Foundation awards $2.2M, divided among researchers

"The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded Binghamton University $2.2 million in grants for various research projects in everything from organic chemistry to psychology to anthropology.

These grants will help BU obtain newer equipment and retain employees.

“I got several grants,” said Mohammad Younis, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “Most of them are from the National Science Foundation; we compete amongst each other, and if they like an idea, they will fund [it].”

The NSF sponsors about 10,000 research projects per year, judged with rigorous, merit-based criteria to see if they qualify.

“My advisers, when I was in grad school, introduced me to these new topics,” Younis said, referring to his field of study. “At that time, mechanical engineering was very hot; it was a new thing. My teacher was dynamic person, he knew dynamics, he asked me to look into it. I read about them and found myself very interested.”

At the moment, Younis is studying the effects of vibrations on tiny electro-mechanical systems. This research could be put to use in reducing damage to various objects during collisions, such as airbags in cars.

“Working on [mechanical engineering] we look for ways to define devices,” Younis said. “It’s physics and dynamics; we understand the physics and motion aspects of this and we try to define our own new concepts for designs and devices.”

Eriks Rozners, an associate professor in BU’s chemistry department who is studying new antibiotic and anticancer drugs, also received a grant of $550,584 from the NSF.

“In general what my group is doing is a synthetic organic chemistry,” Rozners said. “We are working with RNA in particular, so what we are doing is exploring how the structure, function and chemical modification change RNA, and that’s just one direction. The other direction is [studying] small molecules, how they bind biologically to RNA, and all this research is geared toward developing new antibiotics.”

According to Rozners, the grant he received is not directly related to his research.

“The grant is for a major instrument, the nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, [which] costs $780,000,” he said. “While we have [these instruments], they are over 20 years old and they are weak or outdated in their technical capabilities, so we certainly had a need for a modern state of our instrument with the technical advances over the past 20 years.”

“The NSF saw that there’s a real need and potential for us to improve our research capabilities, so they funded it,” he added.

The NSF was established in 1950 and is the largest federally-backed research agency. It has an annual budget of $6.06 billion, and sponsors approximately 20 percent of scientific research conducted throughout colleges and institutes throughout the United States.

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