The Seward Family Digital Archive, a digital-humanities project that fuses object-based learning and community-engaged teaching, has received more than $1 million in external grant funding to date. The latest grant comes from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation for $289,100 to be paid out over two years.

The project, a collaboration between the University’s Department of History, the River Campus Libraries’ department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, and the Digital Scholarship Lab, brings together students in the humanities and computer science, residents of retirement communities, and retired volunteers from the greater Rochester area to help transcribe the thousands of Seward family letters, all written in Victorian-era cursive handwriting.

“Citizen archivists” is how Thomas Slaughter, the project’s principal investigator and the University’s Arthur R. Miller Professor of History, describes his team of students and retirees who transcribe, annotate, and tag personal letters of President Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward; his wife, Frances Miller Seward; their immediate and extended family members, and friends from about 1820 to 1873.

According to Slaughter the new funding will be used to expand the project’s geographical reach, while enhancing teaching and learning opportunities for students and volunteers.

“The generous new grant from the Gardiner Foundation will enable students to train and support additional volunteers beyond the 20 now working with us, to enhance this community-engaged collaboration, and to increase the productivity of the project while maintaining the high standards for documentary editing set by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, which supports the volunteer arm of the project through December 2018,” says Slaughter.

Besides continuing the collaborating with volunteers from the Highlands at Pittsford retirement community, the Penfield Recreation’s DEAR program, and retired University staff and librarians, the effort will soon include another off-campus site for volunteers in Brockport who’ll be working alongside Slaughter’s students. In addition, a student videographer will be trained to make short films about how to collaborate on public history projects.

Read more here.

A new research program will harness machine learning and data science to sift through tens of millions of records of U.S. nursing home and assisted living residents to identify risk factors for suicide. The project, led by Yue Li, professor of public health sciences, and Xueya Cai, research associate professor of biostatistics and computational biology, is supported by a $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Suicide is among the 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. and suicide risk increases substantially after age 65. As approximately 70 percent of individuals over the age of 65 will require long-term care, research indicates that suicide deaths are concentrated in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Residents of long-term care facilities are often socially isolated, physically and cognitively disabled, and diagnosed with multiple mental and medical conditions, all of which are associated with suicide in older adults. As a result, it is speculated that nursing home residents have an elevated risk of taking their own lives compared to older adults who live in the community, despite the fact that long-term care facilities are capable of closely monitoring the daily activities and health of their residents.

The new research will examine records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Violent Death Reporting System, National Death Index) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Medical Center faculty will collaborate with researchers in the Goergen Institute for Data Science to employ advanced machine learning applications that will sift through the immense sets of data and build algorithms that can identify risk and predictive factors – such as depression, physical conditions, status of social and family connections, and cognitive function – for suicide deaths and attempts.

The researchers will also attempt to identify characteristics of nursing homes, such as the safety culture, staffing levels, and quality of care, that contribute to elevated suicide risk. The information developed by the project will  inform potential future organizational and policy interventions to prevent suicide among elders receiving long-term care.

Four grants from the Center of Excellence (CoE) in Data Science are helping local companies translate the cutting-edge science of University researchers into improved health care, while also benefiting the region’s economy and creating jobs.

“We’re looking for the best research we can get, but there’s a baseline economic impact that has to be there,” says Walter Johnson, CoE’ s executive director. Submissions for the current round of funding are being accepted until December 31, 2018, or until all funds are dispersed. (See below.)

The grants, ranging from $25,000 to $94,000, will help fund these projects:

• Geunyoung Yoon, professor of ophthalmology, is developing a Brillouin scattering microscope for Clerio Vision Inc., a startup that is using a new femtosecond laser technology to noninvasively write vision correction into contact lenses, intraocular lenses and even directly into the cornea. The microscope will enable three-dimensional modeling of the individual characteristics of a patient’s cornea or soft contact lenses.
• James McGrath, professor of biomedical engineering, is working with SiMPore, a manufacturer of ultrathin silicon-based membranes first developed in his lab, to model a new filtration technique to improve the process of developing virus-based medical products.
• Jannick Rolland, the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering, is working with LighTopTech, a company she cofounded, on developing a spectrometer to increase the imaging speed of a new technology the company uses to noninvasively biopsy tissue as it is removed during an operation, reducing the need for patients to return for another operation.
• Steven Feldon, director of the Flaum Eye Institute and professor of ophthalmology, is working with Envision Solutions LLC to test the effectiveness of a new visual training technique to restore vision in stroke victims.

The Center of Excellence is housed at the Goergen Institute of Data Science and is funded by the New York State Division of Science Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR). The goal is to help drive regional economic development by supporting basic research, training, and technology development.

Three of the projects are also receiving funding from the Center for Emerging and Innovative Sciences (CEIS), also located the University. CEIS, one of 15 New York State Centers for Advanced Technology, is also supported by NYSTAR, and typically provides a 50 percent match for funds that companies provide to support research projects with university researchers.

These are the first CoE grants to be based on a new model that not only involves a call for proposals but also requires economic impact.

“This is a new way of approaching research for many of our faculty, and we want to do all we can to help them  tap into this new form of support for their work,” Johnson says.

SUBMISSIONS STILL ACCEPTED FOR CURRENT ROUND OF FUNDING

Submissions for the current round of RFP funding by the Data Science Center of Excellence are being accepted until December 31, 2018, or until all funds are dispersed. The deadline for completion of the research remains June 30, 2019, however.  Submissions can be made after this date, but the funding will not be available prior to July 1, 2019, and will be judged in a new pool of submissions.

To be considered in the current round, submit the required paperwork on or before December 31.  The forms can be found at: http://www.sas.rochester.edu/dsc/coe/funding.html.  Contact Walt Johnson (waljohnson@rochester.edu) or Cathy Adams (cathy.adams@rochester.edu) with questions.

The State of New York has set an ambitious target to supply 50 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030, with an ultimate goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

A new solar power and energy storage initiative at the University will help contribute to that goal.

Carmala Garzione, a professor of earth and environmental sciences and the director of the University’s Center for Energy and the Environment (CEE), is spearheading the initiative, which will bring together Rochester researchers, students, and local community members to learn more about solar energy that is integrated with energy storage.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) recently awarded the University a $1 million grant for the project, as part of NYSERDA’s REV Campus Challenge, which recognizes New York universities for their commitments to clean energy. The University of Rochester was one of three NY schools to receive similar NYSERDA grants, announced at a ceremony at RIT.

The Rochester project is part of the CEE’s efforts to “develop technology for improved energy systems and to advance fundamental science that promotes understanding of the impacts of energy technology on the environment and human health.” The project includes installation of a 335-kilowatt integrated solar and energy storage system on the roof of the Goergen Athletic Center. The solar power will offset the majority of the energy needs of a new, net-zero office building that will be constructed on the south side of Hutchison Hall.

“We need to be moving toward renewable energy to mitigate the effects of carbon dioxide emission from burning fossil fuels. One of the goals of the Center for Energy and the Environment is to support the University in setting an example for the larger Rochester community and the state of New York,” Garzione explains in a Q and A with Lindsey Valich. “This project will provide critical data on the performance of integrated solar power and energy storage systems so that these renewable energy technologies can be more widely deployed across New York.”

Read more here.

Medical Center researchers have discovered a potential approach to deliver therapeutics more effectively to the brain. The research could have implications for the treatment of a wide range of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, and brain cancer.

“Improving the delivery of drugs to the central nervous system is a considerable clinical challenge,” said Maiken Nedergaard, co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine and lead author of the article, which appears in the journal JCI Insight. “The findings of this study demonstrate that the brain’s waste removal system could be harnessed to transport drugs quickly and efficiently into the brain.”

Many promising therapies for diseases of the central nervous system have failed in clinical trials because of the difficulty in getting enough of the drugs into the brain to be effective. This is because the brain maintains its own closed environment that is protected by a complex system of molecular gateways – called the blood-brain barrier – that tightly control what can enter and exit the brain.

For example, it is estimated that only two percent of antibodies administered intravenously to treat the buildup of amyloid beta plaques in brains of people with Alzheimer’s actually reach their target.

The new research taps into the power of the glymphatic system, the brain’s unique process of removing waste that was first discovered by Nedergaard in 2012.   The system consists of a plumbing system that piggybacks on the brain’s blood vessels and pumps cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) through the brain’s tissue, flushing away waste.

In experiments conducted on mice, the researchers took advantage of the mechanics of the glymphatic system to deliver antibodies directly into CSF. They then injected the animals with hypertonic saline, a treatment frequently used to reduce intracranial pressure on patients with traumatic brain injury.

Read more here.

Qiang Lin, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and of optics, who has been elected to the Optical Society’s 2019 Fellows Class. Principal factors for election as an OSA Fellow include candidates’ achievements in business leadership, education, research, engineering, and service. Lin is being honored specifically for outstanding and sustained contributions to the research and development of nonlinear fiber optics, silicon photonics, nano-optomechanics, and integrated quantum photonics.

In an effort to reduce administrative burden on the research community, the Office for Human Subject Protection (OHSP) is revising the human subject protection training requirements set forth in OHSP Policy 201.

Effective October 17, 2019, training will be categorized into either Biomedical or Social-Behavioral-Education (SBE).  This change will reduce the total number of modules each group is required to complete for initial training (see table).

The length of refresher training is consistent, if not shorter, with what is currently required.  This should be a seamless transition. OHSP will work with the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) to make this change, so faculty and staff are not required to do anything.

Principal investigators are responsible for ensuring study staff are adequately trained and, therefore, a PI may require staff to complete additional training.  Similarly, the Research Subjects Review Board may also require additional training.

OHSP will no longer provide certification letters following course completion within CITI.  Documentation of course completion is available directly within CITI and may be provided to funding agency, sponsors, etc.  When necessary, OHSP staff are able to download this documentation directly from CITI for study staff.

Questions concerning these policy revisions?  Contact Kelly Unsworth.

Mike Ritz, research compliance officer for Research & Project Administration, will highlight the new features for the eRecord Research functionality coming with the November upgrade at 2 p.m., Tuesday, Class of ’62 Auditorium. He will also share best practices for maintaining study patient records and performance of Research Billing Review, describe some expected future enhancements, and answer questions.

Patricia Ames, director of the Office of Clinical Research with the University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, will provide a high-level overview of the plans for implementing a new clinical trial management system.

The National Institutes of Health takes sexual and gender harassment seriously. When harassment occurs, not only is it a personal violation, it can cause lasting damage to an individual’s professional development and training.

Michael Lauer, NIH’s deputy director for extramural research, recently wrote an article addressing this issue. Read the article on his blog, Open Mike, to learn more about NIH policies regarding sexual and gender harassment.

The University of Rochester provides access to sexual misconduct reporting options and support services, even if someone does not wish to formally report an incident. Learn more about UR policies and resources.

Join the Center for AIDS Research for the Annual CFAR World AIDS Day Scientific Symposium on Friday, November 30 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in recognition of World AIDS Day.

Keynote addresses will be presented in the Class of ’62 Auditorium by Marguerita Lightfoot, professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco, and Douglas Nixon, professor of immunology in medicine at Weil Cornell Medical College.

A poster session will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Flaum Atrium. Poster registration deadline is November 1. 

Contact Laura Enders for more information about World AIDS Day events and poster registration.

Zhen Tan, Biophysics, “Modeling RNA Secondary Structure Using Structure Conservation.” Noon, November 2, 2018. Neuman Room, Medical Center. Advisor: David Mathews.

Kyle Rugg, Chemistry, “1. 2nd Generation Total Synthesis of (-)-Nakadomarin A 2. Studies Toward the Total Synthesis of (-)- Apoptolidin A.” 11 a.m., November 6, 2018. 473 Hutchison Hall. Advisor: Robert Boeckman.

Fanju Meng, Genetics, “Regulation of Stem Cell Proliferation and Differentiation by Drosophila Sox21a and Sox100B in the Adult Intestine.” 3 p.m., November 8, 2018. Adolph Lower Auditorium 1-7619, Medical Center. Advisor: Benoit Biteau.

Today: Deadline to apply for the 2018 World Universities Network (WUN) Research Development Fund. If you are interested in leading a proposal effort, contact the University’s WUN coordinator, Ruth Levenkron.

Oct. 29: “Training Future Researchers: Running an All-Undergraduate, Lean, and Competitive Research Lab,” presented by Jeffrey Miller ’66, a professor of microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. Noon, Hawkins-Carlson Room, Rush Rhees Library. Lunch provided to those who register in advance to ase.events@rochester.edu or to Rachel Lawrick, 275-6166, by October 24.

Oct. 29: “The Future is Today: Transforming the Care of Childhood Onset Chronic Health Conditions.” UR Complex Care Center’s Second Annual Conference, co-sponsored by UR CTSI’s UNYTE Translational Research Network. 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Class of ’62 Auditorium. Click here to register.

Oct. 30: Town Hall for Study Coordinators. New features for eRecord Research functionality coming with November upgrade, best practices for maintaining study patient records and performance of Research Billing Review, and overview of plans for a new clinical trial management system. 2 p.m., Tuesday, Class of ’62 Auditorium.

Nov. 1: “Shijing: The Matter of Painting,” presented by Lihong Liu, assistant professor of art history. Jesse L. Rosenberger Work-in-Progress Seminar. Noon to 2 p.m., Humanities Center Conference Room D, Rush Rhees Library. Lunch provided. RSVP by selecting “I’m Interested”  here.

Nov. 3: 4^th Annual Immune Imaging Symposium, a forum to share the newest developments in understanding immune function through visualizing immunity “in action.” featuring a distinguished group of international speakers, an interactive poster session, and opportunities for oral presentations from students and postdoctoral fellows. Saunder’s Research Building. Registration is free but closes on October 22. Hosted by the Program for Advanced Immune Bioimaging.

Nov. 5: Deadline for collaborative biomedical research teams to apply to the Center for Leading Innovation & Collaboration for funding to write a Synergy Paper. Questions can be directed to synergy_papers@clic-ctsa.org. Click here for the RFA.

Nov. 5: Annual Medical Student Research Poster session, noon to 1 p.m. Flaum Atrium, Medical Center. Medical students present their summer and year-out research projects. Contact omecached@urmc.rochester.edu with questions.

Nov. 6: Inaugural Biomedical Ultrasound Symposium Day. Lectures by Frederick W. Kremkau, professor of radiologic sciences and director of the Program for Medical Ultrasound at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Theresa Tuthill ’84, ’87 (MS), ’91 (PhD), senior director of clinical and translational imaging at Pfizer Inc. Also includes graduate student presentations, a poster session, lunch, and networking. 8:15 a.m. to 5 p.m., Feldman Ballroom in Douglass Commons. RSVP to carlalboff@rochester.edu. Include your name, affiliation, any dietary restrictions, and whether you will be presenting a poster. Hosted by the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound (RCBU).

Nov. 12: Initial abstracts due for the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Scientific Advisory Committee’s (SAC) Incubator Program. See details and application instructions. Contact Anne Reed for more information.

Nov. 13: Wilmot Cancer Institute annual scientific symposium. Keynote speaker is Judith Campisi, professor of biogerontology at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Oral presentations and poster session. 9 a.m. 3 p.m., Class of ’62 Auditorium and Flaum Atrium. Questions about submitting a poster or about the symposium in general can be emailed to Chelsea Costanzo or call 585-273-1447. The deadline for poster registration submission is 4 p.m., Wednesday, October 31.

Nov. 30: Annual CFAR World AIDS Day Scientific Symposium. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Keynote addresses by Marguerita Lightfoot, professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco, and Douglas Nixon, professor of immunology in medicine at Weil Cornell Medical College.Class of ’62 Auditorium. Poster session 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Flaum Atrium. Poster registration deadline is November 1.  Contact Laura Enders for more information about World AIDS Day events and poster registration.

Dec. 5:  Phelps Colloquium series: Ajay Kuriyan, assistant professor of ophthalmology, “The Bionic Eye, Computer Vision, and Drug Discovery: The Gamut of Retina Research.” Kara Bren, professor of chemistry, “Making Fuel and Fertilizer from Sun, Air, and Water.” 4 p.m. Feldman Ballroom Douglass Commons. Register here. Questions? Contact Adele Coelho or call 273-2571.