ND EPSCoR announces UND doctoral dissertation awards
The North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) has announced the 2007 UND doctoral dissertation assistantship awards.
The awards are designed to increase the completion rate of Ph.D. students enrolled in the science, engineering, and mathematics disciplines at North Dakota’s research-intensive universities; and to increase the number of competitive proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation. Gary Johnson, ND EPSCoR co-chair and interim vice president for research noted that “the overall goal of ND EPSCoR is to increase the competitiveness of North Dakota researchers for merit-based grants and contracts in support of science and technology research from federal funding agencies.”
DDA support is available for up to 24 months to enable doctoral students to dedicate their time exclusively to dissertation research. Applications are made by the students with supplemental information provided by their advisors, along with endorsement from their graduate program director and department chair.
The five awards made at UND were competitively selected from a total of 13 applications. Johnson noted that “this is the largest number of DDA applications in the history of the program at UND. The review committee was very impressed by the overall quality of the proposals.”
The 2007 DDA students, their departments and faculty mentors, and the topic of their approved research proposals are as follows:
Nilesh Dale, chemical engineering, advisor Michael Mann, “Study Limiting Factors and Optimum Parameters of Electrochemical Hydrogen Compression Technology Using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy”;
Balachandra Kumar Gorentla, biochemistry and molecular biology, advisor Roxanne Vaughan, “Phosphroylation and Regulation of DAT by ERK”;
Wanyi Jiang, chemistry, advisor Mark Hoffmann, “Relativistic Corrections to Generalized Van Vleck Perturbation Theory”;
Chris Jurgens, pharmacology, physiology and therapeutics, advisor Dr. Van Doze, “Alpha-2 Adrenergic Receptors Inhibit Hippocampal Epileptiform Activity”; and
Peter Reis, physics, advisor Juana Moreno, “Computational Studies of Layered Metal-Organic Magnets.”
For additional information concerning ND EPSCoR or the DDA program, please contact Gary Johnson, co-project director, ND EPSCoR, 415 Twamley Hall, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58201-7093, 701-777-2492.
-- Gary Johnson, Interim Vice President for Research, Office of the Vice President for Research, garyejohnson@mail.und.nodak.edu, 701-777-6736 |