Office of Research Update for January 2023

External Awards Received

The Office of Research is pleased to announce and would like to congratulate our Dearborn faculty members on receipt of the following external funding:

Principal Investigator: Zhen Hu, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering

Project Title:  Innovative Technologies in Structural Health Monitoring for Condition Assessment and Future Reliability Prediction

Funded by: Department of Defense, Army, through the University of California-San Diego

Award Amount: $106,051

Inland waterway structures are essential elements to allow navigation in inland waterways. More than half of these structural assets have surpassed their 50-year economic design life. This project aims to develop novel reliability assessment techniques for inland waterway structures using physics-based modeling, online health monitoring, and human inspection data. It plays an essential role in enhancing the reliability and resilience of inland waterway infrastructures. 

Principal Investigator: Wencong Su, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Project Title: I-Corps: Machine-Learning-enhanced Automated Circuit Configuration and Evaluation of Power Converters (ML-ACCEPT)

Funded by: National Science Foundation

Award Amount: $50,000 

The broader potential of this project is the development of power electronics to automate complex circuit design. While significant progress has been made in advancing modeling simulation and verifying electrical power converters, the process of designing such devices remains inefficient in terms of time and cost. The proposed software may help power electronics engineers consider a wide range of novel concepts more rapidly and cost-effectively before selecting an engineering-optimal architecture for high-fidelity design and evaluation. This project is based on the development of technology that integrates recent breakthroughs in machine learning, power electronics, data analytics, simulation software, and optimization to automate the circuit design of electrical power converters. The technology may also facilitate the integration of the proposed software tools into existing power-converter design workflows. The technology seeks to automatically generate and evaluate power converter designs with physics-based Reduced Order Models: automatically evolving architecture concepts toward the optimal system configurations and automatically generating, evaluating and optimizing architectures within acceptable performance uncertainties while satisfying the desired outputs.

Principal Investigator: Yulia Hristova, Associate Professor of Mathematics

Project Title: GirlsGetMath@Dearborn

Funded by: JetBlue Foundation through Brown University

Award Amount: $5,300 

This funding supports costs for the GirlsGetMath@Dearborn summer program which is open to rising 10th to 12th grade students who live in the Metro Detroit area and allows them to explore topics in applied mathematics such as image processing, graph theory, mathematics of voting, recommendation systems, and cryptography. Engaging and expert mathematical instruction expands participants' understanding and knowledge of mathematics through fun games, interactive lectures, experimentation and daily computer lab activities. In addition, the non-competitive and affirming environment supports participants' confidence and interest in the mathematical sciences. Students are introduced to a variety of career opportunities in which sophisticated mathematical ability plays a key role. The program provides a support group and expert mentors who are successful undergraduate, graduate students, and professionals from the STEM workforce.

Announcements

Competitive Campus Grants Update

Congratulations to the fall cycle Competitive Campus Grant awardees! For a list of the awardees and projects that were funded, visit our Previously Funded Projects webpage.

The winter cycle of Competitive Campus Grants will begin accepting applications on Jan. 11, with a Feb. 15, 2023 (5 p.m.) submission deadline. This will be the final application cycle for the Research Initiation & Development and the UM-Dearborn Scholars Grants for this fiscal year. If funding remains available, Thematic Research Planning Grants will have a third cycle with a June 15, 2023 (5 p.m.) submission deadline.

We will continue to accept applications for the Open Invitation Campus Grants until the end of the fiscal year, through June 30, 2023 or until all funding is awarded (whichever comes first). To apply to an Open Invitation Campus Grant, go to our InfoReady portal and log in through the University of Michigan Weblogin.

For more information about all of our Campus Grants programs (competitive and open invitation) and eligibility information, please visit our Campus Grants webpage. For questions about the Competitive Campus Grants, please view our Frequently Asked Questions webpage, or email us at [email protected].

Research Events in January:

Teaching and Technology Collaborative, “Digital Scholarship 101: Managing Your Data” – Thursday, Jan. 19, 1-2:30 p.m.

The Office of Research website is also updated regularly with research-related events and announcements, so we would encourage you to bookmark our landing page and subscribe to our Research News email list. 

Research Resource Highlight: OVRP RDPS Webinar Recordings

Every month, the Office of Research will feature a resource and/or tool that is available for researchers. This month we are featuring the OVPR Research Development & Proposal Services (RDPS) Webinar Recordings that are available for on-demand viewing on the RDPS website.

The OVPR Research Development & Proposal Services (RDPS) team presents dozens of workshops and webinars each year. Many of the team’s events have been recorded and are available for anyone in the U-M community to watch on their own time. These include valuable sessions for early career researchers, including the Grantsmanship 101 series covering topics such as planning a competitive grant proposal and understanding the review process, and webinars on how to search for funding opportunities presented by U-M Library experts.

Webinar recordings can be found on the RDPS website under “Workshops” or at this Dropbox link. Please note you will need to log into your UMICH authenticated Dropbox account to access the webinars.

Upcoming Funding Opportunities

The Office of Research publishes a list of selected funding opportunities, organized by college, every month on our website under Announcements. In addition, yearly grant calendars organized by subject area provided by Hanover Research are available as well. Contact the UM-Dearborn Office of Research if you would like more information about submitting a proposal to any of the programs.