Espy-Wilson, Bergbreiter receive ADVANCE Seed Grants

Two ISR faculty are among 35 recipients funded by the ADVANCE Program for Inclusive Excellence’s 2012 Interdisciplinary and Engaged Research Seed Grants. Fifteen different projects were funded; the principal investigators come from 24 different departments and academic units across campus.

Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) and Professor Sandra Gordon-Salant (Hearing and Speech Sciences, BSOS) will be working together on “Speech Processing Algorithms for Elderly Listeners with Hearing Loss.”

Assistant Professor Sarah Bergbreiter (ME/ISR) is partnering with Professor Barbara Thorne and Associate Professor Jeffrey Shultz (both from Entomology, CMNS) on “Insect and Robot Locomotion with Heavy Loads.”

About the ADVANCE Seed Grants
This is the second cohort of ADVANCE seed grant awardees. The one-year seed grants provide funding for projects that include the integration of two or more disciplines (interdisciplinary research) and/or projects that involve external partners and benefit the public good (engaged research). The seed grants are intended to support preliminary or exploratory projects that will contribute to future external grant applications, while providing women faculty with a vehicle by which they can establish partnerships for scholarly work.

The ADVANCE Program for Inclusive Excellence aims to transform the institutional culture of the University of Maryland by facilitating networks, offering individual mentoring and support, and offering information and strategic opportunities for women faculty in all areas of academia. The program is funded by a five-year, multi-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. The ADVANCE Program will produce academic environments with assumptions, values and beliefs, policies and practices that support and generate professional growth and excellence for all faculty.

| View PDF file of all 2012 projects and recipients |

Published June 13, 2012