Andrea Pickel, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Benjamin Suárez-Jiménez, assistant professor of neuroscience, are this year’s recipients of University Furth Fund awards, which foster the development of promising scientists in the natural and biological sciences.

Established through the generosity of Valerie and Frank Furth, the fund provides early career scientists with $12,500 to support their research through purchase of new equipment, for example, or funding the work of their graduate students or postdocs.

Pickel’s research focuses on quantifying temperature and heat flow at the nanoscale using sophisticated optical techniques. The Furth Fund award will support a PhD student conducting research in high-throughput optical super-resolution nanothermometry. Read more about her lab.

“Based on her strong publication track record, scientific maturity, and excellent communications skills, we were thrilled to recruit her,” says Renato Perucchio, professor and chair of mechanical engineering. Since then, he adds, Pickel has shown “exceptional creativity and tenacity” in applying her expertise to entirely new areas and initiating collaborations that build on University strengths in high energy density physics and quantum optics.

Suárez-Jiménez studies the coding of basic approach and avoidance mechanisms in the brain, and how these neural signatures become dysfunctional in specific contexts for individuals who experience trauma. His Furth Fund will support a project to study reward versus threat competition using virtual reality and MRI technologies. Learn more about his research.

Suárez-Jiménez, who joined the University in January, has “hit the ground running,” says John Foxe, the Kilian J. and Caroline F. Schmitt Chair in Neuroscience and Director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience. “Perhaps one of the most important points is that Ben, a Puerto Rican native, has a huge commitment to mentoring the next generation of young scientists, particularly those who are disadvantaged financially and are underrepresented in science.”

The Marcellus Formation straddles the New York and Pennsylvania border, a region that shares similar geography and population demographics.  However, on the New York side, unconventional natural gas development – or fracking – is banned, while on the other side it represents a multi-billion-dollar industry. New University research taking advantage of this “natural experiment” finds that people who live in areas with a high concentration of wells are at higher risk for heart attacks.

“Fracking is associated with increased acute myocardial infarction hospitalization rates among middle-aged men, older men and older women as well as with increased heart attack-related mortality among middle-aged men,” says Elaine Hill, an associate professor of public health sciences, and senior author of the study that appears in the journal Environmental Research.  “Our findings lend support for increased awareness about cardiovascular risks of unconventional natural gas development and scaled-up heart attack prevention, as well as suggesting that bans on hydraulic fracturing can be protective for public health.”

The research team studied heart attack hospitalization and death rates in 47 counties on either side of the New York and Pennsylvania state line.  Using data from 2005 to 2014, they observed that heart attack rates were 1.4 to 2.8 percent higher in Pennsylvania, depending upon the age group and level of fracking activity in a given county.

The associations between fracking and heart attack hospitalization and death were most consistent among men aged 45-54, a group most likely to be in the unconventional gas industry workforce and probably the most exposed to fracking-related air pollutants and stressors. Read more here.

The University Research Awards (URA) provide “seed” grants for promising, high-risk projects, says Robert Clark, provost and senior vice president for research. The fund has been increased from $500,000 annually to $1 million with half of the funding coming from the President’s Fund, and the rest being matched by the various schools whose faculty members are recipients.

Recipients must demonstrate that their projects favor new research with a high probability of being leveraged by future external funding. This year’s recipients, and their projects, are:

• Beau Abar, associate professor of emergency medicine, psychiatry, and public health sciences; David Adler, professor of emergency medicine, pediatrics, medicine and public health sciences; Kevin Fiscella, professor of family medicine, public health sciences, and community health and prevention
  Text-based intervention to improve adherence to colorectal cancer screening recommendations among Emergency Department patients 
• Niaz Abdolrahim, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Chenliang Xu, assistant professor of computer science
  Capturing nanoscale lattice variations by applying AI-powered computer vision techniques on synthetic x-ray diffraction data 
• Machiel Blok and John Nichol, assistant professors of physics and astronomy
  Hybrid spin-superconductor quantum systems: making a quantum Printed Circuit Board
• Peter Christensen, associate professor of art history
  Enough Architecture (placing materiality at the center of research in architectural history}
• Diane Dalecki, Kevin J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Denise Hocking, professor of pharmacology and physiology and biomedical engineeering
  Using Mechanical Stimuli to Activate the Extracellular Matrix for Wound Healing
• Rudi Fasan, Andrew S. Kende Professor of Chemistry, Paul Dunman, professor of microbiology and immunology and associate professor of opthalmology
  Ex-novo designed cyclopeptide antibiotics for the treatment of multi-drug resistant bacterial infections
• Ignacio Franco, associate professor of chemistry and assistant professor of physics, Todd Krauss, professor of chemistry and optics
  Molecules for Quantum Technologies: Tackling the Decoherence Challenge
• Ehsan Hoque, associate professor of computer science, Gourab Ghoshal, associate professor of physics, mathematics, and computer science.
  Understanding Creative Performances in Social Networks.
• Michael Huang,  professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science, Qiang Lin, professor of electrical and computer engineering and optics
  Photonic Reservoir for Machine Learning
• Pengfei Huo, assistant professor of chemistry; Todd Krauss, professor of chemistry and optics; Nick Vamivakas, professor of quantum optics and quantum physics
  Investigating Polariton Mediated Electron Transfer Reactions
• Kirsi Jarvinen-Seppo, associate professor of pediatrics, medicine, and microbiology and immunology, Erin Davis, postdoctoral research associate in pediatrics
  Prenatal effect in the development of anti-allergic immunity
• Jiebo Luo, professor of computer science, Timothy Dye, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health sciences
  Addressing COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among Populations with Health Disparities by Integrating Survey and Social Media Data
• Lynne Maquat, J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Oncology, and Pediatrics; Chris Pröschel, associate professor of biomedical genetics, Hitomi Sakano, assistant professor of otolaryngology and neuroscience.
  Targeting nonsense-mediated mRNA decay in Fragile X Syndrome
• Anne Meyer, associate professor of biology, Danielle Benoit, professor of biomedical engineering and chemical engineering; Jin Xiao, associate professor of dentistry.
  Biofilm-on-a-chip: Development of a microphysiological platform to revolutionize treatment paradigms (to achieve durable treatments for dental caries.)
• Gowrishankar Muthukrishnan, research assistant professor of orthopaedics, Christopher Beck, associate professor of biostatistics and orthopaedics, Javier Rangel-Moreno, research assistant professor of medicine (allergy/immunology and rheumatology)
  Deciphering immune mechanisms behind exacerbated Staphylococcus aureus bone infection in humanized mice
• Andrea Pickel, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Nick Vamivakas, professor of quantum optics and quantum physics
  Probing Nanoscale Thermal Transport with Optically Levitated Nanodiamonds
• Regina Rowe, assistant professor of pediatrics; Julian Meeks, associate professor of neuroscience and pediatrics; Thomas Mariani, professor of pediatrics, biomedical genetics, and environmental medicine
  Regulation of immune responses by olfactory chemosensory neurons
• Ruchira Singh, associate professor of ophthalmology and biomedical genetics, Collynn Woeller, assistant professor of ophthalmology and environmental medicine.
  Using high throughput drug screening for pharmacologically targeting macular degeneration in patient-derived hiPSC models.

Are you passionate about developing solutions to specific clinical and translational science issues?

Submit a proposal to start a working group through the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program.

Working groups must propose and deliver well-defined projects or deliverables that fill identified translational gaps and/or further the CTSA Program objectives in high-priority areas.

Projects may result in outputs such as consensus papers, white papers, publications, workshops, symposiums, meetings or a conference. Submit proposals by Tuesday, June 1.

National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Domain Teams enable researchers with shared interests to collaborate more efficiently and analyze data within the N3C Data Enclave, a secure platform housing harmonized COVID clinical data.

These teams provide an opportunity to:

• collect pilot data for grant submissions,
• train algorithms on larger datasets,
• inform clinical trial design,
• learn how to use tools for large-scale COVID data and validate results.

Learn how University of Rochester researchers can benefit from the N3C and the broader Center for Data to Health.

Here are important links for researchers:

• The University’s COVID-19 Resource Center for important updates and guidance on working, teaching, and learning remotely
• University of Rochester Medical Center website for restrictions, resources, and news
• The University’s COVID-19 “Restart and Recovery” web page

PLEASE NOTE that the University’s COVID-19 Dashboard is updated daily and dashboard numbers may reflect additional cases confirmed later in the day. When a new case is known, the contact-tracing process begins immediately with the Monroe County Health Department, with confirmed exposures being contacted and required to quarantine. Remember:

If you feel like you’re experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms, it’s best to report them through Dr. Chat Bot immediately. Even if you think your symptoms might be something else, like a cold, seasonal congestion, or allergies, it’s still important to tell University health professionals and contact tracers what you are experiencing—they always want to receive more, not less, information.

Common COVID-19 symptoms include:

• A temperature of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or higher
• Chills
• Muscle or body aches
• Severe fatigue
• Headache
• Congestion or runny nose
• Sore throat
• Loss of taste, smell, or appetite
• Cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing
• Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea