September 18, 2019
The UNH Research Office announced the annual Collaborative Research Excellence (CoRE) awardees for FY2020. The CoRE initiative supports interdisciplinary and collaborative efforts driven by UNH researchers addressing local, regional, and world issues. Ten teams representing 46 UNH faculty and staff from across the university, as well as 13 external partners, were awarded CoRE funding.
30 applications were received for this year’s competition, with proposals seeking $923K in funding. “We are excited to have so many research teams participate in CoRE. The proposals represent UNH’s breadth of interests and expertise and use of interdisciplinary approaches to solve complex societal challenges. We look forward to supporting this year’s CoRE teams to advance UNH research competitiveness and achieve impacts from their projects,” says Kevin Gardner, Vice Provost for Research.
The CoRE initiative launched in FY18. Over its first two years, 36 interdisciplinary project teams received awards. Those projects have reported a breadth of research and scholarship outputs that include over $46M in external grant proposal submissions; $27M in new awards; numerous manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals; and conferences, workshops, and presentations that have engaged over 3,000 of academic, community, and industry partners.
FY2020 projects fall into three categories:
Creating New Centers provides funding over two years (matched 1:1 by non-OSVPR funds) to establish new, interdisciplinary centers with research programs that have strong potential for significant future external funding support.
- Center for Acoustics Research and Education (CARE) (Leads: Jennifer Miksis-Olds, Anthony Lyons, and Daniel Howard)
Pilot Research Projects seed-funds collaborative research projects for one year with strong potential to attract future funding from external sources and/or with outstanding commercial potential.
- Integrating Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) and Smart Homes to Support Caregiving of Individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease: A Proof-of-Concept Research Project (Leads: Momotaz Begum and Sajay Arthanat)
- Conversion of Elastin Like Polymer Surfaces into a Working Sensor Platform (Leads: Jeffrey Halpern and Sherine Elsawa)
- Toward Automatically Detecting Mind-Wandering While Driving (Leads: Caitlin Mills and Andrew Kun)
- Meeting People Where They Are At: Health Needs of New Hampshire Syringe Service Program Participants (Lead: Kerry Nolte)
- Insights from Re-Wilded Apple Orchards: Do Production Practices Hinder Ecosystem Tolerance to Stress? (Leads: Anissa Poleatewich and Cheryl Andam)
- Biologically-Derived 3D Hydrogel Charge Storage Device (Leads: Young Jo Kim and Kyung Jae Jeong)
Interdisciplinary Working Groups support groups of faculty for one year to convene around research topic areas to build awareness and relationships across disciplines, allow for cross-fertilization of ideas, identify potential collaborative research opportunities, and provide a venue for finding partners.
- Center for Writing Research, Engagement, and Teaching (C-WRET) Interdisciplinary Group (Leads: Christina Ortmeier-Hooper and Lisa MacFarlane)
- Interdisciplinary Working Group on Marine Genomics in the Gulf of Maine (Leads: David Plachetzki and Bonnie Brown)
- Planning for a Net Zero Carbon Emissions Future: Connecting Research to Practice at UNH (Leads: Cameron Wake and Jennifer Andrews)
For more information on CoRE, contact Mark Milutinovich, director of Large Center Development, and Maria Emanuel, Manager, Collaborative Research Excellence Initiative, or visit the CoRE website.