Associate professor in the department of physics and astronomy Matthew Bellis, PhD, received a three-year award of $201,175 from the National Science Foundation to continue his work with students conducting research with the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. These funds support efforts to search for signs of new physics as the LHC starts up again in 2020 after a two-year shutdown and to develop novel approaches to particle physics outreach and education. Dr. Bellis also received a $550 grant from the Bauder Fund of the American Association of Physics Teachers, to continue development of a board game that teaches players about quantum mechanics by incorporating historical experiments as part of the game play. The grant will fund copies to place in local schools. The prototype of the game was developed in the summer of 2019, thanks to CURCA Summer Scholar Delaney Corrigan.
Assistant Professors of Mathematics Kursad Tosun, PhD, and Scott Greenhalgh, PhD, were awarded a three-year, $11,769 grant from the National Science Foundation in collaboration with Mount Holyoke College, Keene State College, and Siena College. The award funds the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (HRUMC) for the next three years; the conference will be hosted by Mount Holyoke College in 2020, by Keene State College in 2021, and by Siena College in 2022. The main goal of HRUMC, which is attended by 250-300 faculty and students each year, is to increase the number of undergraduates interested in a career in mathematics research, and it provides students with the opportunity to present their research work.
Dr. Robin Flatland, professor of computer science, and four faculty colleagues were awarded a two-year, $299,830 grant from the National Science Foundation. The new award will enable the computer science department to leverage and expand an existing researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) to create a new community-focused professional development (PD) model for preparing high quality computer science (CS) teachers capable of increasing the number and diversity of students in their schools' CS classrooms. Siena's past work and strong ties to secondary CS and mathematics education in New York State's Tech Valley region are ideal for developing a regional CS teacher community and for addressing, in a significant manner, the problem of underrepresented groups in CS.
Dr. John Moustakas, associate professor in the department of physics and astronomy, received three grants this year. His new two-year grant from the National Science Foundation provides $59,366 for a collaborative effort with New York University physics professor Dr. Michael Blanton to develop and apply state-of-the-art image resampling techniques to observations of nearby galaxies as part of a broader effort to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies.
A subaward from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory provides $18,138 for Professor Moustakas to contribute to the Survey Validation phase of DESI during the Spring 2020 semester. Dr. Moustakas' continued involvement in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, an effort by more than 300 scientists and 50 research institutions around the world to understand the mysterious phenomenon coined “dark energy.”
He was also awarded a three-year, $150,000 grant from the Department of Energy to work on several key aspects of the survey. These awards will enable Siena students to continue to participate in cutting-edge astrophysics research both during the summer and during the academic year, to travel to world-class observatories and other research universities, and to present their work at national and international conferences.
The Center for Academic Community Engagement (ACE) received three new awards, including a $7,000 Multi-Institutional Innovation grant from Bringing Theory to Practice. With partners at other campuses in the Capital Region ACE will use the seed money to 1) increase capacity for campus and community change through formalization of the regional council on community engagement, 2) foster innovation and collaboration by enhancing issue-based discussions and funding projects, and 3) develop leadership and capacity for structural campus change through enhanced programming and faculty peer mentorship. The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation awarded Siena an $18,000 grant to support ACE in creating a faculty academy to help faculty become community engaged practitioners. The academy’s first year will include the development of learning communities, professional development for faculty, travel to national Bonner conferences, and other developmental experiences. ACE also received $60,000 from the Corporation for National and Community Service for continuation of Siena’s AmeriCorps VISTA program.
Dr. Sharon Small, associate professor of computer science, and Dr. Ting Liu, assistant professor of computer science, received a two-year, $265,225 subaward from General Electric-Global Research to research and develop a model for grounded language acquisition and an automated language acquisition prototype that learns to understand English text and speech, for the purpose of making the information more useable by automated analytics. Starting with no knowledge of language (e.g., no dictionary, no grammar), the prototype will learn to associate textual or spoken input with salient elements of live scenes, images, or video. With a carefully-planned curriculum for language acquisition, the prototype will need to use logic, heuristics, and/or inference to describe previously unseen entities, relations, and events. As the vocabulary, concepts, and linguistic constructions are augmented, the machine should gain the ability to describe increasingly complex events and relations.