COMMUNITY-BUILDING AND IDEATION GRANTS
Building a Lehigh Environment and Health Inequities Research Community to Study Covid-19 and Exacerbated Impacts of Air Pollution and Social Inequities on Public Health (2021)
PI: Dr. Dork Sahagian (EES) dos204@lehigh.edu
Long-standing racial and income inequities have again come to the fore with the advent of COVID-19. The pandemic has highlighted how minorities in many urban settings (including the Lehigh Valley) have been disproportionately impacted both by COVID morbidity and mortality. We propose to organize a new interdisciplinary research community capable of exploring the interactions and feedbacks between race, poverty, air quality, urban social structure, political influence, education, and public health, and the ways that these interactions relate to the causes of racial inequities. The ultimate goal is for Lehigh to better inform the policy community in finding effective means to reduce such racial inequities. In this first-stage “Ideation” project, we propose to organize a research team within Lehigh and forge links with stakeholders throughout the Lehigh Valley community to determine community needs. Discussions during and between workshops will center on asking the right questions and identifying data needed to address them in preparation for a larger, federally funded project to launch a new research direction with the goal of providing additional insights for policy-makers and others to help resolve social economic and health inequities prevalent in minority urban neighborhoods that may be exacerbated by pandemic conditions.
Imagining New Models of Sustainability (2020)
PI: Dr. Michael Kramp (English) dmk209@lehigh.edu
Sustainability has been identified by stakeholders inside and outside of academia as one of contemporary society’s “grand challenges.” While scholars from a wide range of fields have been committed to the work of sustainability for multiple decades--developing rich new research areas ranging from environmental engineering to literary eco-criticism--disciplines remain without a shared conception of the goals, methods, and even the meaning of “sustainability.” This Research Futures Community-Building and Ideation grant is not an attempt to identify a singular goal, method, or meaning; rather, our ambition is to generate meaningful cross-disciplinary dialogue that will help us to imagine new ways of conceptualizing the possibilities of future sustainable communities and infrastructures. Our proposal fosters dialogue between Humanities scholars and faculty from Engineering, the Natural Sciences, and the Social Sciences that can support such vital work at Lehigh. This intellectual exchange has already begun as part of Lehigh’s Mellon-funded Humanities Lab project and has opened up important conversations about both the deficiencies of our isolated intellectual approaches and the important benefits of a joint-scholarly endeavor.
Taskforce on the Institute for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (2019)
PI: Dr. Marilisa Jimenez-Garcia (English) maj416@lehigh.edu
This initiative imagines new ways for faculty and students to come together around faculty strengths and student interests on epistemologies and histories of race in US communities of color. The Taskforce functions as a laboratory and intellectual space for faculty and students to contemplate the role of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies in various research fields, and vice versa, along with the role of CRT and ES in transforming the US academy including its extension in K-12 education.
Reading Group on Antibiotic Resistance
PI: Dr. Lorenzo Servitje (English) los317@lehigh.edu
Antibiotic resistance (as a specific subset of antimicrobial resistance) characterizes bacteria's ability to develop measures to resist antibiotic treatment through different forms of evolution. As a result of the overuse of antibiotics since the mid-twentieth century, bacteria have developed mechanisms that give them resistance to very drugs used to treat them, from first generation antibiotics like penicillin to last resort drugs like vancomycin. To compound this evolutionary response, the pipeline of antibiotic production has for the most part run dry: because of economic, technological, and non-renewable limitations—there have been no new antibiotic classes for over three decades. As scientists, engineers, and humanists, we will combine and refine our expertise to consider how we might tackle the nuance, scale, and complexity of antibiotic resistance.
MAJOR PROGRAM INVESTMENT GRANT
Program in the Foundations and Applications of Mathematical Optimization and Data Science (2021)
PI: Dr. Frank E. Curtis (ISE) fec309@lehigh.edu
Over the past decades, Lehigh has become world-renowned for research on mathematical optimization (MO). MO research develops tools that facilitate discovery, design, and decision-making throughout science, engineering, and business; indeed, all major industries, scientific laboratories, public-sector organizations, and policy-making groups use such tools. Their versatility is what enables power engineers to integrate renewable energy into a power grid while minimizing the probability of cascading failures; healthcare systems engineers to improve supply chain and hospital efficiency; process engineers to maximize the production of chemicals; and biologists to facilitate drug discovery. However, our strength in MO research, which has been dispersed through small groups, has yet to reach its full potential for scholarly and educational impact. At the same time, Lehigh has made concerted efforts to rise to prominence in data science (DS), the revolutionary field that promises to remain a focal point for the scientific community, industry, and funding agencies for years to come. The goal of the proposed project is to establish an interdisciplinary program in the foundations and applications of MO and DS. This program will serve as an identity for coordination and increased visibility that will lay a foundation for a multi-organizational institute with extramural support. The scholarly, educational, and outreach activities of the program will be fully integrated; faculty and visiting scholars will coordinate on course preparation while (under)graduate students and postdocs will play integral roles in intellectual pursuits. The program will foster a diverse community of researchers who work across these exciting and impactful areas.
Taskforce on the Institute on Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Mission: Research-Study-Teach-Action (2020)
PI:Dr. Marilisa Jimenez-Garcia (English) maj416@lehigh.edu
This research initiative exists for the purpose of theorizing, establishing and sustaining an interdisciplinary and cross-University research institute on Critical Race (CRT) and Ethnic Studies (ES) at Lehigh University. The idea for an Institute developed out of conversations between student leaders from the Black Student Union and Latino Student Alliance and faculty for the purposes of centering the experiences of student and faculty of color. Moving forward, the Institute will continue its grant program, with a possible expansion to major fellowship for faculty release time in conversation with university offices, as well as research symposium and establish a graduate education model, Grad Amped, that is research-driven self-sustaining and inter-generational.
Catastrophe Modeling for Natural Disasters and Health-Related Threats (2020)
PI: Dr. Paolo Bocchini (CEE) pab409@lehigh.edu
The goal of this project is to leverage Lehigh’s strengths to establish an interdisciplinary Catastrophe Modeling research program at Lehigh, which will advance research in this field, in parallel with its educational component. “Catastrophe Modeling” (or “CatModeling”) is a phrase still rarely used in academia, born in the insurance sector to indicate a rigorous probabilistic approach to the study of natural disasters and their consequences, with the purpose of estimating expected losses, risk, and ultimately define the premiums. Recent trends have seen CatModeling applied beyond natural disasters, to other rare events like financial crises, political unrest, and pandemics. Over the last five years, Lehigh has built teams working on all the crucial components of CatModeling, and on specific applications to hurricanes, earthquakes, and infectious disease. The main objective of this effort is to officially establish an academic entity that provides a clear identity, cohesion, coordination and visibility for these teams. Moreover, a Center/Institute/Unit will be the appropriate house for a set of inter-collegial educational programs, which will mainly focus on a Master’s degree on CatModeling (a first in the Nation, despite the remarkable interest of the job market for these professionals), and will include professional development courses, a Graduate Certificate in Probabilistic Modeling, and a collaboration with the undergraduate minor in Actuarial Science. Scientific and educational activities will be synergistic: research will be presented in the courses, and the courses will foster the creation of a broad community of students and faculty interested in these topics.