Announcing Three More ARISE Innovation Awards
It might feel like déjà vu, but we are thrilled to announce another three new Research and Education Innovation (REI) Awards! This latest round of projects focuses on key areas, including air quality in manufactured housing, how disasters impact cultural heritage cites, and how to boost mold resiliency.
With these latest additions, the ARISE project has now awarded 19 total seed grants since its launch in 2022. These $50,000 awards are designed to spark homegrown ingenuity at Kansas universities, initiating high-impact research for Kansas.
Funding for these seed grants comes from the five-year ARISE initiative, which stands for Adaptive and Resilient Infrastructures driven by Social Equity. This major statewide initiative is backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and the Kansas Board of Regents. With the aim of strengthening research excellence in regions historically overlooked for federal investment, this effort has successfully returned more than double in federal research support for Kansas.
Fall 2025 REI Award Recipients Round #2:
Yoonjung Ahn, Assistant Professor of Geography & Atmospheric Science, University of Kansas, Manufactured Housing Residents’ Air Quality Exposures and Perspectives
Matthew Howland, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Wichita State University, Documenting and Disseminating History and Mortuary Segregation at Highland Cemetery
Nishit Shetty, Assistant Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Kansas, Characterizing the fungal microbiome in indoor air and stormwater to improve resiliency to mold.