Seed Grants for CAS faculty

Five College of Arts & Sciences received a 2023 New Faculty Seed Grant from the WSU Office of Research. The grant program supports junior faculty in developing research, scholarly, or creative programs that lead to sustained professional development and external funding. The program is sponsored by the Office of Research and the Office of the Provost. 

The CAS 2023 New Faculty Seed Grant recipients are: 

Cecilia Rodriguez-Furlan in the School of Biological Sciences will develop a novel approach to label RAB7-specific interactors in planta and facilitate identification to bring researchers one step closer to producing stress-resilient crops that can withstand the effects of climate change.

Marlene Gaynair in the Department of History will focus on Jamaicans in Toronto and New York City to understand the construction of race, identity, and citizenship, both in Canada and the United States and the Atlantic world. In doing so, Gaynair will seek to facilitate a better understanding of immigrants in urban spaces. Additionally, the project will investigate the cultural and social history of food and drink in the Atlantic world to understand how colonialism, imperialism, and migration transfer and develop our culinary practices and how we are connected and defined through local and national cuisines. 

Anjali Sharma in the Department of Chemistry will test whether targeted glycodendrimer nanoplatform (TgDN) has the potential to fill a critical gap in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer clinical care, which currently is an unmet medical need. 

Change Liu in the Department of Psychology will recruit 60 first-year racially minoritized students to participate in a 14-day Ecological Momentary Assessment study during their first semester to examine underlying real-time perceived stressors and promotive factors and how they influence the daily life, experiences, and psychological wellbeing of racially minorized students. The results will provide guidance for the development of intervention programs focused on enhancing promotive factors that can help racially minoritized students overcome the undesirable consequences of stress and improve their health and wellbeing. 

Hillary Mellinger in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology will analyze qualitative data collected in a mid-sized agrarian area of Washington in which Spanish is the second most spoken language after English to understand interpretation, language access, and cultural communication challenges that confront law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve. 

Read the full descriptions of these projects and meet all nine recipients.

By Karen Hunt, WSU News