Munge’s research team awarded $80K to design aquatic monitoring device
An interdisciplinary research team that includes Dr. Bernard Munge, professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded an $80,000 collaborative research grant through the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) to support their work designing an integrated water sampling and chemical analysis device.
Munge, together with Dr. Jason Dwyer from the University of Rhode Island and Dr. Amit Basu from Brown University, is designing a device for profiling the commercially and environmentally important polysaccharide component of dissolved organic matter. The new device would dramatically simplify sample processing and improve analysis reliability and performance by enabling real time monitoring.
Munge’s team is one of five selected to receive funding totaling $381,069 to support projects that directly address the Rhode Island National Science Foundation EPSCoR themes of assessing resilience, understanding complexity, new innovations, increasing engagement, improving sustainability and identifying new tools or techniques to capture, analyze and disseminate data.
The collaborative research grant program funds projects that focus on building research capacity across institutions and advancing the competitiveness of Rhode Island researchers to secure additional funding. Grants are also awarded to projects that contribute to current or future economic development of the state through technology development and commercialization or demonstrate strong translational components.
From 2007-2018, the program awarded approximately $11 million to more than 75 teams throughout the state. The funding has supported projects to design high-tech toys for children with cerebral palsy, study algae blooms, develop new nanotechnologies and improve the design of prosthetic limbs. To date, awardees have attracted more than $40 million in follow-on funding from public and private sources, with additional dividends expected.
