The Strategic Equipment Investment Program, provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships, has funded six proposals to purchase equipment expected to advance research and creative activities at the University of Oklahoma.
SEIP supports funding for the purchase of strategic equipment that enhances a team’s capabilities and competitiveness at a national level. Specifically, the equipment is expected to provide new opportunities for advancing the team’s ability to achieve new goals in terms of creativity, discovery, innovation, and competitiveness in securing external funding.
The funded proposals are:
Led by principal investigator Andrew Elwood Madden, the proposal team includes faculty in the Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy and will be supported by the Samuel Roberts Noble Microscopy Laboratory. Sputter coating and carbon evaporation for deposition provides extremely thin and quantitative films of metals and carbon, which is essential for increasingly advanced imaging and analysis capabilities. The new instrument will replace both a 37-year-old Anatech Ltd Hummer VI gold-palladium sputter coater as well as a 38-year-old JEOL JEE-4C carbon evaporator, and modernize OU's capabilities.
Led by Han Yuan, the proposal team includes faculty in the Gallogly College of Engineering and the OUHSC Department of Neurosurgery. This instrument is used for multimodal human brain imaging using concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, and electroencephalography. The instrument will enable advanced study of virtually every major brain disease, including depression, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, as well as substance abuse and smoking.
Led by Kara B. De León, the proposal team includes faculty, staff, a postdoctoral fellow, graduate and undergraduate students in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, the Gallogly College of Engineering, and the OUHSC Hudson College of Public Health. This equipment is needed to stay current and relevant with respect to the new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens in wastewater. The system will also be used to provide early detection of emerging pathogens and methods development to meet the goals of the awarded NSF Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) Phase I grant. Data generated with dPCR will enable the development of new proposals, including an NSF Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease proposal to identify and monitor vector-borne and zoonotic pathogens detected at low abundance in wastewater.
Led by Javier Jo, the proposal team includes faculty in the Gallogly College of Engineering, the OU College of Dentistry, and the OU College of Medicine. The equipment will enable label-free, nondestructive, minimally or non-invasive, continuous, high-resolution characterization of live tissues. This unique imaging system will enable producing one-of-a-kind data of live tissues for a wide range of research and clinical applications.
Led by Rockee Zhang, the proposal team includes faculty in the Gallogly College of Engineering and the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences. This equipment will enable the adaption to new and evolving program requirements, such as those as defined by DOT- FAA (AJF-1300-Aviation Technology Group and AJW-124-UAS Operation Program) for operating radio frequency payloads on small UAS, or unmanned aerial systems. The equipment will support sea-based relative navigation field operation and testing and will enable FAA’s flight inspection test operations and data collections.
The proposal team includes principal investigator Tess Elliot with KT Duffy, both tenure-track faculty in the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts. The acquisition of this equipment provides a key investment towards the goal of building a cutting-edge XR lab for teaching and faculty research and creative activity. An XR lab, with motion capture as a central asset, will enhance recruitment efforts for on-campus undergraduate BFA and MFA graduate programs in Art, Technology, & Culture by leveraging the new OU Online MA in Art & Technology.
