Grant & Award Recipients - 2022-2023

4-VA is a collaborative partnership between eight Virginia universities intended to promote collaborations that leverage the strengths of each university. Funding for Collaborative Research awards is provided up to $25,000 to support pilot research headed by a Virginia Tech faculty member collaborating with at least one faculty partner in a 4-VA member institution. This seed funding is designed to lay the groundwork and increase potential for proposals to external granting agencies such as the National Science Foundation, and National Institute for Health.

Bailey, Scott, Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech as a Leader in Space Utilization – Research, Technology, Policy, and Economics. Planning grant awarded prior to collaboration.

Lim, Sol, Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE), Supporting College Students with Impaired Vision in a Shared Housing Through Haptic-Guided Peripersonal Navigation with JMU

Loeffert, Kimberly Goddard, School of Performing Arts, Representation Matters: Who gets to Publish in Music Theory Journals with JMU

Matthews, Gretchen, and Bimal Viswanath, Mathematics, Secure and Trustworthy Data and Technology: Evolution to a New Era. Planning grant awarded prior to collaboration.

Norton, Anderson, and Rachel Arnold, Mathematics, The Commonwealth Proofs Project Collaborative: Promoting Students’ Understanding of Logical Implications and Their Transformations with VCU, JMU, and GMU

Stout, Wendy, Extension Specialist - Coastal Resilience, Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center (AREC), A collaborative investigation of Augmented Reality using vGIS to Solve Coastal Resilience Challenges caused by Sea Level Rise in the coastal zone of Virginia with UVA

Zhang, Ruichuan, Myers-Lawson School of Construction (MLSoC), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT)-supported Construction Pollution Monitoring and Diagnosis with GMU

Zhou, Dawei, Computer Science, Break the Dilemmas between Model Performance and Fairness: A Holistic Solution for Fairness Learning on Graphs with GMU

Zhu, Qin, Engineering Education, Towards a Global Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Identifying and Comparing AI Ethical Perspectives across Sectors and Cultures with JMU

4-VA is a collaborative partnership between eight Virginia universities intended to promote collaborations that leverage the strengths of each university. Awards of up to $8,000 per course can support the development or revision of individual courses to achieve high-quality flexible or online learning experiences. Program level awards are determined based on proposals and can be completed in phases over multiple semesters.

Nottingham, Quinton, Pamplin College of Business, Business Information Technology (BIT) Program Redesign

Robertson, Dana, School of Education (SOE), Reading Specialist Program

Innovation in Learning (IL) Grants are designed to support the evaluation and implementation of new approaches to teaching and learning using technology. These small seed grants are awarded to individuals or teams working on pedagogical and curricular projects that push the boundaries of technology-enhanced learning and have the potential for broad institutional impact. Grant awards are typically capped at $5,000, though exceptions may be made for awards over this amount under special circumstances.

Bennington, Spencer, Instructor in First Year Writing in English
In introductory writing courses, students have a wide variety of media to read/watch/listen to/analyze and write about, but not a lot of creative ways to "compose" multimodally. With this course themed on the study of the interconnectedness of antiracist and political texts in and around the Hip Hop genre, students will work alongside the national award-winning "VT Digging in the Crates (VTDITC): Hip Hop Studies at Virginia Tech" initiative. They will use technology like drum machines, samplers, turntables, as well as the modern software equivalents of these analog tools to chop and “remix” audio essays as part of furthering students' technological literacy as it relates to rhetorical design and the humanities. Dr. Bennington, librarian Craig Arthur, and VTDITC Community Engagement Fellows will partner to teach students the basics of sound engineering alongside more traditional writing pedagogy with the expectations that students will be able to compose multimedia (podcasts, blogs, online marketing materials, etc.) in digital environments for a wide array of public, academic, and professional audiences.

Bruce, Herbert, Assistant Professor of Practice in Food Science and Technology
Instructors in Food Science and Technology are teaching a course with an in-class kitchen workshop component which, due to strong student interest, led to more students enrolling than could be accommodated in their kitchen workshop. This project will connect a second remote kitchen workshop to the first using videoconferencing equipment and provides the opportunity to explore remotely connecting spaces for experiential learning.

Haines, Howard, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Pamplin College of Business
With student group work, it can be challenging to drive accountability for the progress of student group projects and the individual contributions of team members. This project will create a tool that leverages goal-setting (MOKR-Mission, Objective, Key Results) and basic project management reporting (PPP-Progress, Plans, and Problems) to drive accountability for the progress of student group projects and the individual contributions of team members. The shared goal system improves student engagement through task clarity, alignment, and peer support. It also improves the number of experiential learning opportunities through weekly reflection and problem identification.

Roofigari-Esfahan, Nazila, Assistant Professor in Myers Lawson School of Construction
Construction safety is traditionally taught in the classroom using PowerPoint presentations. However, the traditional training methods fall short in providing hands-on hazard recognition opportunities, so students learn safety through being exposed to realistic jobsite situations and learn by having to make decisions. With this project, immersive construction safety scenarios will be designed, developed, and shown in the Cube at the Moss Arts Center. The scenarios aim to complement current safety instruction material to improve students' hazard recognition. This project provides the opportunity to learn about students' experience learning in an immersive augmented reality format.

Shugars, Miranda, Visiting Professor of Practice in the School of Architecture + Design
Instructors in the School of Architecture + Design teach software common to their industry, often by giving in-class tutorials. This project will collect this body of knowledge systematically in the form of faculty-recorded tutorial workflow videos, which will be shared on a flexible and public online platform. This provides an opportunity to explore optimal ways to produce software workflow tutorial videos and platforms for presenting this content in a pedagogical way to students. It also will create a resource that multiple courses draw on with the benefits of freeing up class time for other content and being able to provide content tailored for students.

Thompson, Tyechia, Assistant Professor in English
Remote courses are often delivered over Zoom, but this project will create a set of augmented/virtual reality lectures for students to attend. The instructor will be represented as themself in 3D and situated within a virtual environment. Students will be able to move around this virtual environment while watching the lecture and can interact with 3D objects related to the course content that are in the environment. This project provides the opportunity to compare student engagement between attending AR lectures versus using Zoom for remote teaching.

Pre-Tenure Collaborative Research awards are designed to initiate projects, determine viability for desired outcomes, establish connections for collaborating faculty at other 4-VA institutions, and lay the groundwork for proposals for a  4-VA Collaborative Research grant in Fall 2023. Grants of up to $15,000 were awarded to support pre-tenure faculty who were establishing or expanding their research activities at Virginia Tech. 

Ali, Azahar, VT School of Animal Science, Machine-Learning Assisted 3D Printed Biomedical Sensors for On-Farm Diagnosis of Subclinical Mastitis in Dairy Cows

Boer, Marie, Physics, Experimental Studies of the Nucleon's Longitudinal Momentum Structure (Nuclear Physics)

Breaux, Rosanna, Psychology, Utilizing a Parenting Mobile App to Reduce Clinician and Patient Burden for Families in Virginia

Coates, Adam, Forest Res Environmental Conservation, Soil Properties of Frequently Burned Pine Forests in Eastern Virginia

David-John, Brendan, Computer Science, Personalizing Machine-Learning Guided Navigation Interfaces in Virtual and Augmented Reality

Doan, Thinh, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Efficient Real-Time Wireless Resource Management Using Quantum Reinforcement Learning

Figg, Adrian, Chemistry, Synthetic Polymers with Defined Sites of Functionality

Gao, Peng, Computer Science, Enabling High-Fidelity Cyber Threat Knowledge Acquisition from Open-Source Cyber Threat Intelligence

Gerdes, Julie, English, Communication at the Intersection of Blood, Disease, and Altruism

Grimes, Tameka O., School of Education, Addressing (Racial) Trauma in Rural Students Through Mindfulness and Movement

Hoang, Thang, Computer Science, Privacy-Preserving and Trustworthy AI for Smart Transportation

Howell, Brittany, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, Building Collaborative Infrastructure Between VT and VCU to Improve Access for Rural Maternal-Child-Family Health Through Expansion of Community Based Mobile Research and Care

Katz, Andrew, Engineering Education, Exploring Public Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Generative AI in Education: A Mixed Methods Study of Social Media and Educators 

Kim, Dayoung, Engineering Education, Fostering Regional Innovation Ecosystem in the State of Virginia: Examining University Administrators' Perspectives on the Roles, Opportunities, and Challenges of Academic Institutions

Kim, Junghwan, Geography, Examining the Impacts of Green Space Exposure on People's Health Outcomes by Integrating AI and GIScience Methods

Korneva, Arina, BEAM, Characterization of the Axon Density and Nerve Fiber Layer Thickness of the Mouse Retina

Liao, Jingqiu, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Machine-Learning-Enabled Robust, Interpretable Predication of the Presence of the Bacterial Pathogen Listeria Monocytogenes in the Soil

Lim, Sol, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Is Listening to Podcasts Effective for Learning? Assessing Medical Trainees' Attentiveness Through Electroencephalographic (EEG) Activity

Marston, Landon Todd, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Conducting Parcel-Scale Mapping of Water Rights to Irrigation Croplands to Advance Understanding of Agricultural Water Access Security

Molina, Eduardo, Sustainable Biomaterials, Development of a Systemic Methodology to Enable the Wide Adoption of Fiber-Based Insulation in Passive Shipping Containers

Murzi, Homero, Engineering Education, Exploring Students Perceptions of Engineering Using Arts-Informed Methods: A Multi-Case Study

Quan, Lina, Chemistry, Water Stable Semiconductors for Low-Cost, Efficient Water Splitting Hydrogen Generation

Robert, Michael A., Mathematics, Equity and Evolution of Resistance: A Model-Based Investigation of the Impacts of Genetic Control of Mosquitoes in Resource-Heterogeneous Areas

Shao, Linbo, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Quantum Optics Lab on a Single Lithium Niobate Chip

Tian, Zhenhua, Mechanical Engineering, Acoustics-Enabled Noncontact Manipulation, Patterning, and Assemble of Complex-Shaped Micro-Nanoparticles for Advanced Manufacturing

Worch, Joshua C., Chemistry, Dynamic Helical Polymers from Sugar-Derived Alcohols

Xiong, Wenjie, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Timing-Based Cache Side-Channel Attacks and Mitigation with Reinforcement Learning

Zhou, Wei, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Development of Wireless High-Order Nano-Biosensor Network with Neuromorphic Computing for Waterborne Pathogen Surveillance