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Welcome to the archive of Kansas NSF EPSCoR (KNE) news and announcements blog. Stay up-to-date with all the happenings, discoveries, events and funding opportunities associated with KNE by visiting https://nsfepscor.ku.edu./

Monday, May 21, 2018

Kansas Students travel to Nebraska for the 2018 Women in Science Conference

     Eight Kansas high school students and their teachers from Topeka and Lawrence traveled to the University of Nebraska to attend the 20th Annual Women in Science Conference held April 6-7, 2018.  The conference was for students who want to meet and network with career and academic professional women in science. The attendees also had opportunities to interact with current female science undergraduate and graduate students as well as other high school girls interested in science.  In addition, the conference provided the students with the opportunity to discover and learn about professions in biology, geology, engineering, food science, computer science and various professions in the medical fields. Dr. Dayanna Patera, an  Internist with the Nebraska Internal Medicine PC, was the keynote speaker. 
     On Friday night at the banquet, the students listened to Dr. Patera and then Kansas had the opportunity to visit with current biomedical engineering students.  Saturday's agenda included hands-on activities at the Nebraska Union and lab activities at the Bead Center.  Some of the activities the Kansas students participated in were programing an EV3 robot to dance, building virus models, extracting plant and animal DNA, infect a tobacco leaf with bacteria, gram stain bacteria and practice sampling and organizing scientific data sets. 
     Marci Leuschen, a teacher from Free State High School in Lawrence, KS said "the graduate students leading the activities in the labs were encouraging and positive role models." One of her students, Lydia, commented "Personally, I thought the conference was such an amazing learning opportunity to meet other Women in the science fields that are so incredibly passionate. I enjoyed everything." And another student, Riddhi, said "The conference was a great experience!  It helped me discover professions that I had no idea existed before.  I was able to find professions that interest me and that can help me narrow in my search of personally interesting jobs as a future career."  Marci Leuschen shared, "The girls all came away from the conference energized about scientific research."

Education and outreach funding for the physics teacher workshop was provided by the Kansas and Nebraska NSF EPSCoR Track 2 Grant #1430519 titled: "Imaging and Controlling Ultrafast Dynamics of Atoms, Molecules, and Nanostructures."  The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of atomic/molecular/optical science.

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Kansas NSF EPSCoR Announces MAPS First Award Recipients for 2017-2018

     Kansas NSF EPSCoR has awarded five assistant professors from institutions across the state to receive up to $100,000 in support of their research on topics that focus on Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant and Soil Systems.  The purpose of the EPSCoR First Award Program is to assist early career faculty to become competitive for funding from the research directorates at the National Science Foundation.  It is designed to encourage early career faculty to submit proposals to NSF and accelerate the pace of the research as well as improve the quality of their subsequent proposals.  Any individual tenure track faculty member who is of the rank of assistant professor, currently untenured, has not received a prior First Award from another EPSCoR or EPSCoR like program in KS, and is or has not been a principal investigator on any research grant funded by a federal agency is eligible to apply. The 2017-2018 recipients are: Dong Lin, Colby Moorberg and Prathap Parameswaran from Kansas State University; Ali Eslami fromWichita State University, and Cuncong Zhoong from the University of Kansas.  Listed below are the award recipient submitted abstracts that summarize their proposed research.

Dong Lin  KSU

3D Printing Biomimetic and Hierarchical Wood Structure for Endosphere Microbiome Study

     Plants are regarded as superorganisms that rely on microbiomes for functions and traits. On the other side, plants feed the microbial community and influence their composition and activities. Nowadays, nanomaterials have been widely used in scientific research and everyday usage. The research about the influence of nanomaterials to the human-related microbiome has been intensively conducted, however limited attention has been paid to the plant based microbiome. Cellulose is the major composition of plant matter, and the most abundant organic and bio-degradable polymer on Earth. This research will focus on preparing cellulose/nanomaterials, including nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, and aerogels, in order to study their effect on various bacteria. The cellulose/nanomaterials will be mixed and then subjected to freeze casting suspension. The materials will then be processed using the decomposition method to study their interaction with decomposed bacteria.

 Colby Moorberg  KSU

Quantifying the Impact of Weather Whiplash on Roots and Hyphae with an Automated Minirhizotron Camera System 
   
     Root exudation and turnover are primary soil carbon and energy sources for the rhizosphere microbiome. Plants are the interface between the atmosphere and the soil. Thus, plant stress from weather and climate events drive rhizosphere microbiome responses to stress. Current imaging technologies impede high-temporal-resolution root dynamics data. Minirhizotrons are commonly used for in situ monitoring of roots, and allow non-destructive tracking of root metrics overtime. However, high minirhizotron camera cost ($18,000+) and poor root-soil contrast prevent automated imaging and analysis. I propose to develop an inexpensive minirhizotron camera system using off-the-shelf computers (Raspberry Pi) and components to facilitate permanent camera deployment, high-temporal-resolution imaging, and automated image analysis using machine visioning. Experiments will complement work described in section 4.3.c.1.1 of the MAPS research proposal. Primary goals are to i) examine how weather whiplash impacts short-term (hours) and long-term (months) root dynamics, and ii) assess how root dynamics affect carbon inputs.

Prathap Parameswaran  KSU

Smart adaptation of enriched microbiomes in Recovered Nutrient Products (bio‐fertilizers) from anaerobic wastewater treatment to the native soil 

     Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactors (AnMBRs) are emerging as a viable option for municipalities and agro-businesses for energy positive wastewater treatment with simultaneous recovery of valuable nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorus) and water for indirect potable reuse. A pilot scale Anaerobic Membrane  Bioreactor (AnMBR) operated by the team including me at Ft. Riley, KS treating 1000 gallons per day of wastewater has consistently achieved these goals. More specifically, anaerobic microbial communities have been shown to vary in predominance with time and season, in the organic biosolids and inorganic nutrient product fractions from AnMBRs. The central hypothesis of the proposed research is that wastewater enriched microbial communities present in land applied nutrient products from the AnMBR will integrate with the soil microbiome to beneficially regulate the N and P release rates as well as the transformations of these two nutrients in the top soil layers. Understanding the transport and proliferation of these microbiomes can be achieved through plant uptake studies and field plot experiments. This research is very relevant to the current Kansas NSF EPSCoR program on microbiomes with a strong focus on the unexplored topic of microbiome interactions between the engineered/built environment such as wastewater treatment based bioreactors and the natural soil microbiome.

Ali Eslami  WSU

A Study of DNA Mutations through Error Control
Coding Theory

     Living beings, in particular, microorganisms, rely on DNA mutations for their evolution. Changes in the DNA sequence could be a result of random events such as DNA replication errors, or a result of intentional alterations introduced by genetic engineering. A similar phenomenon occurs in telecommunications when sequences of information are transmitted over a noisy channel, introducing multiple random errors. To overcome this problem, communication engineers “encode” each sequence before transmission, giving them the ability to correct errors later in the receiver. This is called “Error Control Coding”, a well-established area in communications, which started in 1948 and has been perfected over time. There are immense functional similarities between the DNA correction mechanisms in microorganisms and the error control techniques used in telecommunications. This research exploits these similarities and combines statistical methods with the powerful toolbox of algebraic error control coding to understand the behavior and evolution of microorganisms.

Cuncong Zhong  KU

Transforming Metagenomic Sequencing Data
Analysis with Scalable Assembly and Comprehensive Annotation

     The proposed research seeks to develop a series of computational methods and software for the analyses of metagenomic sequencing data. The proposed methods include de novo assembly methods with reduced computational requirement and enhanced parallelism, which facilitate the reconstruction of the metagenomes from huge-volume metagenomic datasets such as those collected form soil. They also include a series of annotation methods that improve the gene-calling, non-coding RNA discovery, gene cluster finding, and functional categorization of metagenomic data. Finally, novel phylogenetic reconstruction methods are also proposed to take advantage from the drastically improved annotation sensitivity and accuracy. The proposed methods can be directly applied on metagenomic and/or metatranscriptomic sequencing data generated from microbiome samples that are collected from environments such as aquatic, plant and/or soil systems.


Workforce Development, Education and Outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas."  The grant's workforce development and educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.




Thursday, April 26, 2018

Two MAPS Researchers Receive an NSF DEB RAPIDS Award

     At the beginning of March, Dr. Amy Burgin (KU) and Dr. Lydia Zeglin (KSU) were awarded an NSF Ecosystems DEB RAPID Award of $200,000 to study how water inputs from a decommissioned fertilizer plant affect riverine water quality. The funding is for one year.
     NSF defines RAPID funding opportunities as awards for projects that possess a severe urgency to be addressed and/or are in need of quick response research.  Specifically, this NSF funding mechanism is dedicated to awarding research projects that have limited availability of, or access to data, facilities or specialized equipment as it relates to natural or anthropogenic disasters and unanticipated events.  Burgin and Zeglin's collaborative project is titled RAPID: Are biogeochemical responses linked to the microbial composition of a defined nutrient and microbial input to a large river?  This project seeks to develop a better understanding of "how large rivers transport and transform nutrients in the face of altered nutrient inputs and microbial loads" which is a key element missing in the understanding of lotic nutrient cycling.         
     Since nitrification and denitrification rates are limited by environmental factors, this research will also provide insight on biological versus geochemical controls over processes that support total removal of N from aquatic ecosystems.  For ecosystem science in general, this project has the potential to improve the mechanistic understanding of future changes in ecosystem function and structure. The ultimate goal is to understand if water microbial community composition help to predict water quality in large rivers.

Both Zeglin and Burgin are part of the Kansas NSF EPSCoR OIA #1656006 Track 1 Award: Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant and Soil Systems across Kansas (MAPS) research team.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

MAPS Investigator presents at Big Botany Symposium

 
    Dr. Jim Bever, Distinguished Foundation Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Senior Scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey at the University of Kansas and co-pi on the Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant and Soil Systems Across Kansas Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 OIA-1656006 Award, was part of a panel that presented at the Big Botany Symposium held March 28, 2018. The all-day symposium was held in conjunction with the Big Botany: Conversations with the Plant World exhibition opening at the Spencer Museum of Art on the University of Kansas campus. The symposium provided an interdisciplinary space for scientists, artists, and other researchers to share their work on plant studies with each other and the community at large.  Dr. Bever discussed "Plant Agency and the Maintenance of Mutualism" and described how “the agency of plants impact their story” by managing microbes and how they work together to help maintain diverse plant communities with high productivity.  


To view Dr. Bever’s talk on YouTube go to the Big Botany Symposium’s video posted at: 


His specific talk begins at the 6:18:50 mark.

Education and outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas."  The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.




Tuesday, April 3, 2018

DOE EPSCoR Funding Opportunity

DOE EPSCoR has released their National Lab partnerships solicitation.

Awards are up to 250,000 per year for up to 3 years. 

Cost sharing is not required.

For more information go to:  https://science.energy.gov/~/media/grants/pdf/foas/2018/SC_FOA_0001897.pdf

Letters of Intent are due April 25, 2018

Applications are due May 16, 2018

General inquiries about this FOA should be directed to the Technical/Scientific Program Contact:

     Dr. Tim Fitzsimmons
     301-903-9830
     Tim.fitzsimmons@science.doe.gov

Monday, March 19, 2018

Topeka Dual Language 3rd Graders Learn about Soils

     The Kansas NSF EPSCoR Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant and Soils Systems Across Kansas (MAPS) outreach initiative directed at teaching elementary science visited Scott Elementary in Topeka, Kansas to teach 3rd grade students about soil composition.  Scott Dual Language Magnet Elementary teaches all science and social studies curriculum in Spanish. Dr. Peggy Schultz, MAPS Outreach Specialist, worked closely with two of Scott's 3rd grade teachers, Ms. Teresa Cotton and Ms. Yesinea Moroyoqui-Ponce, to identify key vocabulary as well as address the curriculum requirements of the 3rd grade Next Generation Science Standards as it related to soil composition. Students in the four 3rd grade science classes at Scott consisted of both native Spanish speakers and native English speakers.  In order to maximize understanding of the lesson's content, students work together to translate and teach the science material to each other in their native languages.
     Dr. Schultz also worked with Mrs. Tita Soberon, an education specialist, to translate the hands-on 3rd grade soils lesson from English into Spanish.  Mrs. Claudia Nunez-Penichet, a prospective University of Kansas Biology graduate student, and Ms. Laura Jimenez, a current University of Kansas PhD candidate, joined the team to facilitate small group discussions and lead hands-on experiments.  Both women are native Spanish speakers.

Mrs. Tita Soberon, Ms. Laura Jimenez and Ms. Claudia Nunez-Penichet facilitating inquiry based experiments in soil composition.

     Students smashed rocks, studied fossils, sifted and measured soil particles, and discovered the many components that make up complex soil.  Their final experiment involved testing the hypothesis: Will a plant grow best in sandy soil or complex soil?  After making predictions, students planted seeds in each type of soil. Their experimental plants were then transported back to the KU Greenhouse so that they could receive appropriate and equal care.  Students will make observations and conclusions regarding the plants when the team returns at the end of March. This was the second lesson taught at Scott Elementary.  The first lesson involved understanding tropic levels and a third lesson is planned to teach about biomes at the end of March.

Education and outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas."  The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.


Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Applications are now available for Biology and Environmental Studies Teachers to participate in The Ecosystems of Kansas Summer Institute at the KU Field Station

   Kansas NSF EPSCoR in conjunction with its RII track-1 award, The Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant and Soils Across Kansasis now recruiting Kansas teachers to participate in the 2018 Ecosystems of Kansas Summer Institute.  This workshop will be held June 4-8, 2018 at the University of Kansas Field Station.  High school biology and environmental studies teachers are encouraged to apply.  Participants will be paid a stipend of $750 and a travel allowance for participants who live more than an hour from the field station will also be provided.  Ten teachers will be selected to participate. 
   During the workshop, participants will conduct investigations, learn about the current research on ecosystems, explore the diverse outdoors, and work with researchers to develop inquiry-based curriculum to take back to their classes.

For more information, go to: https://epscoroutreach.ku.edu/

Applications can be found at: https://goo.gl/McoVSk


Application deadline is April 1, 2018

Education and outreach funding is provided by the Kansas NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award OIA-1656006 titled: "Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant, and Soil Systems across Kansas."  The grant's educational objectives are designed to enhance STEM education in Kansas by supporting activities that will lead to an expanded STEM workforce or prepare a new generation for STEM careers in the areas of aquatic, plant and soil microbiome environments and ecological systems.