Several members of the SUNY Poly faculty are getting a boost as they seek additional funding for their areas of research.

In an effort to continue investing in the scholarly activity of faculty members and foster a vibrant research community that attracts top students to the SUNY Poly campuses while enriching the surrounding communities, six SUNY Poly faculty members have been awarded funding as part of the inaugural SUNY Poly Faculty Seed Grant Program.

The 2018 Faculty Seed Grant Program recipients are:

• Robert Brainard, College of Nanoscale Sciences: “Quartz-Crystal Microbalance for Bio Roll-Up”
• Lauren Endres, College of Arts & Sciences: “Regulation of the oxidative stress response by TRM7-dependent tRNA methylation”
• Andrew Gallup, College of Arts & Sciences: “The hidden psychological effects of acetaminophen”
• Vincent Labella, College of Nanoscale Sciences: “Nanoscale Visualization of the Electrostatic Barrier at Material Interfaces”
• J. Andres Melendez, College of Nanoscale Sciences:“Epitranscriptomic control of selenocysteine utilization and tumorigenesis”
• Carolyn Rodak, College of Engineering: “Exploration of metal contamination in the Mohawk River”
• Yubing Xie College of Nanoscale Sciences: “Bioengineering Ocular Organoids for Mechanistic Study and Drug Screening of Eye Diseases”

A call for proposals was put out in March, seeking to provide seed funding for research projects with high impact led by SUNY Poly faculty.

A total of $50,000 in funding will be invested into the 2018 seed grant program recipients in the hopes that this award will help provide faculty with the assistance they need to bolster their competitiveness for securing external funding and ultimately advance their research areas.

The program criteria was developed by an ad-hoc committee recommended by faculty Governance leaders. The committee was comprised of active research faculty from both campuses and led by the chair of the Council on Research (COR). The program criteria includes high potential for extramural funding; innovation and intellectual merit; project plan; and investigator and research team.

In response to the call for proposals, an outstanding number of proposals were submitted from both the Albany and Utica campuses. Led by the COR, each proposal was subjected to the peer review process to evaluate its potential.