Stanford royalties seed 24 research proposals

With funds gained from the royalties on Stanford licenses and patents, seed grants totaling $625,859 have been awarded to 24 Stanford researchers or research teams, Dean of Research Arthur Bienenstock has announced.

"These seed grants will help our junior faculty to develop their new ideas and compete successfully for [other] research funds," Bienenstock said.

Winners of this year's Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) Research Incentive Fund awards were chosen from among 80 project proposals. Each proposal was evaluated independently by two members of the faculty, most of whom were prior OTL award recipients.

This year, proposals were limited to junior faculty ­ that is, assistant professors or associate professors within their first three years at Stanford. Most of these grants went to promising projects in an initial phase, in which researchers test ideas that may later qualify for major grants from other sponsors.

The following projects were selected for seed grants ranging from $23,500 to $40,000:

Jeremy Bailenson, Communication, Digitally Mediated Person Recognition

Sarah Billington, Civil and Environmental Engineering, A Smart Health-Monitoring System for Post-Tensioned Built Infrastructure

James K. Chen, Molecular Pharmacology, Constitutive and Conditional Gene Silencing in Zebrafish

Christopher Contag, Pediatrics, and Sandip Biswal, Radiology, Spatiotemporal Analysis of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Trafficking in Response to Hematopoietic Stress Using a Novel Bone Graft Model

David DeGusta, Anthropological Sciences, Paleoanthropological Research in Ethiopia

Liran Einav, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research/Economics, Estimating Risk Preferences from Deductible Choice

Feryal Erhun, Management Science and Engineering, Risk Analysis in Supply Chains

Zephyr Frank, History, Urban Tapestry: The Transformation of Rio de Janeiro, 1840-1889

J. Christian Gerdes, Mechanical Engineering, A Race-Track Inspired Approach to Self-Stabilized Vehicles

William A. Kennedy, Urology, and Rebecca Fahrig, Radiology, MRI Voiding Cystography in Children: Quality Improvement and Radiation Elimination

Natasha Kirkham, Psychology, The Role of Multiple Perceptual Cues in Early Learning

Albert Koong, Radiation Oncology, Pilot Study to Investigate the Role of Metabolic Imaging in Predicting Tumor Response and Outcome After Chemoradiotherapy in Patients with Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

Gregory T. A. Kovacs, Electrical Engineering, A Novel Method for the In Vitro Study of Cardiac Cell Transplantation

Merritt Maduke, Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Probing Conformational Changes in Membrane Proteins Using 19F NMR: Exploratory Studies on a Chloride Transporter

David McKenzie, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research/Economics, Logistical Arrangements and Pilot Study of Wealth and Health Effects of Migration

Nicholas A. Melosh, Materials Science and Engineering, Stochastic Actuation of Correlated Cantilevers

Boris Murmann, Electrical Engineering, Mathematical Foundations of Next Generation Analog/Digital Interfaces

Seiji Nishino, Psychiatry, A New Blood Test for the Diagnosis of Narcolepsy

Michael Ramscar, Psychology, Mechanisms for Second Language Learning

Mark Schnitzer, Biological Sciences, Optical Imaging of Cerebellar Neural Dynamics Underlying Classical Conditioning

Gavin Sherlock, Genetics, Genome Plasticity and Evolution in De Novo Yeast Species

Jelena Vuckovic, Ginzton Laboratory/Electrical Engineering, Single Molecules in Photonic Crystals: From Biosensing to Quantum Cryptography

Christine Wijman, Neurology, Selective Cerebral Hypothermia in Acute Stroke

Mylene Yao, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Live-Cell Monitoring of Meiosis for the Mammalian Oocyte

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