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The Human Health and the Environment seed grants for

2017 have been awarded to a pool of interdisciplinary
researchers at Penn State.
Image: Penn State

Recipients of 2017 Human Health and the

Environment seed grants announced
Derek Bannister
July 5, 2017
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. The Human Health and the Environment seed grants for 2017 have been
awarded to a pool of interdisciplinary researchers at Penn State. These seed grants were funded by
eight separate Penn State research entities and institutes, which collectively contributed more than
$500,000.

The principal investigators along with their aliated colleges and project titles who were
awarded Human Health and the Environment seed grants for 2017 are:

Sheri A. Berenbaum College of the Liberal Arts, "Cognitive Changes Associated with Hormonal
Treatment for Breast Cancer"
Nita Bharti Eberly College of Science, "Environmentally Linked Viruses and Dynamic
Transmission Networks"
Ali Borhan College of Engineering, "Patient-Specic Prediction of Susceptibility to Acute Lung
Injury Resulting from Exposure to Environmental Pollutants and Toxic Industrial Chemicals"
Keith C. Cheng College of Medicine, "Digital environmental monitoring of human water supply
watersheds by high-throughput phenotyping of plankton and meiofauna"
Guangquing Chi College of Agricultural Sciences, "From Environmental Change to Left-behind
Childrens Well-being in Rural Highlands"
Andris Freivalds College of Engineering, "UPRITE (Universal Personal Rebalance Information
 Technology Enhancement) A Device for Anticipating and Preventing Elderly Falls"
Adam Glick College of Agricultural Sciences, "Therapeutic Modulation of the Tumor Immune
Microenvironment in Skin Cancer with Localized Activation of Nanoparticle Delivered siRNA"
Vasant Gajanan Honavar College of Information Sciences and Technology, "Predictive Modeling
of Health Risks and Outcomes from Clinical, Environmental, Contextual, Behavioral Data: A Proof-
of-Concept Study Focused on Breast Cancer in Central Pennsylvania"
Scott H. Medina College of Engineering, "Drug-Loaded Antimicrobial Nanogels for
Combinatorial Therapy of Antibiotic-Resistant Tuberculosis"
Shedra Amy Snipes College of Health and Human Development, "Using an Environmental
Justice Lens: An Integrated Pest Management and mHealth Program Aimed to Reduce Pesticides
Exposures for Vulnerable Hispanic Mushroom Farmers in Pennsylvania"
Randy Lee Vander Wal College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, "Identication of Toxicity
Parameters Associated with Combustion Produced PM2.5 Surface Chemistry and Particle
Structure by in Vitro Assays"

These researchers will be conducting interdisciplinary research on a wide range of topics, including
environmentally linked changes in health, the reduction of health risks using technology, and the
improvement of knowledge and safe practices in agriculture.

Seed grant programs like this unleash the creativity and imagination of our faculty, inspire new
interdisciplinary collaborations and generate preliminary data for novel research directions, said
Tom Richard, director of the Institutes of Energy and the Environment and a professor of
agricultural and biological engineering. I am particularly inspired by work that can help children and
disadvantaged communities, including communities in Pennsylvania where children suer asthma
and other respiratory diseases at several times the normal rates; farmworkers and their families
exposed to pesticides; and health of children dislocated from their homes and communities as a
result of climate change a tragic situation that is already occurring in many parts of the world.

The Penn State College of Medicine, the Penn State Cancer Institute, the Huck Institutes of the Life
Sciences, the Social Sciences Research Institute, the Clinical Translational Science Institute, the
Materials Research Institute, the Institute for CyberScience, and the Institutes of Energy and the
Environment all solicited research proposals further underscoring the interdisciplinary nature of
these grants.

We had an exceptional pool of proposals from faculty across the university, Richard said. The
projects address emerging contaminants as well as legacy environmental problems that seriously
impact human health.

Jim Marden, associate director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and professor of biology,
said the application pool was mind-bogglingly diverse. Marden noted that seed grants of this sort
help elevate the importance of research at Penn State, encouraging faculty members to think of
creative and high-risk, high-reward research topics.

Applications for seed grants for research in Future Energy Supply, Smart Energy Systems, Climate
and Ecosystem Change and Water and Biogeochemical Cycles will become available during the fall
semester.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Chris Pfeier, cxp7@psu.edu

Last Updated July 13, 2017