Honors College Announces Winners of Faculty Equipment and Technology Grants

Sean Morrissey

Olivia Fredricks discusses the Risograph SF5450, purchased by art professor Sean Morrissey with grant support from the Honors College. This digital duplicator can reproduce digital or hand-drawn images to create prints, zines and other distributable artworks.

The Honors College has awarded more than $75,000 in grants to 11 faculty-led research projects to promote undergraduate research and honors student researchers working in a broad range of disciplines, from engineering and food science to chemistry and apparel studies. These grants will be used to purchase materials ranging from a Foodini 3-D printer, which will be used to study food safety aspects of food products printed from digital files, to a quartz crystal microbalance system that will contribute to study of the development of next generation lithium-ion batteries.

"Thanks in large part to our faculty mentors, undergraduate students at the University of Arkansas are seeing their research featured in elite publications," said Jennie Popp, associate dean of the Honors College. "These grants help ensure that professors and students have the equipment they need for continued success, and the Honors College is proud to be able to provide funding for such a wide variety of projects."

The Faculty Equipment and Technology Grants are funded by a portion of the $300 million gift made by the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation in 2002. The grants are designed to help clinical, tenured and tenure-track faculty purchase specialized equipment or technology to support, advance and promote undergraduate research and honors student researchers at the University of Arkansas.
This year's awardees, and their project titles are:

• Adnan Alrubaye, Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, "Microbiological and Physiological Evaluation of Selected Nuproxa Feed Additives for Protection against BCO Lameness and Improving the Wellbeing of Broilers in a Lameness Challenge Model"
• Eunjoo Cho and Stephanie Hubert, Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, "Integrating Virtual Reality Technology into Student Research and Education"
• Sami Dridi, Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, "Student Research in Protein Expression Analysis: Western Blot Kit"
• Mostafa Elsaadany, College of Engineering, "Incorporating Immersive Learning into Biomedical Engineering Laboratories using Virtual Reality"
• Kristen Gibson, Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, "From Nutritional Quality to Microbial Safety: Characterizing the Future of Novel 3D Printed Foods" 
• Han Hu, College of Engineering, "Acquisition of Pocket NC V2-10 5-Axis Desktop CNC Mill for Advanced Heat Exchanger Manufacturing" 
• David Huitink, College of Engineering, "Electrodeposited Structures for Thermal & Reliability Benefit in Electronic Assemblies"
• Xiangbo Meng, College of Engineering, "In-Situ Electrochemical Quartz Crystal Microbalance for Studying Interfacial Stability of Lithium Batteries" 
• Yarui Peng, College of Engineering, "Multi-Physics Electro-Thermal and Reliability Co-Optimization for Energy-Efficient All-in-Package Power Converters"
• Josh Sakon, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and Jin-Woo Kim, College of Engineering, "Powder Micro-XRD for small particles"
• Wen Zhang, College of Engineering, "Deep freezer — improving sample storage condition and enhancing environmental microbiology research"

"All of the applications this year were very strong; it was hard to select just 11 projects," Popp said. Faculty Equipment and Technology Grants are awarded annually; the Honors College will begin accepting applications in August 2022 for a Sept. 16 deadline.