2022 Faculty Research Funds Announcement

The Faculty Research Fund program aims to support faculty in establishing or maintaining high-quality research programs and other creative achievements. Competitions are held annually and funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School through a review and nomination process by the Faculty Research Fund Committee.

This year ten recipients received Faculty Research Fund awards through three programs: the Regular Faculty Research Award, the Summer Research Award, and the Scholarly Equipment and Materials Award.

Regular Faculty Research Awards

Assists members of the faculty in establishing or maintaining high-quality research programs that will extend the limits of existing knowledge and lead to a tangible final product (e.g., performance, showing, publication, grant proposal, etc.)

1. Marcus LiBrizzi, Professor, Arts and Letter, University of Maine at Machias. “The Ghost Story in Brazil: Preserving Undocumented Cultural Narratives.”
2. Karissa Tilbury, Assistant Professor, Chemical & Biomedical Engineering. “Development of In-Vitro Tumor Microenvironment Models for the Identification of Hierarchical Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) Imaging Studies.”

Summer Research Awards

Provides $8,000 awards for faculty summer salaries for a minimum of 1.5 months of research effort.

1. Hollie Adams, Assistant Professor, English. “Morley Callaghan and Canadian Literary Modernism.”
2. Elizabeth DePoy, Professor, CCIDS and Social Work. “Professional Knowledge: Cultural Difference.”
3. Gregory Gerbi, Assistant Professor, School of Marine Sciences. “Ocean Dynamics of Coastal Maine.”
4. Sepideh Ghanavati, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information Science. “Towards Enhancing Developers’ Privacy Comprehension through Automated Classification of Privacy Behaviors in Software Applications.”
5. Peter Stechlinski, Assistant Professor, Mathematics and Statistics. “Nonsmooth Neural Networks and Machine Learning Algorithms.”
6. Kristin Vekasi, Associate Professor, Political Science. “The Politics of Supply Chain Security in the Indo-Pacific.”

Scholarly Equipment and Materials

The Scholarly Materials and Equipment Award assists faculty in establishing or maintaining high-quality research programs by providing items of equipment and library collections.

1. Rebecca Schwartz-Mette, Associate Professor, Psychology. “Dyadic Synchrony and Co-Regulation: Putative Vulnerability Markers for Socioemotional Maladjustment and Contagion.”
2. Yingchao Yang, Assistant Professor Mechanical Engineering, “A Fume Hood to Enhance Lab Safety and Fulfill Research Objectives.”

Grantees will have the opportunity to learn from each other and from previously funded RRF grant projects in a series of meetings and events offered throughout the next year.

For more information about the program contact Executive Director of Research Development Jason Charland, jason.charland@maine.edu.