Seed Funding Awarded to Six Projects Related to Strategic Strengths

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Six research projects have been awarded seed funding through the UB 2020 Scholars Fund, a program run by the Office of the Vice President for Research that is designed to fund new projects within the strategic strength areas identified by the UB 2020 strategic planning process.

The fund awards grants of $500 to $15,000 to scholars in the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences for research and creative activities demonstrating or leading to creative and academic excellence. The grants, which are designed "to foster truly innovative work" by UB faculty members, are intended to provide funding when such resources are not available from the department, school or college, or are rare from external funding sources, according to a program description.

The projects receiving UB 2020 Scholars awards -- with descriptions culled from abstracts submitted to the Office of the Vice President for research -- are:

• "Blurred -- A New Choreographic Work:" Melanie Aceto, Department of Theatre and Dance, investigator. The award will fund the development of "Blurred," a new choreographic work of art exploring the boundary between the roles of musician and dancer. Collaborating on the project with Aceto, a choreographer and dancer, are Mark Olivieri, a musician and UB doctoral student in composition, and Evan Johnson, a Rhode Island-based composer, who received his doctorate from UB and is a part-time member of the UB music faculty.

• "Francisca Colipe: A Mestiza Shaman at the Crossroads of Mapuche and Chilean History and Memory:" Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Department of Anthropology, investigator. The goal of the project is to develop a book about how the narratives and practices of historical continuity and memory of a Mapuche mestiza shaman and her community in southern Chile contribute to contemporary discourses of social memory in history and anthropology.

• "Detecting Incipient Lava Dome Collapse With an Infrared Gas-Imaging Camera:" Eliza Calder, Department of Geology, investigator. This project will involve adapting new infrared, gas-imaging cameras from the industrial sector for use in making high spatial- and temporal-resolution images of volcanic gases emanating from fractures in a volcano's lava dome before it collapses. Imaging and quantification of the onset of fracturing and increased gas permeability of the lava dome in the hours before it collapses -- and sends lava and other material speeding down the flanks of the volcano -- will allow researchers to make better forecasts of when the dome will collapse, directly impacting mitigation procedures such as evacuations.

• "Buffalo Experiments:" Mehrdad Hadighi, Department of Architecture, investigator. Buffalo has been at the forefront of artistic, architectural, infrastructural, social, technical and urban "experiments" that defined the nation during the past century, and their influences are still being felt today. The goal of this project is to develop a book that "chronicles the significant experiments in and around the city, examined through the lens of site, material and flow." The book also will "project a future that links significant moments in the city's history with more recent experiments at UB, primarily in architecture, music, poetry and film."

• "A Typological Approach to Problematic Treatment Adherence Among HIV+ Patients:" John E. Roberts, Department of Psychology; Eugene D. Morse, Department of Pharmacy Practice; Chiu Bin Hsiao, Department of Medicine; and Naomi Boston, Department of Pharmacy Practice, investigators. Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapies (HAART) are providing many HIV-positive individuals with a better quality of life and greater longevity. However, extensive research on the efficacy of HAART has concluded that even minimal nonadherence to the therapy requirements can lead to inadequate viral suppression and medication resistance. This project will test a typological model suggesting that the functional antecedents (triggers) of adherence lapses systematically vary across patients. Using repeated assessments of adherence and potential triggers for lapses over a four-week period, the project will test whether patients systematically vary in terms of the functional antecedents of their lapses and will develop measures to assess membership in various categories of problematic adherence.

• "School of Perpetual Training:" Stephanie Rothenberg, Department of Visual Studies, investigator. This project aims to provide a critical look into the global economy of technology's fastest growing sector -- the computer video game industry -- and question the role of play and the current production of play in contemporary culture. Designed as a giant multiplayer computer video game, the interactive installation will transforms a gallery space into a global game factory. An instructional trainer, played by a 3-D computer avatar, will lead visitors through a basic training program that prepares them for a job in the industry. A series of short tutorials referencing popular commercial games ranging from Atari to "World of Warcraft" will both instruct and evaluate players' skills and confront players with real-world, on-the-job choices and obstacles.