Fulbright College to Host Natural Sciences Grant-Writing Workshop

Photo Submitted

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences will host the third installment of a series of workshops dedicated to the art of nationally competitive grant writing.  

The Science of Success: Natural Sciences Grant Writing Workshop will be held from 3-5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 19, in Old Main Room 523. It will feature scholars from natural sciences disciplines who have extensive experience in garnering federal and foundation support for their research.

"The Science of Success will focus on tips and strategies for winning extramural funding in the Natural Sciences,” said Lynda Coon, associate dean of Fulbright College and organizer of the workshop series. "We are bringing together three fantastic researchers who are committed to interdisciplinary team-building in the natural sciences as well as mentoring younger faculty on how to navigate the complex world of applying to federal agencies and private foundations. 

The workshop follows a grant-writing workshop focused on the arts and humanities held in September and one focused on the social sciences held in October. The presentations are designed to benefit faculty at every level, from recent graduates to advanced researchers.

“The series is also motivated by Fulbright College's new research initiative, which is centered squarely on the hyper-competitive world of external funding,” Coon said. “Our natural scientists have brought in extramural dollars at an astounding rate. They are poised to move onward and upward in this scholarly endeavor and will welcome more and more colleagues into their ranks.”

To register for The Science of Success, contact Debbie Power at dlpower@uark.edu or call (479) 575-3684 no later than 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov.12.  Seating is limited to 40 participants.

The Science of Success will showcase Fulbright College faculty members Ralph Henry, Julie Stenken and Peter Ungar. These scholars have won millions of dollars in extramural funding. Their research methods have enormous reach, breaking disciplinary boundaries within the natural science world of Fulbright College and reaching out to colleagues in engineering, medical science, agricultural science, computer science, mathematics, environmental dynamics, and evolutionary studies.

Ralph Henry received his doctorate in biological sciences from Kansas State University and worked at the University of Florida as a postdoctoral fellow before coming to the University of Arkansas in 1996.  He now serves as Distinguished Professor in biological sciences and at the Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering.  Henry holds the W.M. Keck Professorship and has developed an international reputation in the field of protein targeting, which has received continuous federal funding of about $3 million since 1998. Funding sources include the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, Centers for Biomedical Research Excellence and Department of Energy. 

His current Energy Department funding began in 2000 and has been competitively renewed four times.  Additional research efforts were supported by approximately $2 million from NIH and NSF and led to the issuance of three patents in which Henry is an inventor.  The patents represent intellectual property to support two Arkansas-based start-up companies, Boston Mountain Biotech (Fayetteville) and InterveXion Therapeutics (Little Rock). 

Julie Stenken received a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Akron (summa cum laude) and a doctorate with honors from the University of Kansas. During the 1994-1995 academic year, she was a J. William Fulbright Fellow in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics at the University of Kansas Medical Center. In 1996, she began her first academic appointment in chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. In 2000, Stenken received an NSF CAREER award. 

In 2007, she began her appointment as the 21st Century Chair in Proteomics at the University of Arkansas in chemistry and biochemistry.  She is affiliated with both the Cell and Molecular Biology and the Microelectronics and Photonics programs at the university. Stenken has been the principal investigator on several different NIH R01 and R21 grants.  She has also served as a standing member for the NIH Instrumentation Systems and Development (ISD) study section (2004-2009) and more recently has been appointed to the NIH Biomaterials and Biointerfaces study section (2012-16). She regularly reviews NSF grant proposals and recently served on an NSF panel for the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems division.

Peter Ungar received a doctorate in anthropological sciences from Stony Brook University and taught gross anatomy in the medical schools at Johns Hopkins and Duke University before moving to the University of Arkansas, where he serves as Distinguished Professor and chairman of the Department of Anthropology.  He is also a core faculty member in this Environmental Dynamics Program and an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His research has been funded by more than $2 million in grant support.  

Ungar has written or coauthored more than 130 scientific papers on ecology and evolution for books and journals including Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.  He has also edited or co-edited volumes focusing on the evolution of human diet, and his recent academic book, Mammal Teeth: Origin, Evolution, and Diversity (Johns Hopkins University Press), won the 2010 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers for best book in the biological sciences. His new popular science title, Teeth:  A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press), was recently released. 

In addition the previously mentioned funding sources the natural sciences faculty in Fulbright College have won extramural funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, American Academy of Microbiology, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Department of Energy, European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, Fulbright American Scholars, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences, Max Planck Society, National Institute of Health Career Awards, National Institute of Health Grants, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Park Service, National Research Council, National Science Foundation Career Awards, National Science Foundation Grants, Society for Applied Spectroscopy, Society for Biomaterials, Society for Neuroscience, United States Food and Drug Administration and the United States Geological Survey.