Seeding Novel Research in Kansas
Impacts
Kansas NSF EPSCoR supports two seed grant opportunities
- First Awards catapult careers for assistant professors in Kansas, helping to initiate novel research and foster grant writing skills.
- Research & Education Innovation (REI) Awards are for any faculty member at designated universities in Kansas to kickstart a novel area of study. These awards enable faculty to gather preliminary data, expertise, and collaborations needed to successfully compete nationally for larger grants. They also create opportunities for workforce and economic development across the state.
Here are recent recipients of these $50,000 awards.
Since launching in 1992, Kansas NSF EPSCoR has invested in 173 assistant professors with its First Award program. Awardees hail from six universities in Kansas. Many have gone on to win prestigious federal grants and achieve national recognition—two key metrics of the program’s success at building lasting research capacity in Kansas.
First Award Recipients
2024
Matthew Howland, Wichita State University, Improving Cultural Heritage Resilience through Modeling and Quantification of Erosion Risks to Heritage Sites
Melinda Adams, Langston Hughes Assistant Professor, Geography & Atmospheric Science and Indigenous Studies, University of Kansas, Indigenous-Led Cultural Burns and Research In Resiliency with Kansas Tribes
Hongyang Sun, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kansas, Towards Robust Resilience for Large Computing Infrastructures
2023
Xiaolong Guo, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Kansas State University, LLM4KSS: Large-language Models for Kansas Science
Amanda Hovious, Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University, Data Literacy for All: A Kansas Public Library Initiative
Zelalem Demissie, Assistant Professor, Department of Geology, Wichita State University, The use of Radar technology and AI techniques to forecast early-stage drought in Kansas
Davi Soares, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wichita State University, Physics-informed machine learning model for assessment of state of health of lithium-ion batteries used in resilient infrastructure applications
Davood Babaei Pourkargar, Assistant Professor, Tim Taylor Department of Chemical Engineering, Kansas State University, Distributed green ammonia generation for resilient energy storage and fertilizer production in rural communities
Ashesh Sinha, Assistant Professor, Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Kansas State University, Data driven decomposition-based approach for resilient supply chain logistics
2022
Tania Kim, Assistant Professor of Entomology at K-State, Plant-insect interactions in human-modified landscapes
Zak Ratajczak, Assistant Professor of Entomology at K-State, How plant communities respond to changes in climate and land management
2021
Admin Husic, Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Kansas, "Influences of urbanization on the tipping points of benthic algae mat growth, decay, and toxin production"
Wujun Si, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Wichita State University, "Big data driven spatial-temporal analytics of microbiome-environment interaction: a system engineering perspective"
2020
Jeongdae Im, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering, Kansas State University, The Role of Microbial Diversity in Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Conserved Forages
T. M. Sonny Lee, Assistant Professor, Biology, Kansas State University, Linking microbiome function and microbial processes to plant genetic diversity in a foundation forage grass across the Great Plains grassland climate gradient
Thomas M. Luhring, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, Wichita State University, Hot, Dry, and Wet Again: Effects of Drought and Warming on Wetland Microbial Communities
2019
Preetham Burugupally, Mechanical Engineering, Wichita State University, Trapping and assistedpairing (TAP) microfluidic chip meant to study plant cell-microbe interactions in a microenvironment at the single-cell level
Andres Patrignani, Agronomy, Kansas State University, Upscaling transient microbial activity and soil moisture dynamics
Tom Platt, Biology, Kansas State University, Prevalence and co-occurrence of pathogenic and cheater agrobacteria on healthy and crown gall disease infected sunflowers
Maggie Wagner, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, A simplified community to enable manipulative study of maize microbiome function
2017-2018
Dong Lin, KSU, 3D Printing Biomimetic and Hierarchical Wood Structure for Endosphere Microbiome Study
Colby Moorberg, KSU, Quantifying the Impact of Weather Whiplash on Roots and Hyphae with an Automated Minirhizotron Camera System
Prathap Parameswaran, KSU, Smart adaptation of enriched microbiomes in Recovered Nutrient Products (bio‐fertilizers) from anaerobic wastewater treatment to the native soil
Ali Eslami, WSU, A Study of DNA Mutations through Error Control Coding Theory
Cuncong Zhong, KU, Transforming Metagenomic Sequencing Data Analysis with Scalable Assembly and Comprehensive Annotation
Research & Education Innovation Award Recipients
2024
Xiaolong Guo, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Kansas State University, Guarding the Gatekeepers: Ensuring the Safety of IoT Sensors in Essential Infrastructure
Andrew Swindle, Associate Professor of Hydrogeology; Environmental Geochemistry, Wichita State University, Enhanced resilience of drinking water accessibility in Kansas using probabilistic machine learning
John Symons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kansas Institute for Information Sciences, Advancing fairness in machine learning: a multidisciplinary approach
2023
Joseph P. Brewer, II Associate Professor, Environmental Sciences Director, Indigenous Studies Program, University of Kansas, Native Prairie Restoration & Climate Resilience on the Ioway Nation in Kansas and Nebraska
S. Amin Enderami, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Kansas, Evaluating Feasibility of Buyouts as Adaptation Strategy for Post-Wildfire Flash Floods
Ali Eslami, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wichita State University, Developing a Network Science to Study Cascading Failures in the Cyber-Physical Infrastructure
Jeffrey Girard, Assistant Professor, Psychology, University of Kansas, Kansas Data Science Training Pathways | An Integrated Model
Admin Husic, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Kansas, The inequity of urban flooding: exploring societal and climatic drivers across scales
Shakil Bin Kashem, Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning, Kansas State University, Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies for Enhancing Disaster Risk Awareness in Vulnerable Communities
Christopher Koliba, Stene Distinguished Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration, University of Kansas, An Institutional and Behavioral Design Approach to Improving the Use of Flood Forecast Information for the Kansas City Metro Portion of the Missouri River Basin
Ajita Rattani, Assistant Professor, School of Computing, Wichita State University, Understanding and Mitigating Bias of AI-based Natural Disaster Assessment Models for Rescue Coordination and Resiliency
Ehsan Salari, Associate Professor, Department of Industrial, Systems, and Manufacturing Engineering, Wichita State University, Modeling Electric-vehicle (EV) Infrastructure Resilience Using a Socio-economic Approach
Wujun Si, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial, Systems, and Manufacturing Engineering, Wichita State University, Integrating Social Equity into Infrastructure Maintenance Planning Towards Resiliency