Ten principal investigators of externally funded research projects will receive additional funding through a postdoctoral stimulus program provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships.
To stimulate research and creative activities at OU and in support of strategy 1, pillar 5 of the Lead On, University strategic plan, the postdoctoral match program invited OU principal investigators to apply for up to 25% of a postdoctoral researcher's salary and fringe benefits for a one-year time period, provided that such a position was budgeted for in an external grant application that in FY23 was awarded, is currently pending, or is planned. The matching funds are expected to help drive enhanced project outcomes and increase the numbers of postdoctoral researchers at OU.
The lead principal investigators are:
- Daniel Becker, assistant professor in the Department of Biology, for the project, “BII: Predicting the global host-virus network from molecular foundations”, funded by the National Science Foundation.
- Reza Foudazi, associate professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, for the project, “Extraction of values-added minerals from produced water through novel multistage nanofiltration,” funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
- Pierre Kirstetter, associate professor with joint positions in the School of Meteorology and the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, for the project, “Evaluation of precipitation estimates from NASA's tropical rainfall measuring mission and global precipitation measurement mission,” funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
- Robert Lewis-Swan, assistant professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, Center for Quantum Research and Technology, for the project, “Probing the influence of anisotropic and disordered interactions on the dynamics of quantum information in a Rydberg tweezer array,” funded by the Air Force Office of Science Research, Air Force Research Laboratory.
- Dimitrios Papavassiliou, C.M. Sliepcevic Professor of Chemical Engineering in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, for the project, “Understanding the roles of particle softness and anisotropy at interfaces: Bridging interfacial and bulk properties towards tunable complex fluids.” The postdoctoral match funds are contingent upon the successful award of grant funding from the National Science Foundation Directorate for Engineering – Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
- Kathleen Pegion, associate professor and Williams Chair in the School of Meteorology, for the project, “Subseasonal Experiment (SubX),” funded by the Weather Program Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
- Caroline Schroeder, professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, for the project, “Expanding Coptic digital online collections.” The postdoctoral match funds are contingent on the successful award of grant funding from the Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Jason Vogel, professor in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, for the project, “Wastewater-based epidemiology to monitor infectious pathogens in the State of Oklahoma,” funded by the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
- Bin Wang, associate professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, for the project, “Computational design of heterogeneous catalysts for coupling CO2 and ethylene to manufacture acrylic acid derivatives,” funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
- Xiangming Xiao, professor in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, for the project, “Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) Phase 1: International center for avian influenza pandemic prediction and prevention,” funded by the National Science Foundation.
