Grant and Award Announcement

A new study at the University of Houston takes a close look at the humble fungus. Fungal cells have yet to pique much interest among scientific researchers. But this team sees potential, possibly even the ability to clean the environment of toxic wastes and spills.

Science is everywhere, if you think about it. From the food we eat to the cellphones we all carry, to the changing climate and the phenomena it brings, all it takes is a curious mind and the means to investigate, and you’ve got fertile grounds for inquiry, discovery and engagement with the world around us.

The 2021 ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research was presented to a six-member team for their project Digital transformation of droplet/aerosol infection risk assessment realized on “Fugaku” for the fight against COVID-19. The Prize is being awarded in 2020 and 2021 to recognize outstanding research achievement toward the understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic through the use of high performance computing.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, named a 14-member team, drawn from Chinese institutions, recipients of the 2021 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for their project, Closing the "Quantum Supremacy" Gap: Achieving Real-Time Simulation of a Random Quantum Circuit Using a New Sunway Supercomputer.

Faculty in the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science have earned a $3 million grant to lead a network of Virginia universities, in partnership with the Virginia Department of Elections, in creating an innovative educational program to train future cybersecurity professionals to protect election infrastructure.

Just as there often exists an urban-rural divide in political and environmental landscapes, urban and rural education systems share the common issue of being under-resourced, especially for science education. As climate change looms over rural agricultural communities, urban heat islands could serve as critical partners for anticipating the future of economically important crops. Kristine Callis Duehl, PhD, the Sally and Derick Driemeyer Director of Education Research and Outreach at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and her collaborators at the Jackie Joyner Kersee Foundation and University of Illinois Extension were awarded a three year, $685,000 grant from United States Department of Agriculture to create a synergistic partnership between urban and rural communities in Southern IL to establish a cross-regional curriculum that introduces bioengineering and plant monitoring technology to middle school aged youth in summer programs.

LSTM’s Dr Adam Roberts is leading a partnership which has been awarded £1.25 million from the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR(link is external)(opens in a new tab)), which will be looking at the transfer of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance between hospitals into the environment and into animals.