Honoring Ingenuity

Five female faculty members in the sciences recently received major federal grants, highlighting the ingenuity and passion for learning that courses through the College.

Among them are Cacey Bester, assistant professor of physics, and Amy Graves, Walter Kemp Professor in the Natural Sciences and professor of physics — the newest and longest-serving members of the department, respectively. They will support the efforts of Bucknell University physicists Brian Utter and Katharina Vollmayr-Lee on a three-year, $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study properties of granular materials.

The project aligns Bester’s experimentalist approach with Graves’s computer simulations. Their Research in Undergraduate Institutions award will fund student collaboration on the project, as well as equipment, travel to meetings, and more.

The three other faculty members earned grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Academic Research Enhancement Awards program: Assistant Professor of Biology Dawn Carone, Associate Professor of Biology Eva-Maria Collins, and Professor of Chemistry Kathleen Howard. Carone and Howard received awards from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences division, Collins from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.