Introducing the Funding Flash

Welcome to the first-ever Funding Flash newsletter, our finance-focused spinoff set to go out midway through each month. We'll be celebrating grants that have recently been awarded to Huck scientists and informing researchers in the Penn State life sciences community about upcoming funding possibilities. Straight to the point, straight to the money.

Ten percent of adolescents and young adults aged 12 to 20, whose brains are still developing, report drinking alcohol, with 90% of their consumption being binge drinking, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Awarded by the NIAAA, the grant will fund work in mice to better understand the chemical and biological impacts voluntary binge drinking has on the brain.

Jason Keagy, assistant research professor of wildlife behavioral ecology in the College of Agricultural Sciences, is a member of a three-scientist team that will receive $180,000 — $60,000 for each member — from the first year of the initiative to support research related to how fish-foraging behavior may ultimately affect the global carbon cycle, which refers to how carbon moves among land, oceans and the atmosphere.

The award program in this story is featured in our “Opportunities” section below.

The grant, awarded to Research Professor Neela Yennawar, supports the acquisition of a Lumicks C-Trap optical tweezers system at the Biomolecular Interactions Core Facility. The new tool allows researchers to manipulate microscopic objects without physical contact, making it useful for studying a range of delicate materials, including single molecules, nanoparticles and even living cells.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance, of which Penn State is a member, has signed a two-year open publishing agreement (OPA) with Springer Nature, making it the publisher’s first truly unlimited and uncapped open access agreement in the Americas. This is the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s fifth OPA and its most expansive to date.

BWF's Career Awards at the Scientific Interface (CASI) provide $560,000 over five years to bridge advanced postdoctoral training and the first three years of faculty service. These awards are open to U.S. and Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking for innovative ideas to develop novel capabilities for national security. DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) wishes to catalyze future efforts to defend agriculture against threats both naturally occurring and manmade. Areas of interest include:

This three-year Scialog series aims to create a dynamic community of about 50 early career scientists with diverse scientific expertise and perspectives – cell biology, genetics, neurophysiology, climate science, environmental chemistry, physical modeling, toxicology, and other fields. Together, they will develop blue-sky collaborative research projects to explore neurobiological response to change and advance our understanding of the brain’s chemistry, physiology, and adaptation mechanisms that allow survival under environmental stress.

The goal of this award is to increase use of large, publicly available data resources by supporting investigators to allocate time and personnel toward working in and publishing from these previously collected data. Applications should leverage existing publicly accessible datasets to ask new questions and extract new knowledge. Priority will be given to applications that use SFARI-supported resources, although all applications will be considered as long as data are publicly accessible at the time of application.

The purpose of the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship is to create opportunities for leading conservation scientists to strengthen their skills through two years of applied post-doctoral research, supplemented by training programs, peer networking, and field learning experiences, so that they may:

Have you recently received a grant which wasn't covered in the Funding Flash? Want to inform others about a potential funding source? Let us know by emailing [email protected].