Julie Rana, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, watches as students work on the board during Discrete Mathematics in Briggs Hall. Photo: Danny Damiani
Julie Rana, assistant professor of mathematics, watches as students work on the board during Discrete Mathematics. Photo: Danny Damiani
MOTION GRANTED Major National Grants Recognize Faculty Scholarship, Create Opportunities for Student Research By Ed Berthiaume
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wo Lawrence University faculty members—Julie Rana in Mathematics and Israel Del Toro in Biology—are the recipients of six-figure national grants that will further their research and bring more Lawrence students into the research process. Two other faculty members—Lori Hilt ’97 in Psychology and Beth Zinsli ’02 in Art History—received five-figure national grants to enhance their work. Catherine Gunther Kodat, provost and dean of faculty, said bringing in four national grants this fall speaks to the breadth
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of the high-level work being done by Lawrence’s faculty. “It’s wonderfully gratifying to see our faculty receiving national recognition for something we at Lawrence have always known— our faculty are gifted, dedicated teachers who are also engaged in ground-breaking scholarship across the full range of the liberal arts disciplines,” Kodat said.
PROOF OF CONCEPT Assistant Professor of Mathematics Julie Rana was awarded a twoyear grant of $192,905 through the National Science Foundation’s Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) program. It’s a first-time grant, awarded to pre-tenure faculty. It’s a huge accomplishment for Rana, with only 21 grants awarded across the country. A portion of the grant will allow Rana to work on research in algebraic geometry related to moduli spaces, collaborating with math scholars in Europe, Chile, and elsewhere in the United States. The funding will allow her to hire four students in each of the next two summers to work with her on research in an area of math known as graph theory.
