Faculty Awards

Dr. McNulty received $384,323 from the National Science Foundation for a project titled Participation in the City: How Urban Participatory Innovations are Reshaping Democracy, Governance and Trust.

Abstract
In an era of eroding freedoms and withering trust in electoral democracy, innovations in political participation are pivotal to democracy’s survival in the 21st century. Cities have been a key source of urban participatory innovations (UPIs) that offer new practices through which citizens can inform and reshape democracy. Through the lens of these innovations, PAR-CITY will work towards three objectives: 1) establish the empirical significance of cities for responding to the global challenges of democracy, governance and trust (DGT); 2) examine the role of digital tools and technologies in eroding or strengthening DGT in large cities; and 3) advance concepts, models and theories that allow us to better understand how urban spaces are building trust and reshaping democracy through participatory innovations. The project, funded by the Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities, brings together an interdisciplinary team of 25 researchers who will compare 7 major cities (covering 4 regions across the global south and north) to examine how cities and their UPIs respond to the key democratic challenges of our times. The National Science Foundation will fund a team of four experts from the United States who will document and analyze the participatory eco-system of New York City over a period of three years.

Dr. Davis received $384,940 from the National Institutes of Health for a project titled Regulation of pathogen sensing and inflammation by NLR proteins.

Dr. Modern was awarded a $60,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a book project titled The Book of Akron: A Pre-History of Post-Industrial Society.

Abstract

In my hometown, deindustrialization was first glimpsed in bold-letter headlines from the Akron Beacon Journal announcing negotiations, union strikes, loss, or layoffs. Tire production in Akron, Ohio—the so-called “Rubber City”—was in free fall. By 1983, Goodyear, Firestone, and Goodrich—the industrial backbone of my community for over half a century—closed all of their factories. Gone over a decade were the vibrant union cultures and a half-century tradition of having produced up to two-thirds of all tires made in the U.S. The Book of Akron: A Pre-History of Post-Industrial Society uses the particularities of biography and the archive to reimagine the transition between two technological eras—from an age of colonial extraction and industrial expansion to our era of artificial intelligence. Honing in on visions of efficiency and advancements in automation across three centuries, The Book of Akron approaches the longue durée of deindustrialization against the backdrop of the machines, the science, and the automated techniques that were involved—from indigenous practices of animal procurement and the military schemes of settler colonists to early techniques of automation in the tire industry, polymer science, and the increasing (and increasingly overwhelming) presence of micro-computers and their cognitive imperatives.

View more information on Dr. Modern's book and other scholarship.

Dr. Adkins was awarded $150,000 from the National Institue of Standards for a project titled Calculation of Recoil Corrections to Muonium Hyperfine Splitting.

Abstract

Muonium is the bound state of a positive muon and an electron. The structure of muonium is determined by the Coulomb force along with Quantum Electrodynamic (QED) corrections acting between two pointlike spin-1/2 fermions. Strong interaction effects are minimal since, in contrast to the proton, the muon is point-like and has no internal structure governed by the strong interaction. Weak interaction effects are intrinsically small. Precision spectroscopy of muonium provides important information about the validity of QED; the values of fundamental constants such as the muon mass, the Rydberg constant, and the fine structure constant; and informs the search for new physics. The theoretical evaluation of the muonium ground state hyperfine splitting is in immediate need of improvement. The current theoretical value for this interval is less precise than the expected precision of the experiment being developed by the MuSEUM collaboration at J-PARC in Japan. The best use of improved experimental precision will only be realized if theory can be improved as well. The goal of the present project is to improve theory by computing the needed additional energy corrections.

Dr. Plass received $10,000 from the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PittCon) for the purchase of potentistats.

Abstract

Funding was requested for three potentiostats to be used in Chemistry and Physics laboratory courses. Potentiostats measure how electrical current travels into or out of a material. An understanding of this property is crucial to sustainable energy technologies like solar cells, batteries, and solar fuel generation. Laboratory experiences can now be developed teaching these technologies.

View more information on Dr. Plass' research and work with students.

Dr. Rottman received $133,102 from the John Templeton Foundation for a project titled A Multifaceted Investigation of the Development of Intellectual Humility and its Links to Children’s Reasoning Across Domains and Contexts.

Abstract

Increased societal polarization has made it critical to understand how to foster children’s ability to navigate productive disagreement. In particular, we need better insights into the development of intellectual humility (IH)—an awareness of what one does not know (the limits of one’s knowledge) and that one could be wrong (the fallibility of one’s knowledge). In adults, greater IH is associated with decreased polarization and extremism (Bowes et al., 2020; Mellers et al., 2019), an openness to opposing viewpoints (Porter & Schumann, 2018), and greater learning (Krumrei-Mancuso et al., 2020; Porter et al., 2021). Understanding the development of this intellectual virtue across childhood can bring us one step closer to understanding how to promote it, and its benefits, among youth. This multi-site collaborative project will lay the groundwork for a developmental science of IH by developing and validating a novel self-report measure for children from 6 to 10 years of age.

Dr. Tasker received $514,388 from the National Science Foundation for a project titled CAREER: Development of New Gas-Releasing Molecules Using a Thiol Carrier.

Dr. Tasker also received $2,684 from the National Science Foundation for a project titled CAREER Training Conference.

Abstract

Dr. Tasker, working with faculty from the University of California at Riverside, was invited to present at a conference held in the Summer of 2024 in Arlington, Virginia, on preparing successful CAREER proposals to the National Science Foundation.

Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards are among the most prestigious awards made by the National Science Foundation.

View a more technical description of Dr. Tasker's project. View more information on Dr. Tasker's research and her work with students.

Dr. Wilson received $505,358 for a project titled CAREER: Transparent Theory of Mind Algorithms for Social Robots Assisting Young Children.

Abstract

View a more complete and technical description of Dr. Wilson's project. View additional information on Dr. Wilson and his project.

Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards are among the most prestigious awards made by the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Plass was awarded $470,879 by the National Science Foundation for a project titled RUI: Post-synthetic transformations of anions in metal chalcogenide nanoparticles: Uncovering synthetic design rules and the effect on subsequent transformations.

Abstract

Nanoparticle synthesis is not as well understood as traditional chemical synthesis. While organic chemists can design new drugs, inorganic chemists can design new molecular catalysts, and biochemists can design processes like CRISPR, nanomaterials chemists are much more dependent on luck. We aim to find new ways to controllably change the chemistry and shape of particles through post-synthetic transformations. We can make copper sulfide nanorods and then trade out the sulfur component for tellurium or selenium. We seek to understand how these transformations work and how they interplay with other types of transformations. We also seek to use computational methods to model post-synthetic nanoparticle transformations. This work has a wide range of practical applications, including in things like solar energy capture and sustainable electronic devices that rely on the ability to design nanoparticles with specific properties.

View a more technical description of Dr. Plass' work.

View more information on Dr. Plass' research and work with students.

Dr. Adkins was awarded $240,000 from the National Science Foundation for a project titled RUI: Calculation of Higher Order Corrections to Positronium Energy Levels.

Abstract

Positronium is the “exotic atom” consisting of an electron and its antiparticle, the positron.  Positronium is similar in many ways to traditional simple atoms such as hydrogen and helium, but is different because of its unique composition and because of its tendency to annihilate, transforming into pure electromagnetic energy in the form of high-energy photons. Positronium can be produced in the laboratory, and many of its properties, such as energy levels and lifetimes, have been measured to high precision. Positronium properties can also be calculated theoretically to high precision using the methods of bound-state Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) because strong and weak interaction effects are negligible. Consequently, positronium is an ideal system for testing the limits of QED bound state physics and for exploring the consequences of agreement or disagreement between theory and experiment at this high level of precision. Undergraduate students at Franklin & Marshall College will be involved as collaborators in this work. The students will learn theoretical methods of calculation more advanced than those usually encountered at the undergraduate level.  They will gain valuable experience by doing the research, by preparing and giving presentations describing their results, and by publishing their work as co-authors in research journals.

View a more technical description of Dr. Adkins' work.

Dr. Trainor received $86,397 from the Space Science Telescope Institute (STScI) for the project titled CECILIA: A direct-method metallicity calibration for Cosmic Noon through the Epoch of Reionization.

Abstract

The STSci selects and organizes observation times on NASA's two major space telescopes, the Hubble and James Webb. The Chemical Evolution Constrained Using Ionized Lines in Interstellar Aurorae (CECELIA) project, one of the first projects selected to use observations from the James Webb Telescope after it became operational, was intended to...

View more information about Dr. Trainor, his research, and his work with students.