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Five teams win IRDF funding
The latest projects to receive awards from the UB 2020 Interdisciplinary Research Development Fund seek to advance science and make practical improvements in fields ranging from business to medicine and engineering.
The money, distributed by the Office of the Vice President for Research through a competitive process, stimulates and supports research that could later win external awards, such as federal grants. To be eligible for funding, projects must include work by at least two faculty members in different disciplines, in sync with UB 2020’s emphasis on spurring collaborations between departments across the university.
The winning proposals, announced earlier this year, are:
• “Characterization of Vascular Flow”: Corresponding investigator Kenneth Hoffmann, Neurosurgery, with co-investigators Adnan Siddiqui, Neurosurgery; Vipin Chaudhary, Computer Science and Engineering; Jae-Hun Jung, Mathematics; E. Bruce Pitman, Mathematics; Matthew Jones, Center for Computational Research; and Thomas Furlani, Center for Computational Research. This project aims to speed up the calculation of blood-flow patterns in patients, in part by creating a database with information on blood-flow patterns in vessels with different geometries, narrowings, branching and aneurysms.
• “A Dynamic Approach to Strategic Market Segmentation: An Application of Data-mining Techniques”: Corresponding investigator Arun Jain, Marketing, with co-investigators Ram Bezawada, Marketing; and Aidong Zhang, Computer Science and Engineering. The researchers plan to develop novel, sophisticated algorithms and techniques to classify, estimate, predict, cluster and more accurately describe customers’ purchase behavior, making use of state-of-the-art data mining to improve managerial business decisions.
• “Toward the First-principles Calculation of Bulk-phase Thermophysical Properties”: Corresponding investigator David Kofke, Chemical and Biological Engineering, with co-investigators Jing Kong, Chemistry; and Thomas Furlani, Center for Computational Research. This project aims to produce an analytic equation of state that engineers could use to assess material properties, such as the conditions under which a gas will condense into a liquid.
• “Stress, Depression and Autonomic Dysregulation: Effects on Cardio-respiratory Function”: Corresponding investigator Bruce Miller, Psychiatry and Pediatrics, with co-investigators David Pendergast, Physiology and Biophysics; and Beatrice Wood, Psychiatry and Pediatrics. This research project will examine how, in asthmatic children with depression, stressful physical and emotional states disrupt normal regulation of autonomic nervous system processes that control airway function.
• “Children’s Stress and Intima Media Thickness”: Corresponding investigator James Roemmich, Pediatrics, with co-investigator Joan Dorn, Social and Preventive Medicine. The researchers will study whether teenagers who experience greater increases in heart rate and blood pressure as they encounter daily stressors during a school year also experience greater increases in the thickness of the walls of carotid arteries.
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