North Dakota EPSCoR announces awards, grants The North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) has announced the 2009 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 science, engineering, and mathematics (the so-called “STEM”) disciplines at North Dakota’s research-intensive universities. Because of the close connection of outstanding graduate students and the competitiveness of North Dakota researchers for receiving merit-based grants and contracts in support of science and technology research from federal funding agencies, the DDA awards are expected to have very high impact. 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. Two competitive awards were made at UND. The review committee was very impressed by the overall quality of the proposals and noted that funding limitations precluded some otherwise deserving proposals from being awarded. The 2009 DDA students, their departments and faculty mentors, and the topic of their approved research proposals are as follows: * Carrie John, biochemistry, advisor Julia Zhao, “The Development and Application of Fluorescent Nanomaterials for Trace Determination of Analytes.” * Erandi S. Gunapala, physics, advisor Kanishka Marasinghe, “A Study of the Atomic Structure of Vitreous Rare Earth Phosphates Using High Energy X-ray Diffraction and Neutron Diffraction Techniques.” ND EPSCoR Announces UND IIP Collaborative SEED Pilot Program Awards The North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) has announced the IIP Collaborative SEED Pilot Program awards at UND. ND EPSCoR’s SEED awards are designed to increase multidisciplinary research collaborations in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines that would result in competitiveness for large-scale national awards. Since an increasing amount of research in STEM areas is multidisciplinary and collaborative, these awards will foster these activities both within UND and between UND researchers and researchers at NDSU. Two competitive collaboration awards involving three UND researchers will be funded for approximately $198,000. The two-year Collaborative SEED awards made are as follows: * Forrest Ames, mechanical engineering, collaborating with Yildirim Bora Suzen, NDSU mechanical engineering, “Measurements and Predictions of Heat Transfer, Transition, and Aerodynamic Loss at Low Reynolds Numbers in High Speed Flows.” * Sima Noghanian, electrical engineering, collaborating with Edward Sauter, UND School of Medicine, Surgery Department, “Development of an Accurate Breast Phantom based on Breast Tissue Measurements.” For additional information concerning ND EPSCoR or the Collaborative SEED Pilot Program, please contact Mark. R. Hoffmann, Assistant Vice President for Research and Co-Project Director, ND EPSCoR, 777-2492, mhoffmann@chem.und.edu