FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, July 20, 2005

CONTACT:    Janelle Toman, Board of Regents, (605) 773-3455

Gov. Rounds awards grants to university-based researchers

PIERRE, S.D. – Gov. Mike Rounds is awarding nearly $445,000 to 19 faculty members at South Dakota public universities to spur their research work.

“These ‘seed grants’ are part of a strategy to strengthen competitive research at the universities and generate more commercial activity from research,” said Gov. Rounds. “These individual researchers have much to contribute to developing South Dakota’s research industry.”

The governor’s awards will help support faculty researchers as they develop research programs to become more competitive for external grants and contracts. It is also an opportunity for faculty members to develop ideas with commercial potential, Gov. Rounds said.

Targeted research at the public universities and its commercialization potential are part of Gov. Rounds’ 2010 Initiative, which calls for the state to “become a recognized leader in research and technology development by 2010.” The idea is to increase the role of university research in South Dakota’s economic development by expanding academic research and exploiting new development opportunities arising from it.

“Recruiting researchers to staff the four 2010 research centers on our campuses and to work in new Ph.D. programs will be a tremendous boost to the Governor’s effort, but increasing research expectations and opportunities for existing faculty also are very important,” said Regents’ Executive Director Robert T. Tad Perry.

Faculty need release time from teaching to pursue research work, Perry said. These grants will pay for 25 percent of a faculty member’s salary for one academic year, plus one summer month’s salary. Funding is matched by the faculty member’s university, so the researcher earns 50 percent release time and two summer months of salary to do research, starting in August 2005. The award is intended to give the faculty member an opportunity to start a sustainable research program and to help build research capacity in their department.

“We have very talented teaching faculty who may be able to develop research that could impact our economy or advance technologies for commercialization,” Gov. Rounds said. “These grants in particular assist those faculty members who are not substantially involved in research work at the present time.”

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(List of grant awards is attached.)

2005 Governor Rounds’ Individual Research Seed Grant Awards

This is a listing, sorted by university, of faculty members who received a seed grant, the university department they work in, and their research topic:

Black Hills State University

• Scott F. Stoltenberg, Psychology – “Gambling, Impulsivity & Neurotransmitter Genes”

South Dakota School of Mines & Technology

• Gregory A. Buck, Mechanical Engineering – “Ethanol Autothermal Reforming Reactor for On-Board Hydrogen Production for Fuel Cell Vehicles”
• Li Chen, Electrical and Computer Engineering – “Development of a Design Center for Radiation-Hard Microelectronics”
• Hao Fong, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering – “Electrospun Carbon/Graphite Nanofibers for Fuel Cell Related Applications Including Hydrogen Storage and Catalyst Supporting Material”
• James Stone, Civil and Environmental Engineering – “Furthering Uranium and Heavy Metal Remediation Capacities Through Applied Research”
• Nian Zhang, Electrical and Computer Engineering – “A Computerized Electrode Array for Electrocardiology Applications”
  

South Dakota State University

• Alfred S. Andrawis, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science – “Fiber Optic Gas Leak Detector”
• Donald Auger, Biology-Microbiology – “Quantitative Trait Analysis of Seed Dormancy, Seed Shattering, and Indeterminate Flowering in Cuphea, a Potential Oilseed Plant”
• David Galipeau, Electrical Engineering – “Nanosensors – Center for Accelerated Applications at the Nanoscale”
• Xiangming Guan,  Pharmaceutical Sciences – “Inhibition of Glutathione Reductase as a Novel Approach to Reverse Ovarian Cancer Resistance to Chemotherapy”
• MaryLou Mylant, Nursing – “SDSU Student Nurse Family Partnership Program”
• Srinath Palakurthi, Pharmaceutical Sciences – “A Multi-step Approach for the Targeted Therapy of Ovarian Cancer Using the Novel Polyamine-conjugated Dendrimers as Drug Carriers”
• Joseph M. Santos, Economics – “An Economic History of Futures Trading in the United States”
• Daniel Schaal, Mathematics and Statistics – “Research in Combinatorics”
• Songxin Tan, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science – “Development of a Multi-wavelength Polarimetric Lidar Remote Sensing Technique for Vegetation Applications”

University of South Dakota

• Ranjit T. Koodali, Chemistry – “Modified Titanium Dioxide Nanostructured Materials as Advanced Photocatalysts”
• Paula Mabee, Biology – “Bioinformatics: A Case Study Integrating Genomic and Evolutionary Databases”
• Grigoriy Sereda, Chemistry – “Design and Exploration of Photoactivated Catalysts Based on Modified Graphite”
• Susanne Skyrm, Music – “A Teaching/Performing Edition of 18^th–Century Spanish Keyboard Music”