Accolades

The Neuromuscular Research Laboratory/Warrior Human Performance Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh was recently awarded $2 million from the U.S. Marine Corps to study gender-integrated recruit training.

The multi-institutional collaborative study will analyze combinations of gender-integrated training and make recommendations for models that integrate genders to the greatest extent possible while continuing to train Marines to established standards. Specifically, the study will address the sociological and physical training effects of increased gender integration and consider training models which maintain the same level of discipline, physical fitness, attention to detail and camaraderie.

“The Academic Study of U.S. Marine Corps Gender-Integrated Recruit Training will utilize a multistage mixed-method study design and address multidisciplinary evaluation questions through both a social science and human performance lens,” said co-principal investigator Mita Lovalekar, who is an associate professor in Pitt’s Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. “Our study will also assess musculoskeletal injury patterns between male and female recruits during entry level training which will extend upon our prior work identifying the financial and medical costs for these injuries and the negative impact on military readiness.”

Margaret Rosenzweig, a two-time alumna and distinguished service professor in the School of Nursing, is the 2020 recipient of the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research’s President’s Award.

The award is given annually to a researcher who engages both academia and clinical practice partners.

Rosenzweig has been principal investigator on 15 studies addressing cancer survivorship, symptom management, end of life care and disparities among women with breast cancer. Her work has contributed to the understanding of racial differences in the completion of breast cancer treatment and the identification of geographic risk for higher breast cancer mortality.

Three entries to the 10th annual Michael G. Wells Competition, hosted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Innovation Institute, won $5,000 prizes for their work toward healthcare innovation.

The winners included BioBulwark, a mesh implant that provides long-lasting prevention of infection superior to currently popular organic chemical coatings; Biocarpet, an endovascular device that can be shaped by heat to treat peripheral arterial disease occurring in small and complex anatomies, including lesions occurring across joints; and OPS, an endovascular device that provides oxygenated blood flow to critical abdominal organs to maintain organ health for transplant harvesting.

The competition usually awards grand prize winners $20,000, second-place winners $10,000 and third-place winners $5,000. The competition’s namesake, Michael G. Wells (pictured), said the decision to distribute prize money equally came from the judging panel determining that these teams could benefit from money and time to move their ideas along. Wells also said prize money that wasn’t given out will be awarded to teams early next year who have shown “demonstrable progress” in their respective projects.

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, a joint research effort by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, recently received a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, which will continue a lab-computer collaboration that accurately simulates communications between nerve cells and muscle cells. Stephen Meriney, professor of neuroscience in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, is a principal investigator of the project.

The project has immediate applications in treating a type of neurological disease called Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome (LEMS). It also offers fundamental insights into how nerve cells communicate with muscle cells in health and disease. LEMS is a neurological disease in which a person’s immune system attacks calcium channels, leading to a weaker communication between nerve and muscle, which causes weaker muscle contractions and an inability of patients to move and function normally.

In earlier work, scientists at the center and Pitt simulated the role of the calcium channels of the nerve-cell membrane in communication between nerve and muscle cells in frogs and mice. The work faithfully reproduced the nerve-to-muscle signaling differences seen in those species.

The Office of Human Resources held its annual Disability Mentoring Day in mid-October at Beaver Area High School.

The office partners with other University areas to provide mentoring to local high school students with disabilities. It focuses primarily on items like resume writing and interviewing. The office normally hosts the event on campus each year, with visits to Panther Central and Pitt Police, but this year it was held virtually.

Participants included 29 employers and more than 700 total students. They came from the city of Pittsburgh, the counties of Allegheny, Washington and Westmoreland, and 40 school districts.

“Our Pittsburgh region has always shown remarkable participation in this event, which has — and continues to get — high marks,” said Tom Armstrong, recruiter for veterans and individuals with disabilities in Pitt’s Office of Human Resources.

Four faculty in the Swanson School of Engineering received Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation during fiscal year 2019-20, bringing to 15 the number of the school’s faculty who have received the awards since 2016.

According to NSF, the CAREER Program is its most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

The 2020 recipients include:

Takashi D-Y Kozai, assistant professor of bioengineering, received $437,144 for Uncovering the Impact of Traditional and Novel Chronic Stimulation Modalities on Neural Excitability and Native Neuronal Network Function.

Sangyeop Lee, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, received $500,000 for Machine Learning Enabled Study of Thermal Transport in Polycrystalline Materials from First Principles.

Jason Shoemaker, assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, received $547,494 for Enabling Immunomodulatory Treatment of Influenza Infection using Multiscale Modeling.

Feng Xiong, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received $500,00 for Scalable Ionic Gated 2D Synapse (IG-2DS) with Programmable Spatio-Temporal Dynamics for Spiking Neural Networks.

For more information about the research projects, go to the Swanson School of Engineering’s website.

The Gerontological Society of America — the nation’s largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging — has named Steven M. Albert, chair of the Graduate School of Public Health’s Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, as the next editor-in-chief of the journal Innovation in Aging, effective January 2021.

“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Albert as editor-in-chief. He has a stellar career in aging research and has profound leadership and management skills that will be essential in this role,” said Ishan C. Williams, the chair of the society's Program, Publications and Products Committee. 

Innovation in Aging is an online open access journal. It contains conceptually sound, methodologically rigorous research studies that describe innovative theories, research methods, interventions, evaluations and policies relevant to aging and the life course.

“In its four years as an online journal, Innovation in Aging has already made its mark as a place for cutting-edge research,” Albert said. “It attracts high-quality research that cuts across the disparate fields of gerontology.”

Michael Madison, a professor at Pitt Law, is co-leading a novel research collaborative called The Governing Knowledge Commons Project, which received a National Science Foundation award to support efforts to build a research coordination network. 

The other co-principal investigators are Brett Frischmann, professor at Villanova University's Charles Widger School of Law; and Katherine Jo Strandburg, professor at New York University's School of Law.

This NSF-funded project will extend existing research, supporting a new network designed to build a research community to advance the work systematically and scientifically. 

This network, funded by a $350,000 grant, will assemble researchers from around the world and from law, the social and behavioral sciences, computer science, and engineering, allowing them to coordinate, integrate and communicate research across multiple disciplinary and organizational boundaries.

The project, which will take place over three years, will facilitate a series of focused working conferences, each organized around a specific subject matter, as well as a capstone convergence conference bringing the entire network and its research together.

“It’s an exciting time for knowledge commons research. IP law focuses on exclusive property rights. We’re focused on the power of collaboration. I’m thrilled by the recognition by the NSF and what these resources offer to the future of the field and to the future of technology policy,” Madison said.

Melissa Bilec, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, has received $98,000 from the National Science Foundation to convene a panel of experts to meet for a workshop on the circular economy that will help set the research agenda for years to come.

In the course of three three-hour sessions over three weeks, the workshop will be an opportunity for the wide array of invited constituents to discuss and develop ideas in circular economy research.

Bilec will team up with Eric Beckman, distinguished service professor of chemical engineering and co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, and Gemma Jiang, director of the Organizational Innovation Lab at the Swanson School. They are collaborating with the University of Georgia’s Jason Locklin, professor of chemical engineering and founding director of the New Materials Institute; Jenna Jambeck, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia; and Gregg Beckham, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Lab.