UMD Division of Research Announces Maryland Catalyst Fund New Direction 2019 Award Winners

The University of Maryland Division of Research has announced the winners for the inaugural year of the Maryland Catalyst Fund’s New Directions program.

The Maryland Catalyst Fund program – formerly known as the Faculty Incentive Program – is the University of Maryland’s internal faculty research support program and a key resource in the university’s overall effort to expand its research activity. These awards, made possible by funds from the Vice President for Research and matching contributions from individual units, support new research directions with the potential to attract funding, shape scholarship, impact society, and bring visibility to the UMD research enterprise.

There were a total of 12 grants awarded over two FY19 rounds of competition across two tracks - Proof of Concept and Limited External Grant Opportunity (LEGO) - from a pool of 34 applicants. Awarded PIs hailed from eight of UMD’s 12 colleges and schools.

Research abstracts for year’s awardees are listed below. For more information on The Maryland Catalyst Fund and its various programs please visit: https://research.umd.edu/development/MarylandCatalystFund

2019 New Directions Proof of Concept awardees:

• The Next Chapter Project: Exploring Parenting + Mental Health Intervention among Trauma-Affected Young Families
  Elizabeth Aparicio,SPHL-Behavioral & Community Health
• Metasurfaces as a Replacement for Gems: New Strategies to Nonlinear Optics Materials
  Oded Rabin, ENGR-Materials Science & Engineering
• An Investigation of Perinatal Stress in Low-Income African American Women and Their Young Infants
  Brenda Jones Harden,EDUC-Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
• Smart Machine Translation with Social Sensitivity: Facilitating Workplace Inclusion Through Socio-technical Solutions
  Marine Carpuat, CMNS-Computer Science
  Ge Gao, INFO-Information Studies
• Glacial Now
  Cy Keener,ARHU-Art
• Environmental Inequalities in Neurocognitive Development
  Richard Prather,EDUC-Human Development and Quantitative Methodology
  Devon Payne-Sturges, SPHL-Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health (MIAEH)
• Improving measures of marriage in sub-Saharan Africa to address women’s and children’s health outcomes
  Kirsten Stoebenau,SPHL-Behavioral & Community Health
  Sangeetha Madhavan, BSOS-African American Studies
  Gregory R. Hancock, EDUC-Human Development and Quantitative Methodology

2019 New Directions LEGO awardees

• The Search for German Uranium
  Timothy Koeth, CMNS-Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics (IREAP)
  Miriam Hiebert, ENGR-Materials Science & Engineering
• Arctic Circle Residency
  John Ruppert, ARHU-Art
• Justice, Friendship, and Happiness: the Argument of Plato's Republic
  Rachel Singpurwalla, ARHU-Philosophy
• Exploring the Psychology of Environmental Senescence through fMRI
  Jeremy Wells, ARCH-Historic Preservation Program
  Erica Molinario, BSOS-Psychology
  Stephanie Preston, University of Michigan - Psychology, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Area
• Digital Urban History in Colonial Mexico
  Juan Burke, ARCH-Architecture Program

June 25, 2019