Research Equipment Fund awards $2.5M to continue innovation
From climate change to cardiac currents, IU’s newly expanded Research Equipment Fund has awarded more than $2.5 million to sixteen recipients to support their research.
The Research Equipment Fund supports the purchase or development of research equipment or data by groups of investigators, working together or separately, on innovative projects that already have or will have the potential for sustainable external support. It helps faculty purchase research equipment, instrumentation or datasets in any field.
With support from IU President Pam Whitten, the fund was expanded to $4 million in fiscal year 2023 and $5 million in fiscal year 2024.
Thanks to the expanded fund, IU Research was able to make nearly double the number of awards compared to previous rounds, said Brea Perry, Interim Associate Vice President and Vice Provost for Research.
"The IU Research Equipment Fund is a critical investment whose impact can be felt through the cutting-edge research conducted by the world-class faculty of Indiana University," Perry said. "With so many impressive applications and worthy investments, my colleagues and I are excited to see these proposals put into action. That includes propelling research to study global environment change, innovate and create in the art space, and revealing the innerworkings of the human brain and body, which furthers the extraordinary work of researchers and the university."
Spring 2023 Research Equipment Fund recipients:
- Lata Balakrishnan, associate professor of biology at the IUPUI School of Science, Amersham Typhoon 5 Biomolecular imager to better view proteins and nucleic acids.
- Teri Belecky-Adams, associate professor and Center for Developmental and Regenerative Biology director at the IUPUI School of Science, Nikon AX Confocal System to visualize complex structures within the nervous system.
- Broxton Bird, associate professor and Center for Earth and Environmental Science director in the IUPUI School of Science, will obtain a particle size analyzer to measure samples from lake sediment cores as part of ongoing, National Science Foundation-funded, paleoclimate research.
- Andrew Coggan, associate professor in the School of Health and Human Sciences at IUPUI, PhysioFlow system to monitor electrical current to estimate the maximal amount of blood that the heart can pump during exercise.
- Sarah Commodore, assistant professor in the School of Public Health-Bloomington, Vivoflow system to assess longitudinal changes in lung function, which will be instrumental for the development of several lines of research in the fields of environmental health, voice science and addiction science.
- André Franco, assistant professor and Senior Global Futures Fellow in the IUB O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, carbon/nitrogen determinator to effectively quantify how human action and global environmental changes affect soil.
- Christina Friberg, research scientist at the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer to study the chemical and material composition of IUMAA collections and assist graduate research.
- Jonathan Karty, senior scientist at the Mass Spectrometry Facility and the IU College of Arts and Sciences, CytoFLEX LX advanced flow cytometer to characterize properties of single cells and particles and will permit the study of extracellular vesicles nanoparticles.
- Jawshing Liou, Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor and Associate Dean at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design, will upgrade their Maker + Art + Design Lab capacity and ensure it is ready to serve as a hub of innovation and creativity for the next decade.
- Jing Liu, assistant professor of physics at the IUPUI School of Science, will create a multi-modal system for 3D imaging, super resolution imaging and fluorescent lifetime imaging to better study molecules.
- Ken Mackie, Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences for the IU College of Arts and Sciences, Licor Odyssey imager to measure cell surface proteins, their levels in various tissues and any alterations.
- Cydne Perry, assistant professor at the School of Public Health-Bloomington, Bod Pod to measure total body weight, fat mass and fat-free mass in a safe and non-invasive way.
- Shelby Rader, assistant professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the IU College of Arts and Sciences, will upgrade to an Agilent 7850 inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer to better measure the concentration of elements in a larger range of materials to help researchers in those fields better understand what happened in the past or predict future effects.
- Steven Tait, associate director of the IU Electron Microscopy Center and department chair of Chemistry at the IU College of Arts and Sciences, JEOL NeoARM transmission electron microscope to support transformative research by producing images that resolve features smaller than the size of a single atom.
- William Thompson, associate professor in the School of Health & Human Sciences at IUPUI, will acquire a micro computed tomography machine to visualize internal and external structures and generate their 3D images.
- Susan Walsh, associate professor in the IUPUI School of Science, will use a digital imaging unit to explore soft and hard tissue structures of the human face to study their development and aid with forensic facial reconstructions.
The next deadline for submissions is October 1, 2023. More information, including details about proposal submissions, can be found online.
Proposals for the Research Equipment Fund are reviewed competitively twice per year with off-cycle applications being considered in exceptional circumstances. Principle investigators may submit only one proposal per funding cycle but may indicate support for others.