Support for the projects comes from the Alabama Transportation Institute, Alabama Water Institute, Alabama Life Research Institute and the UA Cyber Initiative.

The effort was guided by the strategic plan for the Office for Research and Economic Development that encourages interdisciplinary and transformative research.

Along with the viability of projects to garner external funding after being established, the review process of proposals emphasized a project’s potential to sustain beyond the current global pandemic stemming from COVID-19 and scale to other large challenges.

Projects include:

• Development of a model to track transmission of infectious diseases that can help develop testing and quarantine strategies that contain infections without locking down a region. It could also evaluate the effectiveness of stay-at-home orders. The project is led by Dr. Jun Liu, assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering.
• Using a bacteria’s immune system known as CRISPR-Cas, sequences of genetic code inside bacteria that store information on invading viruses, to develop a low-cost, point-of-care test for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The goal is to offer an alternative diagnostic test that uses a smart phone app to detect a color change in the sample instead of the labor-intensive test used now on expensive lab equipment. The work is led by Dr. Jack Dunkle, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
• Determining if lifestyle factors such as vaccination history, diet and outdoor activity may impact severity of COVID-19 symptoms through a nationwide survey of adults younger than age 50 who recovered from a diagnosis. Survey data can be used to conduct future clinical study with blood and genes investigation. The project is led by researchers from human nutrition and hospitality management, Dr. Han-A Park, assistant professor, and Dr. Amy Ellis, associate professor.
• Exploring and understanding how adolescents and parents dealt with school closings and confinement at home during the spring and summer pandemic. The aim is understanding the differences among families in the decisions, opportunities and losses that occurred and carried forward into the next school year. The research team wants to understand the positive and negative ripple effects on children’s peer experiences and behavioral adjustment while evaluating the effectiveness of affordable school-based medical and behavioral services to support families and children. The project involves collaboration among developmental and educational psychologists, nursing educators, experts in marriage and family therapy, social work experts, and experts in evaluation and school improvement. The cross-campus research is led by Dr. Jeffrey Parker, associate professor of psychology.
• Creating a transformative training program to equip rural Alabamians with skills needed for the evolving job market since it is predicted many of the jobs lost during the pandemic will not return. The project will identify skills associated with programming jobs, conduct a needs assessment of rural communities and identify residents and community leaders willing to participate in training and development. Dr. Kimberly Stowers, assistant professor of management, leads the project.
• Assessing emergency messaging used during the pandemic in Alabama and the perceptions of the public and decision-makers of the response to messaging. Interviews, surveys and workshops with emergency managers around the state will help develop a pandemic and catastrophic event planning guide for dissemination to government officials. The project will be led by Dr. Laura Myers, director and senior research scientist at the Center for Advanced Public Safety.

(Courtesy of the University of Alabama)

“Space exploration is about what we are doing for the next generation and we want to teach them the importance of it,” she said. “We knew that changing our medium of outreach would be a process but we felt that reaching students was still critical to our mission as an organization and that it needed to be done.”

It’s just one way the students are adjusting while the University is on limited business operations with remote instruction. They are continuing the process of readying a small satellite to be launched into space as part of a NASA program.

The UA project is one of 18 small research satellites — called CubeSats — from 11 states selected by NASA to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets launching in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and NASA centers proposed the selected missions in response to NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.

“It’s really stiff competition, and we are really excited to get The University of Alabama’s name on that list,” said Daniels.

UASpace, made up of nearly 50 students, calls their first mission BAMA-1. They aim to demonstrate an emerging technology to bring satellites out of orbit quicker. A launch date is not set, but the team requested a launch in the third quarter of 2021. The UA satellite will be taken to the International Space Station before deploying into orbit.

They are continuing their project through online communication and video conferencing amongst themselves and NASA while conducting initial testing over software programs.

“They all worked really hard and are dedicated to the mission,” said Dr. John Baker, professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics and a team adviser. “It’s a testament to their hard work. They are amazing students, and we should all be very proud of them.”

Along with Baker, faculty advisers include Michael Pope, instructor of marketing in the STEM Path to the MBA Program, and Dr. Rohan Sood, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics.

UASpace has received support from UA, Lockheed Martin, Linc Research Inc. and the Alabama Space Grant Consortium.

(Courtesy of University of Alabama)

The work is part of Beyond EPICA, a more than $12 million project supported by the European Union involving 12 institutions in 10 European countries and with UA selected to perform precise radar imaging. It follows a previous effort, dubbed EPICA, which recovered an 800,000-year-old ice core.

Scientists, led by Dr. Carlo Barbante from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy, hope ice layered 1.5 million years ago can reveal Antarctica’s climate and the greenhouse gasses present during the Middle Pleistocene Transition, which happened between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago.

During this time, the periods between glacial climates transitioned, lengthening from about 41,000 years to 100,000 years between ice ages. This change is the mystery Beyond EPICA seeks to resolve.

Little Dome C, nearly 25 miles from the nearest research station in an area administered by the French and Italian polar agencies, was selected as the potential site to recover the ancient ice after an initial two-year Radar Echo Sounding survey that covered more than nearly 2,500 miles of airborne and ground-based measurements as part of the previous EU project.

In November, UA’s radar was deployed to the site to scan nearly 2 miles below the ice to precisely select the exact drilling site. The work was conducted by Dr. Drew Taylor, UA assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, with international collaborators Dr. Daniel Steinhage from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and Dr. David Lilien from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

The ultra-wideband radar and antenna capable of penetrating deep into ice was able to image, with high definition, the ice layering in the deepest part of the ice sheet. The radar was designed and fabricated by UA researchers, including seven graduate and eight undergraduate students in the UA College of Engineering, and led by Dr. Charles O’Neill from the UA Remote Sensing Center.

Radar development was supported by the University of Copenhagen, the Alfred Wegener Institute, the National Science Foundation and UA.

The radar was previously used in Greenland as part of another international effort to unveil ancient climate history and to provide perspectives on improving climate models.

“We’re proving we have the expertise in remote sensing with our radar systems and design to provide unique solutions to answer the questions the scientists have about the ice and our climate,” Taylor said.

Taylor and the team at Little Dome C drove a tightly spaced grid over two areas about 2.5 square miles in size. The radar collected a tremendous amount of data initially analyzed on-site using software developed by students and faculty from UA.

“It became apparent to everyone these data were much improved from anything seen before in this area,” Taylor said. “It is a testament to the effort put forth by the leadership, faculty, staff and students of the Remote Sensing Center over the past weeks and months.”

The data was further analyzed and modelled in European laboratories, allowing scientist to confirm with a meter-scale resolution the exact future drilling site. The radar imaging showed there should not be any ice melting at the base, despite the tremendous pressure of the mass of ice above it. The characteristics of the deeper layers, with ice at least 1.5 million years old, should be preserved with a good temporal resolution, the scientist believe.

“It is the first time that a site for deep drilling has been selected with such a high precision and effort,” said Dr. Olaf Eisen with the Alfred Wegener Institute and one of the leaders of the Beyond EPICA project. “The new radar measurement showed more clearly than before, that the ice there is well stratified and most probably very old.”

If the project proceeds according to plan, it will take six years to drill, collect and analyze the ice from what will be a deep hole.

(This story originally appeared on The University of Alabama’s News Center website)

“Life research is a signature research theme at UA and needs teams from across campus to address major opportunities and challenges,” said Dr. Kevin Whitaker, UA executive vice president and provost. “Dr. Newman has demonstrated the ability to bring together and lead cross-disciplinary teams, so we are so pleased she will be joining us.”

ALRI was established two years ago to serve as a focal point for interdisciplinary bio-psychosocial research that seeks to investigate the human condition at all levels, from the molecular to the environmental. An umbrella organization, ALRI facilitates collaboration across campus with other institutions, government agencies, community-based organization and the health care and biotechnology industries.

“We firmly believe Dr. Newman has the vision, experience and skill set to be highly successful as the executive director of the Alabama Life Research Institute,” said Dr. Russell J. Mumper, UA vice president for research and economic development. “We will fully support her vision to ensure leading-edge research into the human condition thrives at the university.”

A native of Abbeville, Alabama, Newman comes to UA after more than 14 years at Indiana University, where she was a Class of 1948 Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor in psychological and brain sciences as well as associate vice provost for undergraduate education.

“I see a great opportunity for the ALRI to make a significant impact on the health and well-being of the state of Alabama, and to become a leader in life science research by leveraging the expertise present in multiple departments across campus,” Newman said.

Newman’s research focuses on understanding human brain functioning using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Her work examines language processing, executive function and problem solving, substance addictions, psychopathology and MRI methodology.

She has helped clarify functional distinctions between brain regions involved in sentence comprehension, strengthening earlier interpretations of the functional roles assigned to different brain regions and providing strong empirical support for a particular theoretical model of sentence comprehension.

Among the first scientists to use neuroimaging to study complex language function, Newman is a founding member of the IU Imaging Research Facility and later served as its director, where she developed collaborations investigating schizophrenia, the impact of cannabis and other substances on brain function, and concussions and brain health.

She later became the director of the Program in Neuroscience within IU’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Newman also chaired the Diversity Advancement Committee in her department, initiating regular gatherings for the department’s minority students to discuss concerns and opportunities.

During her time in Indiana, she collaborated across campus with clinical scientists in her own department along with researchers in speech and hearing sciences, vision science, the media school and second language studies.

Newman earned her master’s and doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham after finishing her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University.

After graduating from UAB in 1999, she worked as a postdoctoral associate and adjunct assistant professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University until 2004. She joined IU that year as an assistant professor, becoming associate professor in 2011 and a full professor in 2017. She was tapped as an associate vice provost in 2016.

At UA, Newman holds a joint academic appointment in the department of psychology along with the department of electrical and computer engineering.

She replaces Dr. John E. Lochman, Saxon professor emeritus in psychology, who served as interim executive director.

“We are grateful to Dr. Lochman for his strong leadership of ALRI and moving life research forward at UA,” Mumper said. “He and the search committee accomplished outstanding work in identifying superb candidates and helping UA land the very best leader for life research.”

This story originally appeared on the University of Alabama’s website.

(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)

Dr. Asma Hatoum-Aslan, UA assistant professor of biological sciences, and one of her graduate students, Lucy Chou-Zheng, are co-authors on the paper.

“There are a lot of far-reaching consequences of the work,” Hatoum-Aslan said. “This basic research provides first glimpses of how an important bacterial defensive system mobilizes other parts of the cell in times of need.”

The human body hosts all sorts of bacteria and the viruses that attack them, called phages. There is limited knowledge about what transpires between phages and their bacterial hosts within the microbiome.

Some phages are lethal to their hosts and constitute attractive candidates that might one day supplement or replace antibiotics. However, bacterial defenses threaten to undermine the effectiveness of phage-based antimicrobials.

“Since phages are being explored as alternatives to conventional antibiotics, it is essential to understand precisely how bacterial immune systems work and interact with their immediate environment, especially in pathogenic bacteria,” Hatoum-Aslan said. “In addition, detailed molecular-level studies of this sort usually provide fertile grounds for the conception and development of new biotechnologies.“

(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)

“Basically, the big issue with rural wastewater that we see in Alabama is the confluence of impermeable soil and rural poverty,” said Dr. Mark Elliott, UA associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering. “The fact is, though, the scope of that problem is not well understood.”

The situation has brought the attention of the United Nations, which sent an official to examine straight pipe drainage in 2017. There has also been national and international reporting on the conditions as studies have shown diseases and parasites common in tropical areas, and once thought contained in the United States, are appearing in the Black Belt.

Much of the country can dispose of household wastewater safely, either into a sewer system that leads to a treatment plant or into a septic system that uses engineering and natural geology to filter out contaminants before reaching the groundwater.

The Black Belt, an area of 17 counties across southwest Alabama, is often different. Underneath the topsoil is clay and chalk, which holds water. This can cause a backup of a septic system and risk sending untreated wastewater into the streams, lakes, rivers and groundwater nearby.

Added to the soil challenge, the Black Belt is a poverty-stricken area of the country, especially outside its small towns. Many find it difficult to afford advanced septic systems needed for the soil, instead using a straight pipe running from the home to some other part of the property to drain untreated wastewater.

A 2017 survey by Elliott’s group in Wilcox County conservatively estimated that 60 percent of homes drain wastewater without treatment. Elliott said it is possible more than 500,000 gallons of raw sewage enter the rivers and streams in Wilcox County each day.

Site surveys are expensive and time-consuming, so the full extent of straight pipe drainage in the region is largely unknown.

“Not knowing the scope of the problem prevents any sort of estimate of how much it costs to fix the problem or the benefits of fixing the problem,” Elliott said.

Aaron Blackwell, a graduate student in Elliott’s lab, leads the work of making maps to predict the risk of homes using straight pipe drainage. The maps combine geological information of the soil, property values from the county government and population density to show areas where there is greater risk of homes discharging untreated waste through straight pipes.

“Based on a just a few publicly available data sets, we can come up with decent estimates of where these straight pipes are located and how much wastewater is being discharged untreated to the environment,” Elliott said. “This is an important step.”

The maps can show areas where intervention could be effective, such as clusters of homes outside a town that could share a simple treatment system, he said.

The $15,000 grant to UA comes through EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet, or P3, program. Research teams receive funding to develop sustainable technologies to help solve environmental and public health challenges. The P3 competition challenges students to research, develop and design innovative projects that address a myriad of environmental protection and public health issues.

UA’s team is in the first phase of the program, and it will attend the TechConnect World Innovation Conference and Expo in Boston in June to showcase its research. The team can then apply for a second-phase grant for funding up to $100,000 to further the project design.

Other members of the team include Dr. Joseph Weber, UA professor of geological sciences; Dr. Sagy Cohen, UA associate professor of geological sciences, and Rebecca Greenberg, a UA graduate student studying geology.

This story originally appeared on the University of Alabama’s website.

(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)

The situation has brought the attention of the United Nations, which sent an official to examine straight pipe drainage in 2017. There has also been national and international reporting on the conditions as studies have shown diseases and parasites common in tropical areas, and once thought contained in the United States, are appearing in the Black Belt.

Much of the country can dispose of household wastewater safely, either into a sewer system that leads to a treatment plant or into a septic system that uses engineering and natural geology to filter out contaminants before reaching the groundwater.

The Black Belt, an area of 17 counties across southwest Alabama, is often different. Underneath the topsoil is clay and chalk, which holds water. This can cause a backup of a septic system and risk sending untreated wastewater into the streams, lakes, rivers and groundwater nearby.

Added to the soil challenge, the Black Belt is a poverty-stricken area of the country, especially outside its small towns. Many find it difficult to afford advanced septic systems needed for the soil, instead using a straight pipe running from the home to some other part of the property to drain untreated wastewater.

A 2017 survey by Elliott’s group in Wilcox County conservatively estimated that 60 percent of homes drain wastewater without treatment. Elliott said it is possible more than 500,000 gallons of raw sewage enter the rivers and streams in Wilcox County each day.

Site surveys are expensive and time-consuming, so the full extent of straight pipe drainage in the region is largely unknown.

“Not knowing the scope of the problem prevents any sort of estimate of how much it costs to fix the problem or the benefits of fixing the problem,” Elliott said.

Aaron Blackwell, a graduate student in Elliott’s lab, leads the work of making maps to predict the risk of homes using straight pipe drainage. The maps combine geological information of the soil, property values from the county government and population density to show areas where there is greater risk of homes discharging untreated waste through straight pipes.

“Based on a just a few publicly available data sets, we can come up with decent estimates of where these straight pipes are located and how much wastewater is being discharged untreated to the environment,” Elliott said. “This is an important step.”

The maps can show areas where intervention could be effective, such as clusters of homes outside a town that could share a simple treatment system, he said.

The $15,000 grant to UA comes through EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet, or P3, program. Research teams receive funding to develop sustainable technologies to help solve environmental and public health challenges. The P3 competition challenges students to research, develop and design innovative projects that address a myriad of environmental protection and public health issues.

UA’s team is in the first phase of the program, and it will attend the TechConnect World Innovation Conference and Expo in Boston in June to showcase its research. The team can then apply for a second-phase grant for funding up to $100,000 to further the project design.

Other members of the team include Dr. Joseph Weber, UA professor of geological sciences; Dr. Sagy Cohen, UA associate professor of geological sciences, and Rebecca Greenberg, a UA graduate student studying geology.

This story originally appeared on the University of Alabama’s website.

(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)

“The whole experience was a lot of fun,” Nunn said. “It was a great opportunity and great experience. I would go again if I could.”

He was there to help drag a one-of-a-kind radar across the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream. Developed and built by UA professors and students, the radar helps scientists unveil ancient climate history and provides perspectives on improving climate models.

The team included Nunn, graduate student Christopher Simpson and Dr. Stephen J. Yan, who specializes in ultra-wideband radar and antenna research.

The radar is 1,000 times more sensitive than the current state-of-the-art radar used to image glaciers, operating at a higher power with a bigger, yet lighter, antenna than similar radars for ice sounding, said Yan. The research team was the first to use a radar to image the bottom 10 percent of the ice stream, which is about 1.7 miles deep, Yan said. These results will contribute to developing satellite missions to completely map Greenland and Antarctic ice.

Nunn grew up in Talladega and graduated from Victory Christian High School in Pell City, coming to UA to study electrical engineering. After earning his bachelor’s degree in December 2017, he stayed at UA to get a master’s in electrical engineering.

Nunn worked on the radar technology under Yan before the trip, and while in Greenland he used his knowledge to troubleshoot issues and back up data from the radar.

“I helped make sure the radar didn’t break,” Nunn said. “I learned how these missions generally go and learned how field work is conducted.”

The team stayed on top of the ice stream at a camp housing scientists studying its flow into the ocean. In the middle of white ice, Nunn and the UA team hunkered down at night in a tent with electricity supplied by a generator. Still, one morning, Nunn awoke to find frozen water in a cup beside his bed.

The team had internet with Netflix and could call home, too. In a common area under a domed structure, there was space for a kitchen, meals, shower and laundry. An on-site chef served up some of the best food Nunn had ever eaten.

It was an international team of scientists and engineers, but everyone spoke English, Nunn said.

“It was good to work with folks from another country,” he said. “Everyone should go, if they get a chance.”

This story originally appeared on the University of Alabama’s website.

(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)

Made up of about 65 students from across eight disciplines including engineering and computer science, Alabama Astrobotics is the only team to win more than once in the nine-year history of the NASA contest, placing first in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017 and, now, 2018.

“Our team is just like a football team, you have seniors who graduate at the end and you have new people coming in at the beginning, so every year it’s a completely different team,” said team lead and electrical engineering student Max Eastepp. “For us to be successful this year says a lot for this team and says a lot for how we adapt to new challenges each year.”

Eastepp, a native of New Orleans, said teamwork is critical as students worked from July through the contest this month to design the robot and tackle the new problem NASA presented this year.

Contest organizers revised the rules and rubrics this year to reflect the discovery that water ice is prevalent throughout the Red Planet. The challenge is to mine the precious icy regolith, simulated with gravel in the contest, since water ice will provide oxygen, water and fuel for future off-world colonists.

What that meant for the contest, though, is no points were awarded to teams for digging the top foot of regolith. Teams earned points for collecting the gravel 12 inches below the surface.

UA’s robot mined more of the gravel than any other team in the contest, with many teams failing to mine any gravel.

Also, Alabama Astrobotics was the only team with a robot that competed entirely autonomously, meaning the robot used computer programming to guide itself, mine and deposit the soil and gravel without any directions from students during the contest.

The team placed first in five of nine categories: mining, autonomy, systems engineering paper, efficient use of communications power and outreach reports. In all, the students won $11,000 for use on next year’s robot.

Dr. Kenneth Ricks, team adviser and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the team’s consistent success comes from a culture of sticking to a plan – meeting deadlines, testing thoroughly before competition and paying attention to detail.

“We know what needs to be done and when it needs to be done,” he said. “If our students buy into that process, they know they will have opportunities to be successful.”

The team received funding from the Alabama Space Grant Consortium, NASA, Dynetics, Fitz-Thors Engineering, Crank N Chrome and the university.

(Courtesy of University of Alabama)

One reason for this is those ejected from vehicles during crashes have 50 times the death rate as those who remain in the vehicles, and the probability of being thrown from vehicles increases about 337 times for those not restrained.

“There is no doubt that seat belts are the most effective way of reducing the chances of getting killed in a crash,” said Dr. David Brown, a research associate at CAPS who led the study. “The chances of avoiding a crash altogether that involves injury over your driving lifetime is very low, so these are not just hypothetical or extreme examples. They are real life-and-death probabilities.”

Along with an increased chance of dying in a crash if unrestrained, there is an increased chance of serious injury. About one in seven unrestrained motorists involved in a crash will sustain a serious injury, while only about one in 50 properly restrained motorists will have a serious injury.

The chances of serious injury for those unrestrained increase by more than a factor of seven. For those who buckle up, nine out of 10 are not injured during a crash.

Some of the other interesting factors include driver and passenger demographics and other correlations:

–Those between the ages 17 and 36 are unrestrained significantly more than average.
–Males are about twice as likely to be unrestrained as females.
–If all back-seat occupants were properly restrained, it would result in an estimated saving of 62 lives per year in Alabama.
–Unrestrained drivers are about 2.5 times more likely to have their crashes in the rural areas than in the cities.

Brown said there are many things drivers should do to prevent severe traffic crashes in addition to the use of seatbelts. They include, in the order of ability to prevent fatal crashes:

–Slowing down, as the probability of fatality doubles for every 10 mph increase.
–Pulling over to a safe stopping point until distractions, such as cell phones, are resolved.
–Never driving or riding with anyone who has had any alcohol or who has taken any mind-altering drugs, even if prescribed.
–Anticipating and avoiding bad weather, especially when coupled with darkness.
–Watching for deer if traveling just after dark and slowing down.
–Driving defensively to reduce risk by putting distance between others vehicles, staying out of the blind spots of large trucks and letting aggressive drivers pass.

(Courtesy of the University of Alabama)