Posted July 31, 2026 by Tiffany Lee
The Office of Research and Innovation is pleased to announce several new internal funding awards made in spring and summer 2026, which were supported with funds provided by the University of Nebraska Foundation, the Nebraska Tobacco Settlement Biomedical Research Development Fund and R&I.
Book Fellowship and Manuscript Workshop Program
R&I is supporting six new R&I Book Fellowships through its Book Fellowship and Manuscript Workshop program. These fellowships provide support for faculty to focus on writing and publishing a book through a course buyout or summer salary support and/or costs related to the publishing process.
R&I Book Fellowship recipients and projects:
- Taeyeon Kim, educational administration, “Beyond the Gap”
- Yaroslav Komarovski, classics and religious studies, “Meditation in the Buddhist World”
- Max Perry Mueller, classics and religious studies, “More, America: Twenty-Five (More) Founders of the United States of America”
- Alessio Olivieri, music, “Spanish Verismo: From Catharsis to Silence (1895-1925)”
- Rachael Shah, English, “Collaborative Writing in Community Engagement”
- Stacey Waite, English, “The World as We Wish It Were”
Collaboration Grants: Catalyst Program
Two Catalyst Grants were made through the Collaboration Grants program. These grants support well-established collaborative teams to implement a robust project that will enhance competitiveness for major external funding and begin to position the team for long-term project sustainability. Up to $150,000 is available per award.
Catalyst Grant recipients and projects:
- Nirupam Aich, civil and environmental engineering, “AI-Driven Materials Discovery Platform for Next Generation Water Treatment”
- Michael Hempel, electrical and computer engineering, “Protecting 5G Subscriber Identities Inside the Core Network”
Collaboration Grants: Development Program
Nine Development Grants were made through the Collaboration Grants program, which provide support for teams to conduct collaborative projects that are more preliminary and/or exploratory in nature and occur at an earlier stage of a team’s progression than work supported by Catalyst Grants. Up to $50,000 is available per award.
Development Grant recipients and projects:
- Asaf Dana, mechanical and materials engineering, “Collective Action in Entangling Soft Robots Driven by Stimuli-Responsive Materials”
- Amy Desaulniers, veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences, “Biodistribution and Biological Effects of Environmentally Relevant Micro- and Nanoplastics in the Adult Testis”
- Forrest Kievit, biological systems engineering, “Establishing Neural Biocomputing as an In Vitro New Approach Methodology for Neuropharmacology Testing”
- Greta Krafsur, veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences, “Characterization of the Lipidomic Signature of Epicardial Adipose Tissue (EAT) in a Novel, Naturally Occurring Large Animal Model of Pulmonary Hypertension with Biventricular Cardiac Dysfunction”
- Angela Pannier, biological systems engineering, “Building an Integrated Pipeline to Isolate Spider Venom Extracellular Vesicles and Evaluate Their Bioactivity Using Cancer Cell Models”
- Milad Roohi, architectural engineering and construction, “Data-Driven Reliability Assessment of Transmission Systems for Functional Recovery and Resilience Enhancement”
- Ravi Saraf, chemical and biomolecular engineering, “From Observables to Connectivity: Learning and Designing Self-Assembly of Disordered System via Graph-Based Machine Learning”
- Yeyin Shi, biological systems engineering, “Post-Fire Recovery and Woody Re-encroachment Dynamics of Eastern Redcedar in Nebraska Rangelands”
- Jung Yul Lim, mechanical and materials engineering, “Developing AI-Enabled Modeling Frameworks for Mechanobiology”
Research and Innovation Grants Program
Seventeen projects will be supported through the R&I Grants program, which provides support to UNL faculty members seeking to advance their programs of research, scholarship and/or creative endeavors. Up to $15,000 is available per award.
R&I Grant recipients and projects:
- Ikuho Amano, modern languages and literatures, “Documenting Biopolitics, Eugenics, and Anti-Disability Phenomena of Japan (the 1910s-2020s)”
- Greg Bashford, biological systems engineering, “A Wearable Ultrasound Patch for Preventing Neurological Damage in Survivors of Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage”
- Kelli Boling, journalism and mass communications, “Consumed by True Crime: The Ethics and the Economy of Exploitation”
- Barry Cheung, chemistry, “Transcriptomic Analysis of MRSA Response to Plasma-Activated Chlortetracycline”
- Elizabeth Clausing, global integrative studies, “Epigenetic Embodiment, Mental Health, and Resilience in the Drug Crisis”
- Dawne Curry, history and ethnic studies, “Eulogizing Apartheid’s Dead”
- Christopher Gustafson, agricultural economics, “A Role for AI in Communicating Nutrition Research to the Public: Implications for Comprehension and Action”
- Sungeun Kang, educational psychology, “Breathing to the Beat: Understanding Emotion Regulation and Physiological Responses to Music-Guided Breathing in Autistic Children”
- Ciera Kirkpatrick, journalism and mass communications, “Protecting Maternal Mental Health in the Age of Online Motherhood: Identifying Strategies for Mitigating the Harm of Social Media Idealization”
- Wissam Kontar, civil and environmental engineering, “Quantum-Inspired Tools for Smarter Transportation Systems”
- Yunping Liang, architectural engineering and construction, “Lived Experiences of Rural On-Demand Transit Riders Affected by Fare Changes: A Focused Ethnographic Study”
- Hideaki Moriyama, biological sciences, “Molecular Basis of Insecticide Resistance in Western Corn Rootworm”
- Isabella Starling Alves, educational psychology, “Too Anxious to STEM: an Investigation of how Math Anxiety Impacts Distinct Mathematics Skills at the Behavioral and Neural Levels”
- Ana María Vélez Arango, entomology, “Establishing Methods for Isolation and Characterization of Extracellular Vesicles in Insect Systems”
- Jeffrey Westrop, natural resources, “Contributions of Groundwater Sourced N and P to Nutrient Loading into Sandhill Lakes”
- Lisong Xu, computing, “Verifying Correctness of LLM-Designed Internet Algorithms”
- Jing Zhang, biochemistry, “Exploring the Influence of Artificial Intelligence on Undergraduate Pre-Health Students’ Pre-Professional Identity”
Invited Scholar Grants Program
Eight awards were made through the Invited Scholar Grants program, which enables UNL faculty to invite scholars whose activities are closely related to the research, scholarship and/or creative interests of the UNL community to visit campus to give lectures and/or participate as speakers in symposia or colloquia.
Invited Scholar Grant recipients:
- Katie Anania, art, art history and design
- Beth Dotan, Judaic studies
- Samodha Fernando, animal science
- Hernan Garcia-Ruiz, plant pathology
- Eileen Hebets, biological sciences
- Luis Othoniel Rosa, modern languages and literatures and ethnic studies
- Nicole Sexton, biological sciences
- Eric Weaver, biological sciences
Revision Grants Program
R&I awarded one Revision Grant through a program that supports UNL faculty revising and resubmitting proposals for federal funding by providing financial and developmental support to help improve highly meritorious but previously unfunded federal grant proposals.
Revision Grant recipient:
- Clemencia Rojas, plant pathology
For more information about R&I’s internal funding opportunities, visit the Internal Funding Opportunities website.
