2008 Salomon Awards

John Bodel, Professor, Classics and History;
Michael Satlow, Associate Professor, Religious Studies and Program in Judaic Studies: $19,800
Creation of a "Center of Digital Epigraphy" (CoDE)

Inscriptions are to students of ancient society what documents are to historians of more modern periods: essential primary sources. Their publication in print, however, has always been problematic and is becoming increasingly impractical. Brown has rich but scattered resources in the emerging area of digital epigraphy; a central administrative umbrella for projects in this area will facilitate cross-fertilization and will enable more efficient use of existing resources.  It will also establish Brown as a leader in the field nationally and, in certain respects, internationally.  For the first year, the Center will support two existing projects, “The U.S. Epigraphy Project” and “Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine.”

Nitsan Chorev, Assistant Professor, Sociology: $15,000
From Smallpox to HIV/AIDS: On the Global Governance of Health

Health policies advocated by international organizations have rarely been based on biomedical knowledge alone. Rather, international health policies, like other international initiatives, reflect political considerations and economic calculations. Chorev’s proposed book project will offer the first comprehensive analysis of the political-economic dynamics underlying international health cooperation, from the establishment of the U.N. World Health Organization in the 1940s to the present. Drawing on an extensive original research, Chorev will examine how North-South relations, struggles among international organizations, and the rise of multinational corporations, private foundations and non-governmental organizations, affected the shifts in international health policies.

Deborah Cohen, Associate Professor, History: $15,000
Family Secrets:  The Rise of Confessional Culture in Britain, 1840-1990

Cohen examines the interplay between families and secrecy over the course of a century in a half in Britain.  Charting the shifting boundaries between what was considered private or shameful, and what could be freely disclosed, she makes two main arguments.  First, there is no straightforward story of progressive, enlightened de-closeting to be told; different family secrets had different trajectories.  Second, families did not simply enforce social norms.  Rather, they played a crucial role in arbitrating and even creating them.  Cohen’s grant will fund archival research in Britain.  Her book, “Family Secrets,” is under contract to Viking Penguin.

Sarah Delaney, Assistant Professor, Chemistry: $15,000
Elucidating the Roles of DNA Damage and Repair in Trinucleotide Repeat Expansion

The molecular basis for a family of neurological disorders, including Huntington’s disease and fragile X syndrome, is the expansion of a trinucleotide repeat region of DNA. These repetitive regions are known to form non-canonical secondary structures and, furthermore, recent work in mice has implicated DNA damage and repair in the expansion.  Delaney plans to study the mechanism by which the disease-initiating expansion occurs by unraveling the connections between secondary structure, DNA damage, and repair.  A molecular level understanding of how the expansion occurs will enable the design of agents to inhibit this process and consequently prevent a variety of neurological disorders.

Gerwald Jogl, Assistant Professor, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry: $15,000
Structural Biology of the Human Sir2 homolog, Sirt6, in complex with the Gcip tumor suppressor

Mammalian homologues of the yeast Sir2 histone deacetylase target a multitude of cellular proteins in addition to histones. These enzymes function as protein deacetylases or ADP-ribosyltransferases and have been implicated in processes such as chromatin regulation, DNA maintenance, and energy metabolism. They are considered promising targets for drug development against cancer and aging-related diseases. Human Sirt6 is a chromatin-associated protein, which is essential in DNA base-excision repair. Jogl’s research will attempt to determine the three-dimensional structure of Gcip (Grap2 and Cyclin D Interacting Protein) alone and in complex with Sirt6 to study the structure and function of their interaction.

Stratis Papaioannou, Assistant Professor, Classics: $14,600
Study, Edition, and Translation of the Writings of Michael Psellos (11th cent., Byzantium)

Prolific writer, ingenious courtier, and radical thinker, Michael Psellos (1018 - ca. 1078, Constantinople) represents Byzantine culture at a transitional moment. The eleventh-century is a time when across Europe a movement from premodern to modern cultural patterns is palpable, and Psellos, writing in Medieval Greek, is the earliest and most eloquent figure of this transition. Papaioannou has a comprehensive approach to his research on Psellos: he is completing a study of Psellos' aesthetics and autobiography, editing Psellos' letter-collection for the Teubner Series, and, in collaboration with an international team of scholars, he is preparing an anthology of Psellos' texts in English translation.

Sherief Reda, Assistant Professor, Engineering: $15,000
ProHunter: A Platform to Accelerate Protein Identification from Mass-Spectrometry Data

Mass-spectrometry based proteomics is a powerful technology for protein identification. One of the main challenges in this technology is the sheer volume of data that needs to be processed and analyzed. Despite the algorithmic advances in the last few years, mass spectrometry data analysis remains computationally challenging. Reda’s project will be the design and implementation of a new reconfigurable software/hardware platform that accelerates protein identification from mass spectrometry data using commodity hardware components. In addition to increased speed of computation (more than 1000x), the proposed platform will allow researchers to substitute bulky computer cluster nodes with a small inexpensive device running the same computations much faster and at a much reduced cost.

Deborah Rivas-Drake, Assistant Professor, Education: $15,000
An Examination of Changes in Ethnic Identity and Campus Engagement among Latino College Students Over One Year

Rivas-Drake’s research will examine the identity processes and academic and social adaptations of Latino students in higher education settings. One of her goals is to identify specific ways in which academic and social contexts inform Latino students' ethnic identity beliefs. She also seeks to identify the ways in which ethnic identity beliefs influence students’ decisions regarding how to spend their time in terms of academic work, extracurricular involvement, and recreational activities. Understanding changes in Latino students’ decision-making processes longitudinally will provide critical insight for programmatic efforts aimed at retaining such students in higher education.

Joseph Butch Rovan, Associate Professor, Music: $13,700
Studies in Movement

Studies in Movement pays homage to the great French physiologist and inventor Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904). Marey analyzed, by means of non-invasive sensor systems and stop-action photography, the motion of humans and animals in the natural world. Rovan’s multimedia project, which includes musical composition along with the development of custom gestural interfaces of his own design, will reconsider Marey’s legacy by combining his words and images with new sounds and gestures. The material for the performance aspect of the project—text, music, and image—will draw on Marey’s considerable vision: technical writings, photographs, engravings, and the mysterious graphic tracings from a wide array of his uncommon writing machines.

Vivek Shenoy, Associate Professor, Engineering: $15,000
Mechanics of intracellular pathogens and biomimetic systems propelled by actin comet tails

A number of pathogenic bacteria responsible for diseases like listeriosis, meningitis and gastroenteritis hijack the protein machinery of the infected cells to form a filamentous actin comet tail that propels them within these cells and to other cells in their neighborhood. A physical understanding of the forces that lead to this motion can provide a means to control spreading of infections to healthy cells. Shenoy’s preliminary research has derived a dynamic model that provides a unified description of the seemingly unrelated trajectories of bacteria. The goal of his proposed work is to understand how macroscopic variables in the trajectories are related to molecular level properties of the actin filament network such as the statistical distributions of their lengths and orientations, degree of cross-linking and kinetics of polymerization.

Marcus Spradlin, Assistant Professor, Physics: $15,000
New Computational Methods in High Energy Physics

Spradlin's research has focused on the development of efficient new algorithms for performing otherwise formidable calculations in gauge theories such as quantum chromodynamics, which describes the strong nuclear force.  This project aims to put these theoretical advances to practical use by involving Brown undergraduates in building efficient and user-friendly computer software tools.  This project will lead to technology that would be of great benefit to the field, rendering feasible a number of important calculations in theoretical physics which are presently out of reach.

Tracy Steffes, Assistant Professor, Education: $15,000
A New Education for a Modern Age: School, Society, and State, 1890-1940

Steffes’ project explores the efforts of reformers to define a “new education” for modern, industrial society in the early twentieth century.   She will analyze the ways in which the organizational changes in schooling extended the reach and power of the school and the state over young people in new ways.  In taking a national approach and placing it within the broader context of American responses to modernity and American political development, this project offers a significant reinterpretation of educational development in this period which places the growing role of state authority and national policymaking at the center.

Daniel M. Weinreich, Assistant Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology: $16,000
The Genetic Basis of Adaptation to Novel Environments in Laboratory Microbial Populations

Since Charles Darwin’s observation that natural selection occurs whenever individuals
that reproduce more successfully transmit at least some reproductive advantage to their
offspring, theory has far outstripped data. Biological novelties often arise when an organism’s environment changes, but the genetic details of this process remain largely unknown. Weinreich’s proposal uses the bacterium Escherichia coli to test the importance of preexisting genetic variation when adapting to new environments. The theoretically most intriguing possibility is that mutants with lower than average fitness in their own environment have higher than average fitness in a new environment.

2007 SALOMON AWARDS

Ana Baylin, Assistant Professor, Community Health: $15,000
Genetic Modification of Triggers of Acute Myocardial Infarction

Baylin's overall objective is to identify genetic modifiers of triggers of acute myocardial infarction by examining genes involved in the beta-adrenergic pathway and the caffeine metabolism pathway. Using a novel case-crossover design, it has been established that heavy physical exertion and coffee are potential triggers of acute myocardial infarction. This study offers an unusual opportunity to expand our understanding of how genetic background can modify the triggering effect of transient risk exposures and will help us in identifying subgroups of individuals who may be more responsive to the adverse health effects of some triggers than others.

Richard J. Bennett, Assistant Professor, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology: $15,000
Genetic Epigenetic Variation in the Human pathogen Candida albicans

C. albicans is normally a commensal organism, living as a benign part of the microflora in the gastrointestinal tract. However, it is also an opportunistic pathogen and is capable of causing life-threatening systemic disease due to its ability to exist in many host environments. C. albicans has evolved adaptive mechanisms to populate and thrive in diverse niches, and Bennett's research focuses on the adaptations that have made it efficient at colonization and infection in the host. Bennett will focus on an epigenetic process that allows C. albicans to undergo a rapid and metastable switch in phenotype.

Wayne D. Bowen, Professor, Molecular Pharmacology, Physiological, and Biotechnology
Correlation of Sigma-1 Receptor Expression and Function with Indicators of Tumor Aggressiveness and Metastatic Potential: $15,000

This study focuses on the major contributor to cancer deaths: tumor metastasis. Recognizing that rapidly dividing tumor cells and cells that are highly motile have a greater chance for metastasis, Bowen will study Sigma-1 receptors. These receptors serve as ligand-regulated amplifiers of calcium signaling by enhancing the inositol triphosphate-induced release of calcium from the endoplasmic reticulum when agonist activation of G-protein coupled receptors stimulates phosphoinosite turnover. This study will utilize related breast tumor cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231, which are weakly and strongly metastatic, respectively, and Bowen's sigma-1 overexpressing cells, Line 41. Bowen and his team will attempt to correlate the expression level of sigma-1 receptors to proliferative rate, sensitivity to mitogens, and changes in cell motility. The study could lead to use of sigma-1 receptor expression as a marker for metastatic potential and as a target for drugs that block proliferation by blocking the receptor.

Elizabeth J. Bryan, Associate Professor, English: $5,670
Vernacular Text Production in Medieval England and Spain

This project focuses on the emergence of early Middle English texts in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Bryan will investigate the possibility that the political relationships between Plantagenet monarchs of England and the royal houses of Castile in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries created a climate in which the "idea" of producing texts in vernacular languages, rather than in Latin, might have been mutually influential.

Caroline Castiglione, Assistant Professor, Italian Studies: $7,935
Extravagant Pretensions: Women and Family Conflict in the Public Sphere of Rome, 1650-1750

In early modern Rome, aristocratic family conflicts were negotiated by very public means: petitions, letters, trials, and new spheres of sociability, the "conversazioni." To the regret of some male contemporaries, women frequently reshaped popular opinion in their favor, and won the support of popes and papal magistrates. In Castiglione's project female and male viewpoints will be comparatively analyzed to further our understanding of how aristocratic Roman families survived and were influenced by such controversies. The study will also illuminate the origins of the greater freedoms women came to enjoy in the eighteenth century, the respective roles that women and men played, and the larger impact of such changes on the culture of early modern Rome.

John Cherry, Professor, Classics and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World: $15,000
The Vorotan Project, Southern Armenia: 2007 Season

Cherry's archaeological research explores the long-term human utilization of the Vorotan River corridor (Syunik marz, Republic of Armenia). The team's interests, encouraged by successful fieldwork in 2005 and 2006, revolve around the diachronic record of settlement and exploitation of this river course, and the strategic history of what has long been a recognized passageway for movement, contact, and exchange within the southern Caucasus. In 2007 Cherry will focus on four specific goals for fieldwork: 1) Regional connectivity and control, 2) Test excavations, ceramic study and architectural mapping, 3) Mortuary landscape analysis, and 4) Obsidian studies.

Jennifer Dworak, Assistant Professor, Engineering: $15,000
An Investigation of Pattern-Limited Test Sets for the Detection of Errors Caused by Random Defects, Systematic Defects, and Process Variations

Achieving adequate reliability of integrated circuits (ICs) is a critical problem facing today's semiconductor industry, especially as fabrication processes shrink below 90 nanometers to 65 and 45 nanometers and beyond. As feature sizes decrease systematic defects and process variations become increasingly significant. Dworak's research will explore the detection of systematic and random defects with test sets of limited size. This research will determine the degree to which defects can be detected on groups of ICs with varying defect and process variation characteristics as a function of test set length and quality.

Thalia Field, Assistant Professor, Literary Arts: $15,000
Experimental Animals

Using primary source materials, Field is researching a book entitled, Experimental Animals. Her work inhabits a territory where cultural/science history and innovative fiction overlap. Her passionate stories intertwine through various narrative "experiments," emerging into a portrait of science and aesthetics as they become increasingly specialized and bound together in the modernist imagination. This project brings together the historical root of the aesthetic term "experimental" and the cultural, scientific and ethical implications of vivisection as it mobilized the artists and scientists of thee 19th century.

Matthew Garcia, Associate Professor, American Civilization: $15,000
The Rise and Fall of the Farmworkers Movement: Race, Labor and Justice on the California-Mexican Border, 1940-1980

Garcia's study will explore the Farmworkers Movement from its formation to the purges and defections of key organizers and members of the United Farmworkers Union (UFW). This work focuses on the grassroots efforts of ordinary people, men and women, in the making of a social movement. This project seriously examines the successes and shortcomings of the movement so that we may understand the degraded status of workers who feed the nation and the world today.

Mark Johnson, Assistant Professor, Molecular Biology, Cell biology and Biochemistry: $15,000
How do gametes fuse? Identification of Egg-expressed Proteins Required for Sperm-Egg Fusion

Fertilization is of central importance to the life cycle of all sexual organisms, yet we know very little about the molecules responsible for the fusion of gametes. Using a genetic screen, Johnson has analyzed fertilization mechanisms in the flowering plant, Arabisppsis thaliana and identified a mutation, HAP2, a sperm-expressed gene essential for fertilization. The HAP2 gene encodes a membrane localized and sperm-specific protein. Johnson hypothesizes that HAP2 protein on the surface of the sperm interacts directly with proteins on the surface of the egg and that these protein:protein interactions mediate sperm:egg fusion. Johnson proposes to identify proteins that interact with HAP2 and are required for fertilization.

David Lindstrom, Associate Professor, Sociology and PSTC: $15,000
Migration and Marriage: Union Formation and Dissolution among Mexican Women in Mexico and the US

Using data which provides a unique bi-national, nationally representative pooled sample, Lindstrom examines the impact of U.S. migration on union formation and dissolution among Mexican origin women. The primary objectives of this study are: 1) describe the marital experiences of Mexican origin women in the United States and Mexico, 2) compare marital patterns for first and second generation Mexican immigrant women to non-migrant women in Mexico and native non-Hispanic white women in the United States, 3) identify the relative impact of migrant selectivity, time spent in the United States, and immigrant generation on the likelihood of entry into a union, type of union (marriage verses cohabitation), and union stability.

G. Tayhas R. Palmore, Associate Professor, Engineering: $15,000
Improving the Stability of Polymer-Based Batteries

This proposal seeks to evaluate the stability of polymer-bases batteries for energy storage recently developed in Palmore's laboratory. Palmore's team will fabricate battery prototypes and subject said prototypes to a fixed load for repeated cycles of recharging and discharging. The prototypes will be dismantled and their polymer composites evaluated for mechanisms of degradation (oxidation, leaching of components, dendritic growth) using a variety of spectroscopic and imaging tools (NMR, FTIR, UV-Vis, SEM, AFM, STM, and XPS). Once primary mechanisms of degradation are identified, Palmore will modify the polymer composites to circumvent these deficiencies.

James M. Russell, Assistant Professor, Geological Sciences: $14,850
Paleoclimate Changes and Tropical Glacier Dynamics in the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda-Congo

Understanding the causes, magnitudes, and frequency of decade-to-century-scale climate variability is crucial to future climate prediction and the development of sound water resource management strategies in sub-Saharan African, yet out knowledge of these events remains rudimentary due to a lack of long, quantitative, high-resolution paleoclimate records. Russell will conduct fieldwork to recover sediment cores from six lakes in the Rwenzori Mountains, and will make laboratory investigations of the age, composition, and stratigraphy of those cores to understand climate variability and glacial history in this unique alpine ecosystem.

Hilary Silver, Associate Professor, Sociology and Urban Studies: $15,000
Explaining Neighborhood Change: The Case for South Providence

Silver's research examines whether Providence's redevelopment or local efforts mainly account for improvements and demographic changes visibly occurring on the South Side of Providence, and whether the improvements represent incumbent upgrading or gentrification. What is the impact of downtown redevelopment on low-income, minority neighborhoods? The answer is of practical as well as scholarly significance. Learning who benefits from urban economic growth obviously has implications for policy, but is also at the center of theories in the fields of urban planning, sociology, economics, and politics. Each discipline helps explain why neighborhood renewal varies across places.

Richard Snyder, Associate Professor, Political Science: $15,000
Does Lootable Wealth Breed Chaos? Natural Resources and Political Order in Comparative Perspective

With the main empirical focus of the project being the three Andean countries that are major producers of illicit drugs (Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru), Snyder will develop and test a novel theory of the contrasting political consequences of lootable wealth. Defining lootable wealth as high-value goods with low economic barriers to entry, Snyder argues that different types of institutions of extraction can be constructed on such goods -- with contrasting consequences for political stability. Within this political economy framework, Snyder will advance a more powerful theory of collapsed states and civil war, one that accounts both for disorder and order in the face of lootable wealth.

Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Assistant Professor, Italian Studies and Comparative Literature: $15,000
A History of Italian Repression

Stewart-Steinberg's analysis of Italian culture that begins with 1900 and ends in the present day is centered on a kind of knot tied around the problem of repression, a term that she understands in two senses: as a political term, one that must ask the question of the factuality and the legacy of Italian fascism, but also as a term understood in its psychoanalytic sense, that is, as the creation of both an individual and a cultural unconscious. Stewart-Steinberg will argue that these two meanings of the term are inextricably linked. While, the relative lack of impact of psychoanalysis in Italy has been amply noted, the connection between this lack and the history of Italian fascism has not. In this study, Stewart-Steinberg proposes to investigate precisely this connection, which, she believes, is crucial to furthering our understanding of not only Italian fascism itself, but also of those cultural forces that produced it and then, in its aftermath, dominated the cultural landscape of Italy until the present day.

2006 SALOMON AWARDS

Mark S. Bauer, M.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
“Mad” Poets: Description, Deconstruction, and Destigmatization
This project focuses on the relationship of major mental illness to the creative process, in particular poetry. Unfortunately, much of the current discussion devolves to the level of “Was the poet ‘mad’ when s/he wrote this?” and “Does ‘madness’ help or hinders the poetic process?” Bauer’s work both as a published poet and as an internationally recognized expert in psychiatric diagnosis will provide a unique opportunity to bring both literary critical and clinical research experience to bear on these issues.

Janet Blume, Associate Professor, Engineering; Edward K.S. Chien, Assistant Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology; Pradeep R. Guduru, Assistant Professor, Engineering
Measurement of Stress-Strain Response of the Cervix
This project will research the biomechanical properties of the cervix. Failure of normal cervical function leads to pregnancy loss and prematurity when it occurs early in gestation or results in prolonged pregnancy and cesarean section when it occurs late in pregnancy. This proposal brings together engineering and obstetrics to develop a device that will be used to measure the biomechanics of the cervix. The device will be used to investigate mechanisms responsible for cervical regulation and will provide quantifiable measures that can be mathematically modeled. In addition, this project will provide interdisciplinary research experience for Brown students, who will play an important role in the experiment analysis.

Keith Brown, Assistant Professor (Research), Thomas J. Watson Institute; James Der Derian, Professor (Research), Thomas J. Watson Institute; Catherine Lutz, Professor, Department of Anthropology
Cultural awareness in military operations: The production of knowledge through doctrine, training, education and simulation
Drawing primarily on qualitative social scientific methods, this project will document and analyze the growing attention paid to culture by U.S. and UN military institutions since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It focuses on how the challenges of missions such as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq have driven attempts by military planners and field commanders to define, acquire, disseminate and deploy knowledge about culture. It also explores the ethical and epistemological questions that these military operations raise for professional cultural analysts in the academy, whose input national and international organizations are now seeking.

Will Fairbrother, Assistant Professor, Molecular, Cellular Biology Biochemistry
Discovering Combinatorial Codes in Splicing
This project focuses on modules that are a combination of sequence elements in DNA or RNA that recruits multiple trans-acting factors which function in a coordinated fashion. Several computational methods have been developed to explore these higher order relationships in the field of transcription. Professor Fairbrother will apply these approaches to address an analogous problem in the field of splicing. The experiments are intended to discover how particular combinations of splicing elements are used to regulate alternative splicing.

Dmitri Feldman, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics
Spin Transport in Quantum Wires
This project focuses on the theoretical investigation of quantum transport in nanostructures. Professor Feldman proposes a new method of spin current generation and manipulation in quantum wires, called “the spin ratchet effect”. This effect plays the same role for spintronics as rectification plays in electronics. Insight from this research will be used to understand spin transport in realistic quantum wires, potentially leading to the development of new principles of nanodevices.

Oded Galor, Professor, Department of Economics
Economic Development and Human Evolution
This interdisciplinary research will explore the dynamic interaction between human evolution and the process of economic development. It will advance a unified evolutionary growth theory that will generate hypotheses about the interplay between the process of development and human evolution, shedding new light about the origin of the observed evolution of health, life expectancy, human capital, and risk aversion since the Neolithic revolution.

Katrina L. Gamble, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Having a Seat at the Table: Race, Representation and Deliberation in the United States Congress
The project seeks to examine the possible link between racial diversity in Congress and expanded political deliberations. Does the presence of black legislators allow for more diverse political views to be discussed in Congress? More blacks and Latinos were elected to Congress in 2004 than ever before, making the 109th Congress the most diverse in history of the United States. Consensus on how increased diversity affects policy outcomes seems to evade scholars and political analysts and therefore efforts to understand how to provide marginalized constituencies with equitable political representation remain a fertile area for democratic scholarship. This study will contribute to broader discussions about the value of descriptive representation of democratic ideals.

Robert E. Gramling, Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine
Family history, inflammatory status and coronary heart disease mortality
A family history of early-onset heart disease is a strong predictor of coronary heart disease yet the mechanism underlying this complex association is poorly understood. Family history is associated with inflammatory status and inflammation predicts cardiac-related death. This project will investigate the degree to which baseline inflammatory status explains this relationship between family history and cardiac death.

Karl Jacoby, Associate Professor, Department of History
Shadows at Dawn: The Camp Grant Massacre and the Borderlands of History
On April 30, 1871, a group of Mexican Americans, Anglos, and Tohono O’odham Indians attacked a newly created Apache reservation in Arizona Territory known as Camp Grant. Striking at dawn, the attackers killed some 150 sleeping Apaches, all but eight of them women or children. This premeditated assault remains among the largest mass murders of women and children in United States history. In spite of the event’s significance, however, there exists no scholarly history of the “Camp Grant Massacre.” Jacoby’s goals in writing the first such study are to recapture an incident now unknown to most Americans and to grapple with one of the most difficult questions of the historical enterprise. How does one narrate the history of an atrocity?

Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Meinolf Sellmann, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
RobAuCon – Autonomous Control of Robots from Demonstration
Jenkins and Sellmann will conduct research into methods for the autonomous control of robot teams with strategies learned from human demonstration. The team, which includes Brown students, will focus on a specific application domain, robot soccer, to further research in robot learning from demonstration, time-critical combinatorial optimization, and their application to multi-robot task allocation.

Shouheng Sun, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
Surface modification of magnetic dumbbell nanoparticles for highly sensitive tumor cell detection
The goal of this proposal is to synthesize and modify the surface of the magnetic dumbbell nanoparticles that contain magnetic iron oxide and noble metal Au. In particular the proposal focuses on surfactant exchange on the dumbbell nanoparticles to make the particles stable in physiological conditions and suitable for highly sensitive magnetic detection.

2005 SALOMON AWARDS

A Multi-Technique Approach to Understand the Specificity of Protein Phosphatase 1
Rebecca Page and Wolfgang Peti, Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology & Biotechnology
Award: $29,810

Plasticity of Motor Cortex Synaptic Structure
Anna Dunaevsky, Neuroscience
Award: $15,000

HIV/AIDS Related Risk Behaviors Among Young People in the Context of Expanded Access to Testing and Treatment in South Africa
Mark Lurie, Community Health
Award: $15,000

A New Architecture and Model for Tasking Wireless Sensor Networks
Ugur Cetintemel and John Jannotti, Computer Science
Award: $24,000

Epitaxial Printing: A Process for Making Continuous Single Crystal Metal Films
Eric Chason, Engineering
Award: $15,000

2D Quantum Magnets
Vesna F. Mitrovic, Physics
Award: $15,000

The Political Economy of School District Mergers
Brian Knight, Economics
Award: $15,000

Children’s Evolving Social Networks in the Context of High HIV/AIDs Prevalence
Susan E. Short, Sociology
Award: $15,000

Marketizing Environmental Regulation: consequences for environmental advocacy groups
Simone Pulver, Watson Institute
Award: $15,000

Inscriptions from the Land of Israel
Michael L. Satlow, Judaic Studies and Religious Studies
Award: $15,000

This is a Man’s World: Los Angeles and the Politics of Gender in Mid-Century America
Robert O. Self, History
Award: $10,775

The 1534 Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlan
Catherine Zerner, History of Art and Architecture
Award: $15,000

2004 SALOMON AWARDS

Relationship between the Hippocampal rate and temporal codes
Mayank Mehta, Neuroscience
Award: $15,000

Brain Systems Involved in Paying Attention to Emotional Stimuli
Luiz Pessoa, Psychology
Award: $14,900

Overweight and asthma in children: “Twin” challenges for public health
Deborah N. Pearlman, Community Health
Award: $15,000

Asbestos, Knowledge Production, and Activism in South Africa
Lundy Braun, Pathology and Africana Studies
Award: $7,970

Establishing assays to investigate BMP ligand type and receptor choice
Kristi Wharton, Molecular, Cellular Biology, Biochemistry
Award: $15,000

Nanoscale sculpting of ferromagnetic thin films using magnetic configurational forces
Pradeep R. Guduru and Brian W. Sheldon, Engineering
Award: $20,000

Chemotactic trajectory and hydrodynamics of Caulobacter crescentus swarmer cells
Jay Tang, Physics and Engineering
Award: $20,000

EPIC: The Einstein Polarization Interferometer of Cosmology
Gregory Tucker, Physics
Award: $15,000

Aerodynamic mechanisms of bat flight: an integrated multidisciplinary approach
Sharon Swartz, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Kenneth Breuer, Engineering; and David Laidlaw, Computer Science
Award: $20,000

The Changing Context of Social Service Provision in Urban America: Trends in Access to Services in Metropolitan Detroit
Scott Allard, Political Science
Award: $15,000

State Reconstruction and Social Service Provision in Collapsed Societies
Melanie Cammett, Political Science
Award: $15,000

The Family Consequences of Child Disability
Dennis Hogan and Frances Goldscheider, Sociology
Award: $15,000

Fog/Speaking of War
Leslie thornton, Modern Culture and Media
Award: $15,000

2003 SALOMON AWARDS

Underwater Locomotion of the Thick-billed Murre
George E. Goslow, Jr., Biology and Medicine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Award: $12,960

Physiological Dynamics of Cell-Type Switching
Jeffrey D. Laney, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry
Award: $15,000

Segregation, Social Inequality and Links to Disparities in Community Environmental Health
Rachel Morello-Frosch, Center for Environmental Studies and Community Health
Award: $15,000

Mechanotransduction and Lung Alveolar Differentiation
Juan R. Sanchez-Esteban, Pediatrics
Award: $14,760

Gene Expressional Network dynamics; from experimental data to gene-gene connectivity reconstruction
Gastone C. Castellani and Nathan Intrator, Institute for Brain and Neural Systems
Award: $15,000

Untitled
Yan Guo, Applied Mathematics
Award: $15,000

Rydberg fingerprint spectroscopy of Proteins
Peter Weber, Chemistry
Award: $15,000

Household Gods; The British and their Possessions, 1851-1945
Deborah Anne Cohen, History
Award: $9,734

Not Just a Mimicry: Sound Symbolic Expressions, Cognitive Representations and Discourse Functions in Czech
Masako U. Fidler, Slavic Languages
Award: $3,500

Funds for a three-dimensional reconstruction of the water system at Qumran – the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Katharina Galor, Center for Old World Art and Archaeology and Eileen Vote, Computer Science
Award: $7,500

Research and translation for publication of La Noche (The Night), a booklength poem by 20th century Bolivian visionary poet Jaime Saenz
Forrest Gander, Creative Writing Program and English
Award: $12,000

Project Temenos: Cultural Exchange and Appropriation in the Mediterranean World
Kenneth Sacks, History; David Konstan, Classics and Comparative Literature; Kurt Raaflaub, Classics and History
Award: $10,000

The Power of Advice: Experimental Evidence on Correlated Equilibria
Pedro Dal Bo, Economics and Amy Greenwald, Computer Science
Award: $10,000

Understanding Sexual Differentiation: A New Paradigm for Psychology
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Medical Science and Cynthia Garcia Coll, Education, Psychology and Pediatrics
Award: $14,680

Community Organizing and the Ecology of Civic Engagement
Marion Orr, Political Science
Award: $10,170

The Measurement of Influence: Theory and Applications in Economics, Computer Science, and Personnel Management in Academic Institutions
Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, Economics
Award: $11,000

The Social Contexts of Partisan Dynamics
Alan S. Zuckerman, Political Science
Award: $12,100