Three Faculty Members in the Department of Physics and Astronomy lead two Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants

Eleven grants totaling $1.5 million were awarded in November 2021 in the third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants

How can nanotechnology and big data be used to improve diagnosis of infectious viruses like SARS-CoV-2?

That’s one of the questions that will be explored through funding provided by a third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants.

One project, led by primary investigator and Distinguished Research Professor of Physics Yiping Zhao, aims to combine nano-optics and machine-learning techniques to develop a rapid, portable and cost-effective point-of-care method to detect viruses—such as SARS-CoV-2—and bacterial infections in patients.

“Mitigating epidemic and pandemic diseases like COVID-19 will require improved diagnostic methods,” said Zhao, Distinguished Research Professor of Physics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “Preliminary results have shown that our approach can deliver direct and differential detection of important respiratory viruses within 20 minutes.”

Zhao’s team includes Ralph Tripp and Hemant Naikare (College of Veterinary Medicine), Xianyan Chen (Franklin College of Arts and Sciences) and external collaborators.

Professor of Physics Susanne Ullrich (primary investigator) leads the project “Evaluating the Agrivoltaic Potential of Emerging Perovskite-Based Solar Cells for Greenhouse Applications.” Associate Professor Tho Nguyen is on her team along with Marc van Iersel (College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), Maric Boudreau and Richard Watson (Terry College of Business), and Tom Lawrence (College of Engineering).

Eleven grants totaling $1.5 million were awarded in November 2021 to recipients of the third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants. Overall the awards went to faculty from 13 UGA departments, centers, programs, schools and colleges.

The program launched in 2017, with a second round of grants in 2019, through a partnership between UGA Research and UGA Public Service and Outreach. Teams in the first two rounds were highly successful at winning external funding to pursue the work initiated through these seed grants.

In all, 89 faculty teams submitted research proposals in round three, targeting significant challenges at the local, national or global level that align with the goals in UGA’s 2025 Strategic Plan. Examples include areas identified by the Provost’s Task Force on Academic Excellence (precision agriculture, security, climate and environment, brain and behavioral sciences, and  data science and AI), as well as those requiring close collaboration between social/behavioral and biomedical faculty.

“I am pleased with the continued success of this program as the University of Georgia seeks ways to grow our research enterprise and expand the impact of our faculty,” said President Jere W. Morehead. “Research funding opportunities such as the Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants are investments in the future of our state, nation and world as well as our university.”

Parts of this post were excerpted from "Third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants awarded" in UGA Today by Allyson Mann.