EPSCoR announces UND doctoral dissertation awards The North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) has announced the 2006 Doctoral Dissertation Assistantship (DDA) awards at UND. ND EPSCoR’s DDA 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. Peter Alfonso, ND EPSCoR Co-Chair and Vice President for Research at UND noted that “the overall goal of ND EPSCoR is to increase the competitiveness of North Dakota 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 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 seven awards made at UND were competitively selected from a total of 11 applications. Gary Johnson, ND EPSCoR Co-Project Director and Assistant Vice President for Research at UND, noted that “this is the largest number of DDA awards made in the history of the program at UND. The review committee was very impressed by the overall quality of the proposals.” The 2006 DDA students, their departments and faculty mentors, and the topic of their approved research proposals are as follows: * Christian Biaku, Accra, Ghana, chemical engineering, advisor Michael Mann, “Large Scale Integration of Electrochemical Stacks with Distribution Networks: An Impedance Spectroscopy Approach.” * Lata Balakrishnan, Grand Forks, biochemistry, advisor Barry Milavetz, “Characterization of Histone Modifications During Transcription.” * Sunitha Bollimuntha, Andhrapradesh, India, biochemistry, advisor Brij Singh, “TRPC3 and Neurosecretion.” * Kristin Hillman, The Woodlands, Texas, pharmacology, physiology and therapeutics, advisor James Porter, “Adrenergic Modulation of CA 1 Hippocampal Circuitry.” * Karthik Krishnan, Secunderbad, India, microbiology, advisor Ann Flower, “Regulatory Roles of Bip A in Escherichia coli.” * Christopher Knudson, Bismarck, N.D., anatomy and cell biology, advisor Patrick Carr, “The Distribution of Adrenergic Receptors in the Rodent Hippocampus.” * James Maskey, Grand Forks, biology, advisor Rick Sweitzer, “Population Ecology of Moose in North Dakota: Movements, Habitat Use, Diets, and Parasitic Disease.” 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.