2020 Funded Projects
A psychophysiological approach to the refinement of suicide risk management intervention
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Suicide rates are rising dramatically in the U.S. Timely interventions are necessary so that high risk individuals get help to identify their personal warning signs and adopt coping strategies to manage emotional dysregulation tha ...
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An investigation of pathogens on rock climbing mat materials
Funded in 2020 for $15K
The International Federation of Sport Climbing reports that 44.5 million individuals rock climb regularly and that this community is growing as a result of rock climbing's debut in the upcoming 2020 Olympics. Increasing anecdotal ...
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Brain Injury Alliance of Utah and University of Utah Educational Conference on Brain Injury: Focus on the Mind Body Connection in Recovery
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The goal of this application is to support an educational and outreach activity, an educational conference for providers, survivors, and family members of brain injury. The conference will be a forum for community engagement and ...
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Building a branch from UPSTEM to the HSC: co-creating infrastructure and skills to increase student diversity and success in our health professional schools
Funded in 2020 for $15K
An unmet goal of the U’s health professional programs, including the schools of medicine and dentistry, is to educate diverse cohorts of students who reflect our local and regional communities. To address this longstanding chall ...
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Building a Graduate Student Pipeline for Pacific Island Students
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The proposed project seeks to create pathways to graduate and professional school for Pacific Island students. Pacific Islanders have a long and rich history in Utah, and yet, are still severely underrepresented in higher educatio ...
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Capturing and Communicating Diverse Biomedical Hypotheses Through Visualization
Funded in 2020 for $30K
This new cross-disciplinary project brings together experts in visualization, communication and neuroscience. The project will establish mechanisms to enhance the communication and understanding of diverse hypotheses among researc ...
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Climate Change – An Expression of Sounds, Visuals, Words and Science. A symposium and performances where music, visual art, poetry and science presents the urgency of climate justice in a new and innovative light to give clarity of action to the defining issue of our generation.
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The proposed project is an attempt to bring together artists, educators and scientists in an informed discussion and expression about climate change and its effects in Utah and beyond. The collaboration is intended to culminate i ...
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Collaborative Multi-Condition Caregiving Initiative
Funded in 2020 for $15K
Families are essential members of the healthcare team who provide care for their loved ones. We believe that family caregivers of persons with a wide variety of conditions (e.g., dementia, autism, spinal cord injury) have shared e ...
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Combining Modeling with Experiments for the Study of Cell Mechanosensing
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Understanding how mechanical forces affect cell structure and function is critical to a variety of physiological and pathological phenomena, including cell migration, development, wound healing and cancer metastasis. In this proje ...
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Comprehensive Sex Education for Refugee and Immigrant Elementary (4-6th) School Students
Funded in 2020 for $15K
The goal of this project is to pilot a Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) for late elementary school students of refugee and immigrant backgrounds. CSE is defined by the United Nations Population Fund as giving young people access ...
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Design Thinking as a Process for Healthcare Innovation | engaging cross-disciplinary collaboration through design and development
Funded in 2020 for $15K
We propose to develop a cross-discipline health design training program for students who are interested in digital health applications. This curriculum will combine graduate students from the Departments of Biomedical and undergra ...
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Development of a Multi-Disciplinary Tool to Investigate Vision Loss due to Posterior Vitreous Detachment
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The objective of this proposal is to develop a unique mechanics-based imaging methodology that allows multidisciplinary investigation of vitreous liquefaction and microscale vitreoretinal adhesion to elucidate mechanisms of vision ...
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Development of Beta-lactamase as a self-labeling protein tag
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Fluorescence microscopy is a major way that biologists examine cells and tissues. Self-labeling protein tags are a relatively new way of tagging proteins with fluorescent dyes. This method provides the advantages of genetically en ...
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End-of-life healthcare and hospice use in Alzheimer's Disease: A comparative analysis using the Utah Population database.
Funded in 2020 for $15K
Our team will use the Utah Population Database (UPDB) to conduct an analysis comparing end of life hospice and healthcare services of Dementia and Cancer patients. Hospice eligibility is currently benchmarked to Cancer trajectorie ...
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Gender-Based Violence Consortium
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Gender-based violence (GBV) is understood as violence that results in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering, based on a person’s gender, where coercion, or arbitrary deprivations of freedom occurs in public or priv ...
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Hyperspectral Endoscopic Microscopy for Optical Biopsies
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Overview: We propose to develop a miniaturized hyperspectral microscope that can be placed at the tip of a pulmonary endoscope and create real-time hyper-spectral video imaging with close to diffraction-limited resolution. Relati ...
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In-vivo real-time monitoring of neurotransmitter in mouse brain for study of neurodevelopmental disorders
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Real-time monitoring of brain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin is the key in understanding the biological bases of neurodevelopmental disorders and also in the development of novel therapeutic agents for the treat ...
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Increasing Access to Special Education and Disability Legal Information for Refugee, Immigrant and Native Utahns
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Our goal is to partner with community groups that serve refugee, immigrant, and Native populations to promote accessibility for students with disabilities in Utah. While children with disabilities are legally guaranteed access to ...
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Integrating lineage across individuals with phylogenetic tree comparison
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The cell lineage tree describes every cell division from the fertilized egg to the adult. Tracing cell lineage trees informs our understanding of the processes that sculpt development and disease. We established a new method for t ...
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Learning Morphology, Virtually Naturally
Funded in 2020 for $30K
This project will promote student success and transform lives by creating interdisciplinary and deeply engaging learning opportunities for students of the anatomical sciences, especially students who will train in medicine, nursin ...
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Leveraging Prehistoric Footwear to Reconstruct Ancient Running Biomechanics
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Running is an important cultural practice among modern Diné and Puebloan peoples, and has roots in prehistoric practice. Oral history suggests running was important in ceremony, communication, hunting, and warfare. However, prehi ...
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Music-Based, Personalized Digital Therapy for People with Epilepsy
Funded in 2020 for $30K
In this cross-disciplinary project, we propose to create a precision digital therapy by integrating expertise in music, mobile health, and atmospheric sciences. Neurological effects of music are recognized as a means to improve tr ...
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Prenatal Education for Cytomegalovirus: Knowledge, Attitudes and Compliance
Funded in 2020 for $15K
Congenital CMV (cCMV) is the leading cause of non-genetic sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in children in the US. The disease burden of cCMV may include permanent neurocognitive disability and musculoskeletal impairment. Yet pub ...
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Promoting patient engagement and commitment to physical therapy: RCT demonstration of a Brief Motivational Interviewing Training.
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions are a leading source of disability healthcare costs. Both disability and costs can be reduced with routine physical activity. Brief motivational interviewing (MI) interventions are effectiv ...
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Revolving Sky: artists and scientists exploring human experiences of earth and sky
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Today’s big environmental challenges cross disciplinary boundaries, requiring academics to collaborate outside their sphere and translate research language to the general population. Contemporary performance artists who address ...
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Rules of Resilience: Modeling impacts of host-microbe interactions during perturbations
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The gut microbiota has emerged as an integral component of organism well-being, influencing the most basic of functions such as metabolism, to more specialized systems e.g., immunological function. While work has been done to und ...
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Super Critical Carbon Dioxide in the Large Scale Drug Manufacturing
Funded in 2020 for $30K
There is an urgent need for the development of novel large-scale manufacture engineering methods, which enhance sustainability and renewability while minimizing or eliminating the use of hazardous chemicals, biologicals and solven ...
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Supporting the quality of SafeUT: The evaluation of text-based crisis counseling with machine learning.
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Suicide is a leading cause of death among people ages 10-34. The suicide rate in Utah is higher than the national average, with 600 deaths and 4500 attempts each year. SafeUT is an app that provides 24/7 access to text-based crisi ...
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The role of the brain extracellular matrix in brain clearance
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The clearance of toxic macromolecules and metabolic byproducts from the interstitial/extracellular space (ECS) of brain parenchyma via interstitial fluid (ISF) is critical for the maintenance of brain homeostasis. Impairment of br ...
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Treating Alzheimer's Disease with Targeted Alpha Therapy
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Targeted alpha therapy has gained recognition for the treatment of cancers. The therapeutic efficacy of alpha particles lies in the short range and high linear energy transfer of these ionizing particles. Alpha particles emitted i ...
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Understanding the Role of Combustion Particle Pollution and Upper Airway Disease In Utah
Funded in 2020 for $30K
The project will be a new-cross campus partnership between the CoE (Dr. Kelly, ChE, PhD, PE), CofM (Dr. Jeremiah Alt, Surgery, Division of Otolaryngology MD, PhD), and CofPh/CoE (Dr. Hamid Ghandehari, Pharmaceutics/Bioengineering, ...
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Using serious games to address air quality as an environmental health problem
Funded in 2020 for $15K
In Utah, air quality is a chronic concern for much of the state. Poor air quality contributes to health problems and reduces life expectancy, and the geography of air quality reinforces these as social and environmental justice is ...
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Visualization and Integration of Cancer Cell Response Data by Quantitative Phase Imaging
Funded in 2020 for $30K
Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is a microscopy method that can be used to monitor cell behavior or response to targeted therapy. Both the Judson-Torres and Zangle labs at the University of Utah work on applications of QPI to stu ...
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