New Faculty Seed Grant is sponsored by WSU Office of Research (though the example mentions 3D printing, this is a US-based university grant, the original query asked for grants for 3D Printing in India.) This grant encourages new, junior-level faculty to develop research, scholarly, or creative programs that lead to sustained professional development and extramural funding.

An example of a past funded project involved 3D-printing technology for underwater soft robots.

New Faculty Seed Grant | Advancement & Strategy | Washington State University A grant to encourage new, junior level faculty to develop research, scholarly, or creative programs. The New Faculty Seed Grant Program helps junior faculty develop research, scholarly, or creative programs that lead to sustained professional development and extramural funding.

View a recorded Information Session about the New Faculty Seed Grant Program The 2026 application cycle begins November 1. A Notice of Intent is required and must be submitted by 5pm December 1, 2025 in order to be considered for this program. Late NOIs will not be accepted.

Full proposals are due February 1, 2026 by 5pm. If you have any questions concerning the guidelines, proposal or review process, please contact us at or. orap.

servicedesk@wsu. edu . Review the New Faculty Seed Grant RFP Submit a Notice of Intent for 2026 Funding As examples of the types of projects that received New Faculty Seed Grants, browse the lists below.

Hannah Haemmerli (School of the Environment) – Agriculture and Environment emphasis Title: The Ripple Effect: Governance Transformations After Dam Removal Conflicts over natural resources, such as water, are becoming more prevalent as climate change, technological advancements, shifting societal values, and other changes amplify tensions. While often very costly, conflict can also be transformative.

For example, decades-long conflicts over the removal of dams from rivers have supported more inclusive and collaborative decision-making, emerging leadership, and negotiations of shared values. Such attributes can be considered characteristics of adaptive and collaborative governance. Despite this positive governance transformation, in some river basins, we see a return to conflict.

This research seeks to understand how and under which conditions dam removal conflicts can lead to las ng governance changes that increase the adaptive and collaborative capacities of decision-makers to sustainably govern water resources.

The impacts of dam removal conflicts on long-term water governance in river basins will be investigated by (1) identifying attributes of adaptive and collaborative processes that emerge from conflict and (2) tracing their institutional impact over me. This grant will fund a case study of the Kennebec River in Maine as a proof-of-concept.

The results will help decision-makers ensure conflict resolution can sustainably transform water governance.

Martin King (School of Music) – Arts/Fine Arts emphasis Title: Cultural Preservation through the Wind Quintets of Southeast Asian Composers While music from Asia has grown more visible in the western concert hall during the early part of the 21st century, access to music from Asian composers has lagged behind the quality, quantity and diversity of their repertoire.

Works by US-based composers, such as Chen Yi and Xinyan Li, have been published and are performed occasionally in academic settings. But works by composers from Asia, and those focusing on localized musical traditions are not yet available via recording and performance for American audiences. Assistant Professor Martin King will use his unique position as a French horn player specializing in this music to address this problem.

Along with his quintet, the Pan Pacific Ensemble, Dr. King has been engaged with this music for the past decade. This project will expand Asian wind quintet repertoire by commissioning Macaoborn composer Bun Ching Lam and championing an under-appreciated wind quintet by the dean of Southeast Asian composition, the Cambodian-born Chinary Ung.

Bibhushana Poudyal (Department of English) – Arts/Fine Arts emphasis Title: Global South Solidarities and Community-Driven Open Scholarship Digital Storytelling and Global South Solidarities addresses the persistence of Eurocentric, colonial frameworks in academia by creating an open-access digital repository that amplifies the voices, histories, and perspectives of marginalized communities from South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa.

It will bridge scholarly and community knowledge through curated narratives, educational resources, and multimedia storytelling, fostering justice-driven scholarship and global solidarity.

Field research in Nepal, Pakistan, and India along with remote U.S.-based archival work, will unearth silenced histories, including Dalit movements, indigenous knowledge systems, feminist activism, colonial cartographic violence and anti-colonial resistance, ensuring ethical and diverse curation.

This initiative integrates marginalized perspectives into academia, reshaping educational practices, advancing inclusive pedagogy, interdisciplinary collaboration, and international partnerships. Aligned with decolonial goals, the project elevates these narratives to redefine knowledge production, fostering an inclusive academia, global solidarity, and transformative change.

Peng He (Department of Teaching and Learning) – Education emphasis Title: Building Community-Engaged Partnerships to Develop K-12 STEM Teacher AI Literacy Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming society, yet AI literacy remains underdeveloped in K-12 STEM education.

This project builds a Community of Practice (CoP) to co-design professional learning workshops that equip teachers with strategies to integrate AI literacy into their instruction. The project follows the Human Inquiry–AI–Human Empowerment framework to support teachers integrate AI literacy into their instruction and understand ethical AI use.

Through iterative design and collaboration with teachers in Eastern Washington, the project will develop, pilot, and refine AI literacy workshops. Teachers will gain resources to navigate algorithmic bias, data privacy, and equity challenges in AI education. A design-based research approach will guide the process.

Data will be collected through classroom observations, teacher feedback, and student work. The project will provide strategies for teachers to use AI tools effectively and responsibly. This work ensures that AI literacy becomes an equitable and integral component of K-12 STEM education, preparing students for an AI-driven future.

Qiaowan Chang (School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering) – Engineering emphasis Title: Advanced electrocatalytic upgrading of methane to liquid oxygenates Natural gas, primarily composed of methane (CH4), accounts for 47% of global petroleum reserves. Yet, in remote areas, low CH4 production rates make traditional collection and utilization cost prohibitive, resulting in flaring and wasted CH4.

To improve natural gas utilization efficiency, it is crucial to develop sustainable technologies that convert CH4 into transportable liquid oxygenates at mild conditions. Active oxygen species (H2O2 and ·OH radicals) play a key role in achieving this conversion.

However, an ongoing debate over the effectiveness of H2O2 generation methods in CH4 conversion highlights the urgent need for a fundamental understanding of how H2O2 influences the reaction pathway. Furthermore, it is still unknown how to control the generation of active oxygen species to enhance CH4-to-oxygenates conversion.

Thus, to understand the role of H2O2 and ·OH radicals, and explore their potential in enhancing CH4 utilization at mild conditions, this project will integrate atomic-scale electrocatalyst design with advanced in-situ/operando spectroscopy techniques to bridge critical knowledge gaps and discover efficient catalysts.

Wheaton Schroeder (School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering) – Engineering emphasis Title: Building Metabolic Models for Astrocyte-Neuron Metabolic Coupling from FABP7 Lack of sleep is a strong trigger of seizures, the recurrence of which are a key symptom of epilepsy, a neurological disease that affects 65 million people worldwide.

The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the association between seizures and lipid metabolism are poorly understood. The proposed astrocyte-neuron lactate shuttle hypothesis (ANLSH) details the metabolic dependencies of these cells through lactate, glutamate (a “wake” signal), adenosine (a somnogen), and damaging reactive oxygen species.

Recently, our collaborator Jason Gerstner demonstrated that mice with impaired astrocyte fatty acid (lipid) shuttles (the protein FABP7) show no significant differences in protein expression to that of recently seized mice. Building on this work, I hypothesized that these two conditions have very similar metabolic states due to a “traffic jam” of lipids at the site of lipid exchange, the tripartite synapse.

I propose to use two metabolic modeling techniques to recreate in silico the ANLSH, investigate this hypothesis, and extend the ANLSH to incorporate the critical role of lipid metabolic coupling. These results will lead to investigation of FABP7 as a critical link between sleep, circadian rhythms, and metabolism.

Emily Qualls-Creekmore (Department of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience) – Health/Life Science emphasis Title: The role of the amygdala in stress-potentiated irritable bowel syndrome In irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), stress often precedes flare-ups of symptoms and in turn, gastrointestinal discomfort can cause more stress.

The basolateral amygdala is activated during stress, receives direct input from the nucleus of the solitary tract, a key component of the gut-brain axis, and projects to brain regions implicated in interoception and gastrointestinal physiology.

We hypothesize that the basolateral amygdala is required for the conscious assessment of ascending sensory signals from the gut and potentiates IBS symptoms via activation of downstream brain regions that exacerbate gastrointestinal dysregulation. The goal of this project is to define the neural dynamics mediating the involvement of basolateral amygdala circuits in stress-potentiated GI dysfunction associated with IBS.

We will accomplish this goal using a mouse model of IBS to test the hypothesis that the BLA is responsive to interoceptive signals from the colon via vagal input to the NTS and that stress amplifies the ability of the BLA to exacerbate symptoms in IBS. The results from this project will reveal mechanisms by which discrete brain regions operate in concert with the gut-brain axis to exacerbate the symptoms of IBS in stressed individuals.

Amy Kemp (Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences) – Health/Life Science emphasis Title: Language Assessment in Context using Ecological Momentary Assessments (LACE) While memory loss is the hallmark symptom of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRDs), language impairments often emerge in the early stages as well.

These impairments progressively affect an individual’s ability to communicate, perform daily activities, and maintain meaningful interactions. This project explores the use of mobile technology to improve early detection of ADRDs in rural communities. By collecting speech and language samples through smartphones, we aim to identify early warning signs of ADRDs, such as changes in hearing and speaking.

Current methods for assessing these changes are time-intensive and difficult to access in underserved areas, making this research crucial for addressing health disparities. Our study will compare data collected via mobile devices to traditional in-person tests to ensure accuracy and reliability. Over 30 days, we will also analyze how speech and language patterns vary throughout the day to improve monitoring methods.

By creating a scalable, real-time tool for assessing communication health, this work will make it easier to detect and address ADRDs earlier, promoting healthier aging and greater equity in healthcare access.

Yefeng Mei (Department of Physics and Astronomy) – Physical Science/Math/Computer Science emphasis Title: Cold atomic ensemble antennas for distributed quantum computing We aim to develop a next-generation distributed quantum network by combining two powerful quantum technologies: single neutral atoms in optical tweezer arrays and cold atomic ensembles.

While single-atom systems offer precise control for local quantum tasks, connecting them over long distances is challenging due to weak atom-photon interactions. In contrast, atomic ensembles enable strong configurable interactions, which are crucial for long-distance quantum entanglement.

This proposal bridges their limits and creates a hybrid quantum system where atomic ensembles act as “quantum antennas”, linking single-atom qubits with flying photons. This synergy allows us to generate single photons for entanglement between distant quantum nodes while maintaining the precision of single-atom qubits.

We further demonstrate a scalable architecture for quantum networking – a critical step toward distributed quantum computing and secure communication. Our research paves the way for a future quantum internet, where remote quantum systems collaborate seamlessly to solve problems in complex systems beyond classical reach.

Long Nguyen (Department of Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurships) – Social Science/Business emphasis Vanessa Delgado (Department of Sociology) – Social Science/Business emphasis Title: Unequal Aging: Ethnicity, Legal Status, and Growing Old in Rural Washington This study examines the retirement plans of older low-income Latino/a immigrants (55+) in rural Washington.

In recent years, social scientists have raised concerns about the aging Latino/a immigrant population because this group is disproportionally more likely to live in poverty, have lower educational levels, own fewer financial assets, possess less wealth, and have very limited savings and retirement income. On top of this, Latino/a immigrants are more likely to be undocumented than other immigrant populations.

Undocumented Latino/a immigrants are less likely to be covered by employer retirement plans, cannot access the social safety net, most banking and retirement accounts, and healthcare coverage—all of which is likely to shape their retirement plans. To date, very few studies have explored how immigration laws shape the retirement plans of Latino/a immigrants.

This study will address this theoretical and empirical lacuna through 50 in-depth interviews with undocumented (N=25) and documented (N=25) Latino/a immigrants in rural Washington and elucidate how legal status shapes the life course.

Scott Jess (School of the Environment) – Agriculture and Environment emphasis Title: The breakup of North America: mapping extension across the central Cordillera Mountain belts form through the collision of tectonic plates, but all eventually begin to collapse and vanish over time.

We have always struggled to study their collapse and the risks this poses to local communities as ancient mountain belts leave behind only limited traces of their existence due to the destructive nature of their demise. Our best hope is to study mountain belts currently experiencing collapse, such as the North American Cordillera.

Previous work in the Cordillera has concentrated on two domains, one in the north (e.g., British Columbia) and one in the south (e.g., Nevada, Arizona). Unfortunately, we have difficulty correlating these domains due to an absence of work completed across the central domain (e.g., Washington, Oregon). Here, the rocks we need to study are covered by a blanket of lava up to 5 km thick.

Fortunately, from this lava rises small bedrock exposures full of information about the tectonic collapse of the region, though traditional methods of investigation are useless due to their size. This project will utilize innovative radiometric dating methods to study the tectonic history of the region prior to their burial and be the first to unravel the tectonic history of the Central Cordillera.

By studying the tectonic collapse of the entire Cordillera, we can better understand this major geological process and mitigate the risks it poses to society.

Cesar Haas (School of Music) – Arts/Fine Arts emphasis Title: WSU Brazilian Jazz Festival A guest artist residency focused on performances, workshops, and discussion panels that promote dissemination, teaching, and learning of Brazilian music at WSU and middle/high schools in the area free of charge to the community.

The team that leads the project is Três Mais, a new collaboration between American and Brazilian rhythm section musicians and educators marrying Brazilian music styles with American Jazz. The core rhythm section of Três Mais consists of three musicians and educators: Brazilian guitarist César Haas, Brazilian drummer Graciliano Zambonim, and American jazz bassist Wayne Moose.

Três Mais invites internationally acclaimed artists that share the same passion for diversity and collaboration. For the first year of the project, the featured artist will be Brazilian guitarist, arranger, and educator Nelson Faria.

One of the most important musicians in Brazil, he has released 12 CDs as a leader, 6 books (2 in the US, Japan, Brazil, and Italy), he has also recorded as guitar player and/or arranger or producer on over 200 CDs by Brazilian and international artists. The guest artists will perform concerts, teach clinics, and record a live video performance at WSU Recording Studios to be released on YouTube and other streaming platforms.

Jessica Williams-Nguyen (IREACH ) – Arts/Fine Arts emphasis Title: Blending Traditions: Indigenous Methodologies in Quantitative Health Research Quantitative health science (epidemiology, biostatistics, and related disciplines) plays a crucial role in research by supporting evidence-based strategies for individual and population health.

Tools such as the randomized controlled trial and null hypothesis significance testing are nearly universally accepted as gold standards for causal inference, but they are underpinned by dominant cultural worldviews that disregard or undervalue the experiences and knowledge of non-dominant cultures. In the context of Indigenous health, this status quo creates barriers to building and sustaining academic-community research partnerships.

Alternatively, an emerging literature promotes quantitative methods that are rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing, but these resources are siloed across niches of the global scientific community, with vanishingly low visibility and low likelihood of broad translation in public health.

The proposed study bridges this gap by 1) mapping the existing interdisciplinary and transcultural knowledge on Indigenous-centered quantitative science; and 2) assessing the readiness of academic and community stakeholders in applying these methods to real-world quantitative studies.

Anya Sheftel (Department of Teaching and Learning) – Education emphasis Title: Development of Motivational Enhancement Group Intervention – College and Beyond The proposed project, Motivational Enhancement Group Intervention – College and Beyond (MEGI-C), will support the development of an evidence-based career development and self-determination intervention designed to meet the needs of young adults with intellectual and development disabilities (IDD) enrolled in inclusive postsecondary education programs (IPSEs).

The overarching aim of this project is to reduce disparities in post-school outcomes between these young adults and their peers. Evidence-based practices are important in ensuring that the strategies used by educators and other professionals are effective and grounded in research.

With support from the WSU New Faculty Seed Grant, Dr. Sheftel will develop MEGI-C and test its efficacy by using a mixed methods randomized waitlist control study with a national sample of 80 young adults with IDD enrolled in IPSEs. She will disseminate the results of this project to scholars and practitioners.

Additionally, she will use these results to apply for a federal grant through the Institute of Education Sciences to establish MEGI-C as an evidence-based practice.

Kang Huang (Biological Systems Engineering) – Engineering emphasis Title: Multifunctional substrate-independent coatings derived from food grade phenolics Biofouling and biofilms in pipeline interconnects, such as joints, fittings, and seams, can lead to a variety of problems, impacting both the efficiency and safety of water distribution and food processing systems.

Considerable effort has been devoted to developing new antimicrobial materials to kill fouling organisms and prevent their settlement. However, concerns persist regarding the toxic biocides used in these materials, particularly their environmental impact and the associated health risks.

The overall goal of this research is to minimize biofouling accumulation and prevent biofilm formation in the interconnect zones of water distribution and food processing pipelines. This will be achieved through the development of a substrate-independent, highly adaptable hydrogel coating using food-grade materials derived from agricultural byproducts.

The success of this research will yield a nontoxic, environmentally friendly approach for addressing the biofouling and biofilm issues associated with pipeline interconnects, thus enhancing the safety and efficiency of water distribution and food processing systems.

Catherine Jarrett (Nutrition and Exercise Physiology ) – Health & Life Science emphasis Title: New anti-obesity medication and its effect on cardiovascular health The obesity prevalence in the US has grown substantially over the past 4 decades, and this rise is predicted to continue despite weight management efforts.

New anti-obesity medications (e.g., Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound), originally developed to treat individuals with diabetes, have recently been approved for weight loss. Impressively, clinical trials demonstrate more than double the amount of weight loss seen with intensive lifestyle changes (diet and exercise). These findings coupled with increased access, have boosted their popularity among adults with overweight and obesity.

More importantly, clinically meaningful improvements have been shown, such as reductions in blood pressure and the reduction of major adverse cardiovascular events (e.g., heart attack, stroke). Although not commonly measured, fitness and vascular health can provide early insights into to how these medications are reducing cardiovascular events.

The objective of this project is to assess the fitness and vascular health of obese adults from the Spokane community in a real-word setting undergoing medical weight loss.

Qingze Guan (Physics and Astronomy) – Physical Science and Math emphasis Title: Beyond mean-field physics in ultracold quantum gases This proposal aims to provide a theoretical investigation on a variety of beyond-mean-field physics in weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Ultracold quantum gases have broad applications in various aspects of quantum technology such as quantum simulations and quantum sensing.

Understanding beyond-mean-field effects in the non-equilibrium systems are, in many cases, crucial not only for manipulating the systems in controlled ways but provides valuable inputs to the cutting-edge research on quantum chaos and thermalizations in closed quantum systems. Focusing on the dynamics of BECs, the aimed projects of this proposal cover the scattering dynamics of BECs with multiple momentum components.

How to develop a reliable theoretical description that captures thermal and quantum fluctuations in these scenarios? How robust is the underlying mean-field physics against those fluctuations?

The proposed works will provide a comprehensive description of recent pertinent experimental results in the literature and benefit not only the cold atom community but the other areas of quantum research, including quantum optics and quantum information science.

Courtney Kurinec (Sleep and Performance Research Center ) – Social Science and Business emphasis Title: Role of working memory in associative inference and inference-based decisions In everyday life, people are frequently confronted with novel situations (e.g., diagnosing new patients, operating a new type of car).

People can successfully navigate these new situations by inferring the best course of action from past, similar experiences. However, people do not always make the appropriate inferences from prior memory. Knowing what causes people to fail to make the inferences needed for good decision-making would help individuals to avoid errors in fields where decisions have high stakes.

This project will investigate the impact of two commonly experienced constraints that are likely to produce errors in inference-based decision-making: cognitive load from multitasking and time pressure from deadlines. I hypothesize that people will be less able to make inferences and thus make poorer decisions in novel settings when under these constraints.

I will conduct two experiments in which healthy adults complete an inference-based decision-making task while their resources are constrained by either cognitive load (Experiment 1) or time pressure (Experiment 2) as compared to a control condition without constraint.

This project will provide insight into how common constraints impact inference-based decision-making, laying the groundwork for future research on real-world consequences and potential interventions.

Wei Peng (Strategic Communication) – Social Science and Business emphasis Title: Positive psychology intervention to promote rural colorectal cancer screening Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in U.S. rural populations. Screening tests can effectively detect CRC but the uptake is low among rural populations.

One critical barrier is negative emotions elicited by screening procedures, but no intervention has been implemented to decrease their impacts. The objective of the project is to develop and evaluate an emotional regulation (ER) intervention based on small media (i.e., digital pamphlets) that can control negative emotions and improve CRC screening uptake among rural populations.

The proposed intervention will provide three evidence-based skills: 1) re-interpret the meaning of screening, 2) use practical skills to deal with an eliciting situation, and 3) recognize and accept emotions. The project objective will be achieved by three studies with specific aims. The study for Aim 1 is a cross-sectional survey to evaluate the causes of negative emotions associated with CRC screening in rural populations.

The study for Aim 2 uses focus group interviews to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed ER intervention, including intervention messages on a pamphlet. The study for Aim 3 is a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the ER intervention relative to standard health education in reducing negative emotions and increasing intent to participate in CRC screening.

Cecilia Rodriguez-Furlan (School of Biological Sciences) – Agriculture Sciences/Environment emphasis Title: Plant stress responses revealed by protein interaction maps Worldwide crop yield loss due to environmental stress is around US$5 billion per year. Agriculture and food security depend on our ability to learn how increasingly challenging environments impact plant growth.

Plants deal with stress at the cellular level by activating two degradative pathways known as endocytosis and autophagy. The RAB7 proteins control the endocytic and autophagic pathways by acting as ON/OFF switches. RAB7 permanently ON interacts with many proteins that execute various biological processes, and the whole plant becomes resistant to different stresses.

To understand how RAB7 regulates whole-plant stress responses, it is essential to map its interactions. Despite this, invitro methods have only identified a few RAB7-interacting proteins. Therefore, this project proposes a novel approach to label RAB7-specific interactors in-planta , facilitating identification.

These results will shape a “RAB7-specific interactome. ” This information will bring us one step closer to producing stress-resilient crops that can withstand the effects of climate change.

Kristina Borrman (School of Design and Construction) – Arts/Fine Arts emphasis Title: Banking by Design: Paul Revere Williams and the Architectures of Financial Activism Paul Revere Williams was the first Black member of the American Institute of Architects, and he rose to prominence designing houses for Hollywood celebrities.

For this reason, scholarship has focused on the grand homes that Williams designed for famous clients such as Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. Until recently, scholars had scant evidence for Williams’s life-long commitment to financial equity, which he demonstrated in his design and management of Black-owned banks.

Evidence for Williams’s financial activism was buried in the architect’s archive, acquired by the Getty Research Institute in 2020 and previously believed to have been lost to fire during the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest.

“Banking by Design: Paul Revere Williams and the Architectures of Financial Activism” recovers new evidence in the life and career of the famous architect to offer the first extended scholarly study of his struggle against redlining, detailing his partnership with Black-owned banks and advancing an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of financial activism at midcentury.

Marlene Gaynair (History) – Arts/Fine Arts emphasis Title: Jamaican Diasporic Histories: Toronto and New York City From Yaad to Abroad: Jamaican Cultures, Identities, and Belonging in New York and Toronto is a social, cultural, and political comparative history of Jamaican communities in both cities during the twentieth century.

It argues that the specific local influences that shaped a unique Jamaican experience through community building, also created a sense of belonging and form of resistance from the British, American, and Canadian nation-state(s). By focusing on Jamaicans in both cities, this study challenges the way we understand the construction of race, identity, and citizenship, both in Canada and the United States, and the Atlantic world.

Through the examination of a small business class, a national airline, and a second-generation youth culture, the study of Jamaican communities facilitates a better understanding of immigrants in urban spaces, which brings their contributions from the margins and into the center of our histories and collective memories. My second research project investigates the cultural and social history of food and drink in the Atlantic world.

This builds upon my interests in transnational histories to understand how colonialism, imperialism, and migration transfer and develop our culinary practices and how we are connected and defined through our local and national cuisines. Nicole Scalise (Department of Human Development) – Education emphasis Title: Better Together?

The Effects of Socially Interactive Early Mathematics Activities Children’s understanding of numbers at the beginning of kindergarten lays the foundation for their later mathematics success. Previous research has shown that playing number games can lead to improvements in preschoolers’ abilities to count, name written numerals, and compare numbers to say which is more.

Theories of playful learning suggest that social interactions with other people while playing games are key to helping children learn. However, it is unclear whether these types of learning games have to involve social interactions with another person to benefit children, or whether children can learn just as well from playing the game independently on a tablet app.

The proposed study will test whether children who play a number card game on a tablet with a researcher learn more, are more engaged, and talk more about math than children who play the same number card game on a tablet independently. The results will inform best practices for supporting children’s early math skills.

Pouria Bahmani (Civil and Environmental Engineering) – Engineering emphasis Title: Codifying the Use of Timber-Concrete Composite (TCC) Floor Systems in the United States Mass timber structures, and in particular, cross-laminated timber (CLT) products have been gaining traction in the U.S. due to its low carbon footprint, use of sustainable materials, and relatively high mechanical properties and structural performance.

CLT panels can serve as a flooring system; however, one drawback of using them as a flooring system is that they are not strong or stiff enough to span long distances. One way to strengthen and stiffen the CLT panels to enable them to span longer distances is to add a layer of concrete on top of them. Concrete offers high compressive strength and can improve the structural performance of the floor.

However, to use concrete and take advantage of its strength, both the CLT panel and the concrete layer must work together as a single member, called composite behavior. If both materials work together, their cumulative strength will be much higher than summation of strength of each material individually.

This study aims to close practical gaps in the implementation of Timber-Concrete Composite (TCC) floors by investigating composite actions, and eventually, developing a design guideline for practitioners in the U.S. Jia Li (Civil and Environmental Engineering) – Engineering emphasis Title: Human-like or not?

Cooperative driving behavior design for autonomous vehicles How driving behaviors of autonomous vehicles (AVs) should be designed is an open problem, which has critical impacts on the safety and efficiency of mixed autonomy traffic flow. Solving this problem needs to thoroughly address the complex interactions between human-driven vehicles (HVs) with AVs and devise proper objective functions.

Recent studies commonly argues that AVs should be “human- like” and adopt various machine learning techniques and human-driving data to achieve the purpose. The proposed research postulates that human-like driving behaviors are not necessarily optimal and non-human-like behaviors may achieve better individual and system performance.

To verify this hypothesis, we consider three driving behaviors with increasing level of information sharing among traffic agents and coordination, but all assume the AVs are self-interested. We will develop a deep reinforcement learning framework to train AV behaviors in these scenarios.

Performance of these three designs will be evaluated against human-like AV driving behavior using the open-source SUMO microscopic traffic simulation platform. Anjali Sharma (Chemistry) – Health / Life Science emphasis Title: PSMA-Targeted Dendrimer Nanomedicines for Prostate Cancer Advanced prostate cancer (PCa) is a second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men in the United States.

Despite advances in cancer care, treatment options for advanced prostate cancer patients remain limited