(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, DC – Jefferson Sciences Associates (JSA) has announced the award of $558,060 through its JSA Initiatives Fund Program. The program supports projects by staff and scientific users at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The FY23 program awards leveraged over $800,000 in matching funds, and taken together, the program and matching awards total over $1.3 million. Project awards include scientific meeting support, education and career development, and outreach activities, all of which support the lab’s mission.
Jefferson Lab is a world-leading nuclear physics research facility in Newport News, Va. More than 1,850 scientists from around the world use the lab’s unique particle accelerator to conduct experiments to expand our understanding of the visible universe.
JSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), manages and operates Jefferson Lab for DOE’s Office of Science. The JSA Initiatives Fund Program is funded annually, so that Jefferson Lab and its scientific users may engage more effectively in educational, scientific, technical and outreach activities. These activities contribute to the lab’s overall ability to accomplish its mission.
According to JSA Board Chair and SURA President & CEO Sean Hearne, the JSA Initiatives Fund Program is an investment that returns immense value to the lab, its user community and DOE.
“Fellowships, research grants, and K-12 projects further the education and training of the scientific leaders of the future. Over the past three decades this program has provided over 250 graduate fellowships enabling students to perform their research projects at Jefferson Lab,” Hearne said.
Program awards may be made to Jefferson Lab employees or members of the Jefferson Lab Users Organization. JLUO members are the scientific users who conduct their research at the lab. More than two-thirds of the Initiatives Fund Program awards are in support of the JLUO, including support for the Annual JLUO Meeting at which the JLUO poster prizes, thesis prize, and postdoc research grant are announced.
“JSA Initiatives Fund awards support more than 100 students and postdocs annually to attend and participate in scientific meetings, conferences and workshops, both here at the lab and off-site. Participation at these events not only develops the individual participants, but most importantly, provides networking and outreach opportunities for the lab’s impactful science program,” said Jefferson Lab Director Stuart Henderson.
The FY23 Initiatives Fund Program awards include:
Director’s Discretionary Funds, $115,000
JSA/JLab Graduate Fellowships, $108,000
Economic Impact Study, $40,000
JLab Science Activities for Teachers (JSAT), $32,500
JSA/JLab Sabbatical/Research Leave Support, $27,000
JSA/JLab Minority/Female Undergraduate Research Assistantship, $21,600
Junior Scientist Travel Support, $20,000
Undergraduate Support in Jefferson Lab Research, $19,800
Nuclear Physics Hill Day and Other Congressional Visits, $12,500
HUGS (Hampton University Graduate Studies program) International Fellowship for Graduate Students in Developing Countries, $11,060
JLUO (Jefferson Lab Users Organization) Annual Meeting, $11,000
JSA Post Doctoral Fellow Research Grant, $10,825
EIC (Electron-Ion Collider) Early Career Workshop, $10,000
Accelerator Applications Conference, $10,000
Spin Symposium (SPIN 2023), $10,000
Building Public Recognition, $10,000
JLab Computing Workshop, $9,000
JLUO Satellite Meeting at APS/DNP Conferences, $9,000
Accelerator Physics Education Outreach with Mexican Universities, $8,800
Graduate Student and Post Doc Association Activities, $6,700
Frontiers and Careers Workshop, $6,000
JLUO Awards: Thesis Prize, Poster Awards, $5,675
Honoraria for Foreign PAC (Program Advisory Committee) Members, $5,600
Nathan Isgur Theoretical Fellowship Research Grant, $5,000
Hermann Grunder Fellowship Research Grant, $5,000
Nathan Isgur Experimental Fellowship Research Grant, $5,000
Light-Cone (LC2023), $5,000
Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP), $4,000
JLUO Board Business Travel, $4,000
Toward Improved Hadron Femtography with Hard Exclusive Reactions, $3,000
Next Generation Streaming Readout Systems Workshop, $3,000
Extra Child Care (ExCARE), $2,500
Precision Tests of Fundamental Physics with Light Mesons, $1,500
Since 2006, the JSA Initiatives Fund Program has supported over 470 projects. The JSA funds support programs, initiatives and activities that further the scientific outreach, and promote the science, education and technology missions of Jefferson Lab in ways that complement its basic and applied research focus. Program funds also support activities of the laboratory’s extended user community.
The program is managed and administered by SURA. Funding decisions are made by individuals from SURA, JSA, Jefferson Lab, and the Jefferson Lab scientific user community.
Contact: Elizabeth Lawson, SURA Chief of Laboratory Operations, 202-408-2410, elawson@sura.org
-end-
Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. JSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, Inc. (SURA).
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
END
Sophisticated systems for the detection of biomarkers — molecules such as DNA or proteins that indicate the presence of a disease — are crucial for real-time diagnostic and disease-monitoring devices.
Holger Schmidt, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz, and his group have long been focused on developing unique, highly sensitive devices called optofluidic chips to detect biomarkers.
Schmidt’s graduate student Vahid Ganjalizadeh led an effort to use machine learning to enhance ...
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) is hosting a free webinar, “How the Brain's Dopamine Circuitry Helps Regulate Cognitive Flexibility and Reward-Seeking” on Tuesday, May 9, 2023, at 2:00 pm EST. The presenter will be Nikhil Urs, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Florida and a recipient of a 2018 BBRF Young Investigator Grant. The webinar will be hosted by Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., President & CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and host of the public television series Healthy Minds.
Register today at BBRFoundation.org
Dopamine ...
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the medical field has the possibility to automate diagnoses, decrease physician workload, and even to bring specialized healthcare to people in rural areas or developing countries. However, with possibility comes potential pitfalls.
Analyzing crowd-sourced sets of data used to create AI algorithms from medical images, University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers found that most did not include patient demographics. In the study published April 3 in Nature Medicine, the researchers also found that the algorithms did not evaluate for inherent biases either. That means they have ...
AMES, IA — Iowa State researchers in psychology and engineering found women experience cybersickness with virtual reality headsets more often than men. Their ongoing work, supported by a new $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, explores why this difference exists and options to help individuals adapt.
Psychology professor Jonathan Kelly studies human computer interaction, spatial cognition and virtual reality. He says gender discrepancies in cybersickness may not seem that important when it’s related to video games and other forms of entertainment.
"But it’s still a problem, and when VR gets to the point ...
Using blood samples to study diseases that originate in the brain is a difficulty faced by psychiatric genetics in the search for markers of mental health disorders. Researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) in Brazil have shown that this hindrance can be surmounted by analyzing microRNAs in extracellular vesicles (EVs), which are produced by most cells in the body, including neurons and other nervous system cells.
The study was supported by FAPESP and is reported ...
Three years ago, an international study commissioned by the journal Lancet listed 12 modifiable factors that increased the risk of dementia, including three new ones: excessive alcohol, head injury and air pollution.
Writing in the May 2, 2023 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, a team of researchers, led by scientists at University of California San Diego, further elaborate on how exposure to the last of those new factors — ambient air pollution, such as car exhaust and power plant emissions — is associated with a measurably greater risk of developing dementia over time.
Senior author William S. Kremen, PhD, professor ...
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (May 2, 2023) — Van Andel Institute scientists have developed a new extraction protocol for RNA-seq and metabolomic analysis, offering a more complete picture of cellular activity than either technique on its own.
The protocol employs a streamlined extraction from a single sample, which reduces variation, improves efficiency, preserves data fidelity and maximizes use of precious biospecimens.
“Our new technique enables researchers to study metabolic phenotypes in a unique way while getting the most information we can out of single samples,” ...
Scientists at UMass Chan Medical School have developed a technology to deliver gene therapy directly to lung tissue through intranasal administration, a development that could potentially create a new class of treatments for lung disease.
Published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study by a multidisciplinary team of RNA biologists, chemical biologists, immunologists and virologists describes the delivery of siRNA molecules locally to lung tissue. It is the first demonstration that multimeric ...
After a drought-stricken California lifted a year of mandatory water-use cuts that were effective in 2015 and 2016, urban water use crept back up somewhat, but the overall lasting effect was a more waterwise Golden State, a University of California, Riverside, study has found.
Published Tuesday, April 25, in the journal Water Resources Research, the UCR study found that water use by 2019 was still lower than it was in 2013, thanks in large part to water use changes by larger water users.
The water-reduction mandate imposed ...
Using a “spooky” phenomenon of quantum physics, Caltech researchers have discovered a way to double the resolution of light microscopes.
In a paper appearing in the journal Nature Communications, a team led by Lihong Wang, Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, shows the achievement of a leap forward in microscopy through what is known as quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two particles are linked such that the state of one particle is tied ...
