab Animal retains sole responsibility for the content. The articles are provided free to interested readers for 6 months with support from sponsors, for which Lab Animal is grateful.

What’s In the Spending Agreement? We Read It So You Don’t Have To

Lawmakers reached an agreement late Sunday on a broad spending package to fund the federal government through the end of the fiscal year in September, ending weeks of uncertainty. The House and Senate are expected to vote on the package early this week. The bipartisan agreement includes $12.5 billion in new military spending and $1.5 billion more for border security, a major priority for Republican leaders in Congress.

Zika Virus Persists in the Central Nervous System and Lymph Nodes of Rhesus Monkeys

Zika virus can persist in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), lymph nodes and colorectal tissue of infected rhesus monkeys for weeks after the virus has been cleared from blood, urine and mucosal secretions, according to a study published online today in Cell. The research was led by Dan H. Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School and was funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

NIH Research Improves Health for People With Asthma

May is Asthma Awareness Month, and the National Institutes of Health is finding solutions to improve the health of the nearly 25 million people in the United States who currently have asthma. In recent decades, the prevalence of asthma has been increasing, resulting in millions of urgent medical visits and missed days of work and school each year.

Politics: Turbulence Ahead

Since the US presidential election last November, scientists have been on edge. Researchers around the world worry that the new administration's policies could undermine US researchers and agencies that have long served as global leaders on issues such as climate change. Many fear, too, that steps such as barring travellers from Muslim-majority countries from visiting the United States could create roadblocks to international scientific collaboration.

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Research Spotlight

Raymond "Bob" Rowland, Kansas State University professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, has created a way to protect swine offspring from the devastating PRRS virus during reproduction.

Seek research magazine cover

Read Seek, K-State's flagship research magazine