DISCOVERIES AND INNOVATIONS

PVAMU Vice President of Research & Innovation Dr. Magesh Rajan has launched a funding initiative called the Rapid-Response Grant Program (RAPID) to support researchers and innovators seeking to address pressing issues with a short turnaround time of summer months.

The RAPID program supports research studies to help understand and address complex national needs and challenges. RAPID grants are generally for a limited time. This grant program encourages PVAMU faculty, research staff and doctoral students from all disciplines to broaden their research or jump-start new research in relevant areas to current national needs. It helps mobilize scholarly researchers and, particularly, deepen understanding and develop ways to respond to the recent national challenges. The RAPID Program funded research projects based on university priorities and societal needs.

During the first two years of the RAPID program, the Division for Research & Innovation funded more than 40 research and innovation projects to faculty researchers with $3,000-$5,000 funding support. Because many federal funding agencies require preliminary data to show the feasibility of the proposed research, the RAPID grant serves as an essential means to collect needed data to successfully pursue larger external funding.

IN FISCAL YEAR 2022, R&I AWARDED 22 GRANTS:

1. Rania Labib, Assistant Professor-Architecture — Quantifying the Negative Impact of Reflective Building Facades using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

2. Vahid Faghihi, Assistant Professor-Construction Science — Prairie View Advanced Construction Technology (PV-ACT)

3. Sameh Abdelwahed, Assistant Professor-Chemistry and Physics — Electroactive Materials for Energy Conversion and Catalysis

4. Gina Chiarella, Assistant Professor-Chemistry and Physics — Synthesis of environmentally safe Transition metal complexes with redox catalytic activity and luminescence properties as a green alternative for industrial and pharmacological catalysts

5. Yingchun Li, Assistant Professor-Chemistry and Physics — Development of Novel Graphitic Carbon Nitride Nanomaterials as Photocatalysts for Solar Driven Hydrogen Production: from Mechanism-based Design to Practical Application

6. Gururaj Neelgund, Assistant Professor-Chemistry and Physics — Novel NIR active nanomaterials for cancer therapy

7. Tyler Moore, Assistant Professor-History — Cloud-based Digital Archives Analysis Platform for a More Transformative Future

8. M. Misaghian, Associate Professor-Mathematics — Theta Correspondences over a 2-adic Field

9. Anne Lippert, Assistant Professor-Psychology: Text2Net — User-Friendly Software for the Analysis of Open-Ended Response Questions

10. Temilola Salami, Assistant Professor-Psychology — Assessing Culturally Relevant IPV Risk and Protective Variables and Developing an Adaptive Toolkit to Reduce IPV-Related Mental Health Consequences Among Black College Students at HBCUs, PWIs, and HSIs.

11. Iyanda Ayodeji, Assistant Professor-Social Sciences — Pilot project to examine the impact of discrimination and neighborhood disorder on academic outcomes among Black college students

12. Larry Hill, Assistant Professor-Social Work — Exploring Pathways to Integrate Novel Medical and Behavioral Health Technologies into Health and Human Service Agencies

13. Beverly Miller, Assistant Professor-Curriculum and Instruction — TEXSTEM: Producing PV STEM Teachers for the 21st Century K-12 Student 14. Stella Smith, Assistant Professsor-Educational Leadership & Counseling — Pragmatic Idealism: The Educational Leadership Legacy of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune 15. Kazeem Olanrewaju, Assistant Professor-Chemical Engineering — Numerical Experimentation of Physiological and Pathophysiological Effect of Species Transport and Transformation in the Cardiovascular- Gastrointestinal Systems 16. Nabila Shamim, Assistant Professor-Chemical Engineering — Designing and Testing 3D Printed Scaffolds for Bio-medical Applications

Ahmed Ahmed, Assistant Professor-Computer Science — A Formal Model and Programming Platform for Supporting Distributed Sensor-Based Services

Xishuang Dong, Assistant Professor-Electrical & Computer Engineering — Trustworthy AI Based Screening for Combating Global Pandemics

Jiang Lai, Assistant Professor-Mechanical Engineering — Laser Sintering Based Additive Manufacturing of Sustainable PLA/Natural Filler Biocomposites

Shahin Shafiee, Assistant Professor-Mechanical Engineering — Investigation of Anomalous Transport Phenomena and Phonon Scattering of Conductive Materials in Magnetic Fields

Emmanuel Dada, Assistant Professor-Chemical Engineering — Chemical Recycling of Plastic Wastes Using Hydrogenolysis Method

Myra Michelle DeBose, Assistant Professor-Nursing — Evaluating social media and medication adherence for PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis): Using photovoice to prevent HIV in adults.