{"id":385,"date":"2019-01-16T19:22:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T19:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/?page_id=385"},"modified":"2019-01-16T19:22:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T19:22:03","slug":"spotlight-news-briefs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/fall-2018\/spotlight-news-briefs\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight: News Briefs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fast Start for Grants<\/span><\/h2>\n

For the first quarter of fiscal year 2019 \u2014 from July 1 through September 30, 2018 \u2014 星空无限传媒 researchers have received $5.3 million in externally sponsored grants and contracts. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c星空无限传媒\u2019s steady increase in extramural funding is a true testament to both the growth of our research enterprise as well as the strength of our research faculty,\u201d says Vice Provost for Research and Graduate School Dean Scott Herness<\/strong>.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe breadth of our funding portfolio \u2014 from educational assessment to astrophysics \u2014 is exactly what one would expect at a nationally designated doctoral research university,\u201d Herness says. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur continued increase in funding from such competitive federal agencies, as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, illustrates the high quality of the work done<\/span> by our researchers and their doctoral students,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In fiscal year 2018, 星空无限传媒 received 84 grants totaling nearly $18 million from a diverse group of federal, state, local, private and international sources.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Finding the Most Distant Black Holes<\/span><\/h2>\n

Rodica Martin<\/strong>, a professor in the newly launched Department of Physics and Astronomy, is a member of the celebrated international LIGO \u2014 Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory \u2014 team that confirmed Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity by detecting black hole collisions and neutron star mergers. <\/span><\/p>\n

She has recently received a $90,000 National Science Foundation grant to study the optical properties of materials that can be used to develop the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Professor
Professor Martin in her optics lab.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Martin\u2019s research will focus on exploring new magneto-optical materials for the detectors\u2019 Faraday isolators. \u201cThis grant will allow me to deepen my studies\u00a0<\/span>in new areas that contribute to increasing the sensitivity of future detectors,\u201d she says. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWith more sensitive instruments, LIGO can detect gravitational waves from sources that are much further away, or that are too weak to observe with current detectors, giving us new insights into the dynamics of the cosmos.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

High-Tech Way to Test Water<\/span><\/h2>\n

With help from a $192,212 National Science Foundation grant, 星空无限传媒 professors are purchasing a Dynamic Imaging Particle Analyzer (DIPA) that will help them image, count and characterize particles from pollutants to algal cells that can degrade water quality \u2014 and harm people and aquatic life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe DIPA will let us process samples much more efficiently,\u201d says Meiyin Wu<\/strong>, biology professor and director of the University\u2019s Passaic River Institute. <\/span><\/p>\n

Wu, a project co-principal investigator with Earth and Environmental Sciences Professor Yang Deng<\/strong>, notes, \u201cCurrently, we process samples under a scope, which can take about three hours for a single sample. Now, it will only take about 10 minutes. <\/span><\/p>\n

With its accurate, rapid analyses, the DIPA will be a core instrument for critical University research initiatives focusing on developing innovative water treatment technologies for the removal of water pollutants, as well as for identifying and characterizing freshwater algae.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Database Tracks Early Caribbean Census<\/span><\/h2>\n

History Professor Julia Landweber<\/strong> has received funding for a June 2019 residence at Brown University\u2019s John Carter Brown Library for ongoing collaboration with Elizabeth Heath of Baruch College\u2013CUNY to create a digital database focusing on the human populations \u2014 both free and enslaved \u2014 and agricultural production of early modern French Caribbean colonies. <\/span><\/p>\n

By digitizing and linking census data to interactive digital maps, it will be possible for the first time to depict the development of multiple commodities across <\/span>space and time in the early modern Caribbean.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur database will be a useful resource to both scholars and students, offering scholars an unprecedented opportunity to use GIS (Geographical Information Systems) tools to analyze demographic, economic and social trends in these colonies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fast Start for Grants For the first quarter of fiscal year 2019 \u2014 from July 1 through September 30, 2018 \u2014 星空无限传媒 researchers have received $5.3 million in externally sponsored grants and contracts. \u201c星空无限传媒\u2019s steady increase in extramural funding is a true testament to both the growth of our research enterprise as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11,"parent":356,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-385","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/385\/revisions\/387"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/forward-thinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}