The 2017 Innovative Seed Grant Competition included a record 112 applications and resulted in 23 new grants for a total of $1.1 million being awarded to CU Boulder faculty across all disciplines, including $240,000 for five projects supporting work directly connected to the CU Boulder Grand Challenge.

2017 Funded Projects

Torin Clark Aerospace Engineering Sciences Identifying Biomarkers of Sensorimotor Adaptation to a Spaceflight Analog Environment
John Farnsworth Aerospace Engineering Sciences Unsteady Wind Tunnel Modifications for the Study of Convective Longitudinal Gusts (Grand Challenge)
William Kleiber Applied Mathematics Inferring Earth Dynamics from Drones
Stephen Becker Applied Mathematics Blind Structured Illumination Photoacoustic Microscopy with Compressed Sensing
Maciej Walczak Chemistry and Biochemistry Synthetic Peptide Assemblies for Biomedical Applications
Amy Javernick-Will Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Post Disaster Housing Reconstruction: Participation, Performance, and Resilience
Tara Knight Critical Media Practices Sound Planetarium: Sonifying a Universe of Data
Katharine Suding Ecology and Evolutionary Biology The Boulder Apple Tree Project
Nichole Barger Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Monitoring landscape scale biocrust restoration on degraded drylands: Deploying remote sensing technologies from unmanned aerial systems (Grand Challenge)
Dimitra Psychogiou Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering Microfluidically-tuned 3D-printed waveguides (M3W) for dynamic RF spectrum access
Jae-Woong Jeong Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering Transformative Electronics: A Future of Electronics
Peter Newton Environmental Studies Program Reducing deforestation and improving livelihoods through innovative subnational governance: learning lessons from the state of Acre, Brazil (Grand Challenge)
Brian Hynek Geological Sciences/LASP Understanding Mars’ Astrobiological Potential with a Hyperspectral Imager on a UAS (Grand Challenge)
Vilja Hulden History / Linguistics Computing support for Digital Humanities at CU (Grand Challenge)
Brian Keegan Information Science Prosopographical Data Mining for Analyzing Multiplex Networks among Members of U.S. Congress since 1789
Yifu Ding Mechanical Engineering Sequential Laser Ablation and AFM (SLAA) for Imaging 3D Porous Structures
Sara Sawyer Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology A machine learning approach for predicting cellular targets of the dengue virus protease
Jingshi Shen Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Identify new therapeutic targets of cancer immunotherapy using CRISPR genetic screens
Robert Spencer Psychology & Neuroscience Circadian salivary cortisol hormone profile as an innovative biomarker and treatment target for improving recovery from mild traumatic brain injury
Serge Campeau Psychology & Neuroscience Exploratory determination of molecular modifications associated with stress habituation
Amanda Stevenson Sociology Assessing life course impacts of expanded access to highly effective contraception in Colorado
Jason Boardman Sociology Denver Study of the Built and Social Environment
Rachael Baiduc Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Hearing Loss and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factor Burden