Kansas NSF EPSCoR Supercharges Research with Four New First Awards
Big news for Kansas research! This month, Kansas NSF EPSCoR announced four new First Awards—prestigious seed grants that will supercharge the careers of early-career assistant professors at Kansas universities. These competitive grants are designed to spark groundbreaking research and sharpen grant-writing skills, setting the stage for long-term academic success.
Each award provides up to $50,000 for a full year of innovative research and educational efforts tied to the bold goals of the ARISE project—Adaptive and Resilient Infrastructures driven by Social Equity. This year’s award recipients, hailing from the University of Kansas and Wichita State University, are diving into topics packed with real-world impact ranging from smart infrastructure to resilient housing.
Since its launch in 1992, the First Award program has supported 177 assistant professors across six Kansas universities. The results speak for themselves: many recipients have gone on to win major federal research grants and earn national acclaim. It’s a proven launchpad for the state’s brightest minds.
This year’s funding comes from the five-year ARISE initiative, backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and co-funded by the Kansas Board of Regents. The initiative aims to strengthen research excellence in regions historically overlooked for federal investment—and it’s working, with every dollar in EPSCoR funding helping bring in more than double in additional federal research support.
Summer 2025 First Award Recipients
Strengthening Resilience of Built Environments Through Early Mold Detection by Nishit Jaideep Shetty, Assistant Professor, University of Kansas
Advancing Robust Building Damage Detection for Resilient Infrastructure by Shruti Kshirsagar, Assistant Professor, Wichita State University
Towards a Reliable Software Stack for Communications in Smart Infrastructure by Sankha Narayan Guria, Assistant Professor, University of Kansas
Evaluating Disparate Impacts from Multi-Climate Risks for Manufactured Homes by Yoonjung Ahn, Assistant Professor, University of Kansas