I-STEM Education Initiative

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BeeSpace—An Interactive Environment for Analyzing Nature and Nurture in Societal Roles

National Science Foundation Award # 0425852
Bruce Schatz, Gene Robinson, Susan Fahrbach, Sandra Rodriguez-Zas, ChengXiang Zhai
Institute for Genomic Biology

This project will analyze social behavior on an unprecedented whole-genome scale, using Apis mellifera the Western honey bee, as the model organism. The purpose is to address one of the most important questions in biology is the origin of behavior: nature or nurture? This research will use genomic biology to liberate the study of behavior from the shackles of this dichotomy. The new paradigm is that the environment ("nurture"), which includes other individuals, impacts an inherited genome ("nature") by orchestrating gene expression during the lifetime of the animal. Honey bees live in a complex society governed by an age-related division of labor, with each individual assuming many roles during her lifetime. Both genetic heredity and environmental conditions determine what role a bee performs, and when she performs it. The biology research will generate a unique database of gene expressions for all social behavior, recording brain gene expression for hundreds of individuals, each with a specific societal role. The informatics research will develop an interactive environment to analyze all information sources relevant to bee social behavior. The BeeSpace environment will enable users to navigate a uniform space of diverse databases and literature sources for hypothesis development and testing.

Education and outreach are critical to the success of BeeSpace. The project aims to bring leading-edge scientific knowledge, practice, and information tools to teachers and students at graduate, undergraduate, high school, and middle school levels. Fostering of extensive, deep collaborations among learners at all these levels is integral to the BeeSpace mission.

Center for Advanced Materials for Water Purification

National Science Foundation Award # 0120978
Mark Shannon, Paul Bohn, John Georgiadis, David Cahill
Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Science and Engineering

The U.S. and the world are facing the very real dangers of depleted aquifers, inadequate surface water supplies, and contamination from a variety of sources including agricultural runoff, industrial discharges, acid rain, and ground-water pollutants. Waterborne pathogens are also a growing threat for water supplies. These dangers are expected to increase as populations continue to grow. Numerous technologies are being implemented to purify water, but current membrane and adsorbent materials used in water purification are not sufficient to solve all contamination problems and meet increasingly stringent new standards being proposed to protect health.

The best state-of-the-art materials have well-known shortcomings that are due to shortfalls in the current understanding of the underlying science. Indeed, to develop the revolutionary new materials and systems for safe and economical water-purification technology needed to counter the impending water crisis requires a coordinated, intensive, multi-year effort of scientists and engineers. The vision of this Center is to forge multi-disciplinary groups of researchers, educators, and practitioners into a cohesive team with the overarching goal of developing new functional materials and systems to purify water for the peoples of the United States and the world.

This Science and Technology Center (STC) has several distinguishing features. First and foremost, it provides coordinated participation of researchers in the following areas: water quality at Stanford and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), material science at UIUC, basic physical science (chemistry and physics) at the University of California at Berkeley, Clark Atlanta University, Stanford, and UIUC, and system-level experts at Stanford and UIUC. Furthermore, the Center facilitates the technology transfer and feedback from practitioners in water treatment through linkages with the UIUC Waste Management Research Center, and the Orange County (CA )Water District, as well as other water-quality organizations.

Another distinguishing feature of the STC is its establishment of a collaborative laboratory (collaboratory) for its education, research, and outreach functions, to ensure the integration of the activities. In this multi-disciplinary collaboratory, chemists, material scientists, physicists, biologists, and engineers will work together with library and information-science experts in the Center to disseminate information and research results showing how to synthesize, characterize, and understand new material systems designed to separate compounds from water and/or transform them.

The premise of this STC is that advanced, selective and efficient water-treatment technologies will be based on membrane filters, adsorbents, and catalytic surfaces. Rational development of the required materials requires a firm grasp of the basic science of the aqueous interface. The key issue is to observe and to manipulate on the Angstrom to nanometer scale interactions between the aqueous solution and the solid substrate. The goals of the STC are: (i) to advance the basic understanding of these interactions; (ii) to use the results to radically improve membranes, filters, adsorbents, and ion-exchange materials through the synthesis of new materials that are able to separate selectively and/or transform compounds in water; (iii) to integrate these new materials into viable water purification systems; and (iv) to integrate the human and knowledge infrastructure with the research mission to implement effectively the science and technology.

To accomplish these goals, the STC is organized in four core teams: (i) Interfacial Processes and Molecular Characterization, (ii) Materials Synthesis and Development, (iii) System Analysis and Integration, and (iv) Collaboratory Education and Outreach.

The Center supports education and outreach activities for: (i) K-12 teachers and students to learn why clean water is important and how fundamental research and sound engineering can help make water cleaner; (ii) underrepresented groups in science and engineering, encouraging members of such groups to pursue careers related to water purification, material science, and engineering; (iii) citizen groups, water industry professionals, and local governments to help formulate, debate, and implement policies related to water quality control; and (iv) the general public to understand the need for basic research on water purification. All constituent groups are supported by a web-based collaborative laboratory to support knowledge dissemination, mentoring, learning, public debate, and discussion. The main tool used for the collaboratory is the INQUIRY-based learning and research environment developed in the UIUC School of Library and Information Science, which allows two-way research and education to be conducted between the partners and all the participants and constituent groups of the Center.

The STC seeks aggressively to increase diversity in education, research, and outreach.

Diversity is essential for increasing the numbers of under-represented groups in science and technology. The STC can make the greatest impact if the knowledge and technologies developed are implemented throughout the U.S. and the world by diverse educators and researchers. To achieve this impact, the proposed STC has partnered with the Environmental Technology Consortium (ETC) of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other minority institutions (MIs) to increase minority participation. In addition, CAU is an active water-treatment research partner, which supports the training of a diverse group of students in water purification research.

Due to the critical need for improved materials and processes for water purification, this STC has an immediate opportunity to transfer the knowledge gained from basic science and engineering research to the practitioners in the field. In addition to the usual modes of dissemination in conferences, proceedings, journal articles, and courses, the collaboratory two-way learning and research tools developed through the STC quickly transmit knowledge between the academic partners and the partner organizations.

Community Building Meetings for the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Computing Initiative

National Science Foundation Award # 0622450
Edee Wiziecki
NCSA

NCSA has received a CISE Special Projects award to convene a PI meeting and informational outreach meetings on the CISE Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) initiative. BPC aims to build broad Alliances of institutions and organizations to design and carry out comprehensive programs that address under-representation in the computing disciplines. The PI meeting is the kickoff event for the first group of funded projects. The informational meetings and outreach through the Access Grid are informal meetings designed to include broad range of participation. These meetings provide participants with information about the BPC program and enable them to meet for dissemination of successful programs and to establish alliance connections.

Computer-Guided Comprehensive Mathematics Assessment for Young Children

National Institutes of Health Award # 5R01HD051538
Arthur Baroody
Curriculum and Instruction

This project is a partnership of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Teachers College, Columbia University. The project seeks to develop a mathematics assessment system for young children that can be used by education professionals. The plan is to design the Early Mathematics Assessment System (EMAS), a tool which will measure a broad range of mathematical content knowledge and proficiency skills of children. Once developed, the next steps are to develop a software format that can be used on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and then to ensure the reliability and validity of the EMAS. The last goal in the project is to assess how the EMAS is used by evaluators.

Fostering Fluency with Basic Addition & Subtraction Facts

Institute of Education Sciences Award #: R305A080479
Arthur Baroody
Curriculum and Instruction

This project evaluates the efficacy of computer-based programs to foster primary-grade children’s fluency with single-digit addition and subtraction facts. The PI’s theory- and research-based programs incorporate features that may promote fact fluency, including relatively novel efforts to promote discovery of patterns and relations underlying whole fact families. Systematic comparisons of experimental and control conditions involve at least 60 children at risk for academic failure (e.g., pupils from low-income families or a minority group). Training experiments evaluate programs with different fact families and include gauging retention and transfer of fluency and effects of age and risk factors.

NSEC: Center for Nano-Chemical-Electrical-Mechanical Manufacturing Systems\Nano-CEMMS

National Science Foundation Award # 0749028
Placid Ferreira, John Rogers, Paul Kenis, Lizanne DeStefano
Mechanical Science and Engineering, Educational Psychology

The Nanoscale Chemical-Electrical-Mechanical-Manufacturing Systems (Nano-CEMMS) Science and Engineering Center, a collaboration between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the California Institute of Technology, and the North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, aims to revolutionize the nation's nanomanufacturing capabilities to position the nation at the forefront of high technology manufacturing. The Nano-CEMMS Center's research builds on two key breakthroughs made by members of the Center's research team, molecular gate technology and Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) fluidic circuits, to directly manufacture nanoscale structures and systems. The molecular gate can be digitally switched to deliver and control incredibly tiny attoliter (0.000 ,000,000,000,000,001 liter) amounts of material, a billion times smaller than the nanoliter switches of today. Molecular gates also are akin to transistors that deliver and control electrons, but with increased functionality since diverse and dissimilar materials can be delivered and molecules can undergo chemical reactions. The capability to build large arrays of addressable molecular gates through VLSI fluidic circuits coupled with other advances in micro-fluidics, nanoelectronics and optical sensing, and nanopositioning carves out a pathway for developing truly novel, scalable and robust manufacturing processes for constructing 3-D nano-structured multi-material devices.

Fully realizing that nanotechnology cannot be successful without a well-trained workforce, an extensive education and outreach program has been planned to enhance the scientific research, education, and industrial nanotechnology workforce of our nation. The program, spanning K-12 education and professional training, will build on existing successful K-12 outreach and education programs and will be centered on an extensive web-based Collaboratory that will allow for the dissemination of materials across the nation and the participation of its students, teachers, scientists and industry professionals. A comprehensive assessment component will help the Center track its broader impact and continuously improve its programs for increased effectiveness.