Office of Sponsored Research and Foundation Relations Recent Grant Awards

Jennifer Acker, Editor in Chief of The Common, received an award of $15,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts. This grant will support the publication of The Common and The Common Online and promote emerging writers and underrepresented literary communities. The upcoming issues, which will be available in print and through The Common's open-access website, will feature place-based fiction, poetry, and essays from new and underrepresented writers, including a portfolio of Arabic fiction in translation connecting readers with contemporary voices from Kuwait. Emerging authors will receive intensive editorial guidance and dedicated promotional efforts. All contributors will be featured through a wide variety of outreach that will introduce high school and college students and aspiring writers of all ages to the diverse voices within pages of The Common.

Erica Drennan, Associate Director and Head of Collections at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture (ACRC), received a $9,992 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The funding will support a preservation needs assessment, conducted by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, that will lead to the development of long-term preservation goals and plans for the ACRC’s collections. The grant will also allow for the rehousing and storage of archival materials, photographs, and artists books from recent acquisitions.

Marc Edwards, Assistant Professor of Biology, received $10,500 in funding from the Albree Trust in support of the Summer 2023 STEM Incubator program. The program, led by Edwards, along with Brittney Bailey, Assistant Professor of Statistics, and Christopher Durr, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, provides eighteen rising sophomores from under-represented groups with early STEM research experiences to strengthen their research and professional skills and lay the groundwork for a career in the sciences. The Albree Trust’s support fully funds two student research fellowships, and covers partially costs for a third student. In addition to discussing scientific literature, formulating research questions, and analyzing datasets, Fellows interact with science professionals to gain insight into the life of a scientist, and take part in a final capstone presentation of their work.

Rosemary Effiom, Director, MMUF Program and Academic Engagement & Student Success, and Catherine Epstein, Provost and Dean of the Faculty and Henry Steele Commager Professor of History, received renewed institutional support of $98,000 for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program. The grant was approved by the American Council of Learned Societies at the recommendation of the Mellon Foundation. The program provides mentorship and extensive development opportunities to a diverse pool of students to support their progression through Amherst and into successful careers as humanities professors and academic researchers, thereby helping build the national pipeline for a more diverse faculty. By supporting and highlighting the considerable talents and accomplishments of fellows and program alums, the program has an enormous impact on the Amherst community, providing inspiration and mentorship to peers and affirming Amherst’s commitment to humanities scholarship as integral to a liberal arts education.

Kiara Vigil, Associate Professor of American Studies and Dean of New Students, was awarded a Scholarly Editions and Translations grant of $100,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to translate and annotate issues from the Dakota-language historical newspaper, Iapi Oaye: The Word Carrier (1871-1939). Through an open-access website and print volume of annotated translations and historical and literary scholarship, the project will provide new access to the history of westward expansion as viewed through the multiple lenses of Christian missionaries, educators, Dakota writers, and the wider communities in which they were enmeshed. It will also help document the history of a critically endangered language and efforts to create and standardize written forms of Dakota.

Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, and Megan Ramsey, Collections Manager, received a $117,237 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a two year project to improve collections documentation and management. In year one, the project will consist of the digitization of institutional records related to Dickinson family artifacts. In year two, the Museum will conduct surveys of archival material at other institutions to understand the extent of primary sources related to EDM collections objects, which will become the subject of a future digitization phase. Altogether, the work will enable the Museum to interpret the poet’s life and times more fully and provide public and scholarly access to an important cultural collection.

Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, was awarded a $200,000 grant for environmental improvements at The Evergreens, historic home of the poet's brother Austin and his family. The grant was made by the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, a program of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, administered through a collaborative arrangement between MassDevelopment and the Mass Cultural Council. The project includes building envelope repairs and installing a museum-grade HVAC system. These improvements provide more nuanced control of changes in temperature and relative humidity to support the preservation of collections, significantly improve The Evergreens' energy efficiency, and prepare for eventual transition to ground source heating and cooling.

Jennifer Acker, Editor in Chief, The Common, received funding through the National Endowment for the Arts’ Grants for Arts Projects initiative in support of The Common’s work to promote new and underrepresented voices, broaden readers' perspectives, and encourage mutual respect within the global literary community.

Sara Brenneis, Professor of Spanish, received a subaward from the UNH Center for the Humanities, as part of funding provided by the Mellon Foundation, for her project: Stolperstein in Spain: Digital Mapping Project. With this funding, Brenneis will partner with activists in Madrid, Spain and a photographer/web developer in Barcelona to develop a comprehensive database and map of "Stolperstein" memorial stones that commemorate Spaniards who were deported to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.

Amy Coddington, Assistant Professor of Music, received a grant from the American Musicological Society in contribution to her book project: How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race. Condington’s book interrogates rap music’s place in the popular music mainstream in the United States by examining how the commercial radio industry programmed the genre during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Michael Cohen, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, received two grants from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, The first grant will fund his project, “Can consciousness be separated from function in the brain?”. This project aims to identify the parts of the brain that are active when a person consciously perceives a stimulus (e.g., a car horn honking) compared to when a stimulus is processed by the brain, but a person does not consciously perceive it (e.g., a pot hole in the road that you run right into).

The second grant will fund his project, “The limits of visual awareness during active real-world vision.” This grant uses virtual reality to alter and distort the world around an observer to determine how much people are aware of the world around them at any given moment.

Ivan Contreras, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, received a grant from the National Science Foundation in support of travel and lodging for participants (primarily young researchers) for the next Gone Fishing: A Meeting in Poisson Geometry conference, to take place at Amherst College in March 2023.

Lisa Crossman, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, received a grant from Founders’ Fund of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation in support of an artist residency program to take place at the Mead this fall. The residency, co-conceived with guest curator Heid E. Erdrich, will bring together several Indigenous artists participating in the exhibition, Boundless (opening August 29 at the Mead), for a week of self-directed studio and research time, and opportunities for dialogue amongst one another and with select audiences from the community.

Christopher B. Durr, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has been named a Cottrell Scholar by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Awardees are chosen for excellence in research and teaching as well as their potential to become change-makers at their institutions, in science and society at large. With this award, Durr will pursue the project: Exploring the synthesis and mechanism of single-site and cationic group V catalysts for the production of biodegradable polymers.

Rosemary Effiom, Director, MMUF Program and Academic Engagement & Student Success, and Catherine Epstein, Provost and Dean of the Faculty and Henry Steele Commager Professor of History, received renewed institutional support for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program. The grant was approved by the American Council of Learned Societies, at the recommendation of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The MMUF program provides mentorship and extensive development opportunities to a diverse pool of students to support their progression through Amherst and onto graduate study and academic careers in the Humanities. Fellows and program alumni have an enormous impact on the Amherst community, inspiring their peers by conducting advanced research, writing impressive theses, receiving coveted senior prizes and Latin Honors, winning national and international fellowships and returning from top-notch graduate and PhD programs to mentor younger students.

Chris Elliott, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, along with co-PIs from Northeastern University and Providence College, was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for: NEAT MAPS (New England Algebraic Topology and Mathematical Physics Seminar), a series of short conferences designed to bring together researchers in topology, mathematical physics and related subjects working within New England and the surrounding area. The grant will support the second and third meetings in the series, which will take place in November 2023 at Boston University, and April 2024 at Amherst College.

Kate Follette, Assistant Professor of Astronomy, received a 2022 Scialog: Signatures of Life in the Universe Collaborative Innovation Award from the Heising-Simons Foundation. The funding, which promotes interdisciplinary research and community-building between faculty members who have not collaborated before, will support a project proposed by Follette and Jeffrey Marlow, assistant professor of biology at Boston University, titled “From Exoplanets to Microbes: Using Astronomical Image Processing Techniques to Detect Microbes in Astrobiological Contexts.”

Victor Guevara, Assistant Professor of Geology, received a National Science Foundation grant for the Collaborative Research project: “Resolving conflicting thermobarometry and stratigraphy in the Tethyan Himalaya”. This project will involve fieldwork and sample collection in the Himalaya mountain range of northwest India, as well as geochemical analysis on the collected samples, which will be performed by undergraduate student researchers at Amherst.  

David Hall, Paula R. and David J. Avenius 1941 Professor of Physics, received a National Science Foundation grant for the RUI project: “Topological Excitations in Spin-1 and Spin-2 Bose-Einstein Condensates”.

David Hanneke, Associate Professor of Physics, received a grant from the National Science Foundation for his project: “Optical Molecular Clocks for New Physics Searches”.  The project will demonstrate the tools needed to use molecular vibrations as precise frequency references (that are as good clocks) and is a stepping stone on the way towards searching for changes in the basic physical parameters of nature (such as how many times heavier the proton is than the electron). Amherst undergraduates will be key members of the research team.

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, Associate Professor of Black Studies and History, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for work on her book project, Abolitionists, Anti-Abolitionists, and the Business of Manufacturing Cotton Grown by the Enslaved in Lowell, Massachusetts, focusing on the history of the town from the 1820s to the 1860s, and the community’s relationship to slavery and antislavery. 

Michael Kunichika, Associate Professor of Russian and Director of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture, received Emergency Grant support from the US Russia Foundation.  This funding will allow the Center to bring Russian scholars to come to Amherst as fellows. It supplements an initiative of the ACRC and the College to support Ukrainian and Russian citizens in response to reports of scholars, curators, writers, and artists displaced by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Helen Leung, George H. Corey 1888 Professor of Chemistry, and Mark Marshall, Class of 1959 Professor of Chemistry, were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for the research project, "Discerning the balance of intermolecular forces and the enantiomeric composition of chiral samples from the structures of gas-phase heterodimers."  With their students, their work will lead to a better understanding of the subtle interplay among the intermolecular forces that results in a preferred binding geometry, and will identify useful chiral tags that enable effective conversion of a sample of enantiomers (molecules that are mirror images of each other) into distinct molecular species that have different rotational spectra.

Jacob Olshansky, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Jonathan Friedman, Professor of Physics, received a National Science Foundation grant for the RUI project, “Using Colloidal Nanoparticles to Host Photogenerated Spin Qubit Pairs”. 

Mardi Pierson-Buell, Director of Development at The Emily Dickinson Museum, received a grant from the Amherst Cultural Council in support of the Museum’s annual celebration of Dickinson’s birthday. The celebration featured a free community day with special programming, guided tours and activities designed to honor the life and work of Amherst's most famous and beloved resident. The Amherst Cultural Council is a local agency supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Emily Potter-Ndiaye, Dwight and Kirsten Poler & Andrew W. Mellon Head of Education and Curator of Academic Programs, and Miloslava Hruba, Study Room Manager and European Print Specialist at the Mead Art Museum, were awarded a grant from the IFPDA Foundation in support of “Collecting 101: Acquiring Art for the Mead,” a biannual print acquisition program for students to be held in January 2024. Funding from the IFPDA Foundation will contribute to the experiential learning component of the program, during which they will bring 10-15 students to New York City to meet artists and visit galleries and museums.

Emily Potter-Ndiaye, Dwight and Kirsten Poler & Andrew W. Mellon Head of Education and Curator of Academic Programs and Olivia Feal, Manager of Experiential Learning and K-12 Programs at the Mead Art Museum received a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities for: Boundless: Indigenous Art and Stories Across Massachusetts. The funding will expand the access and reach of local Indigenous objects and histories from the Boundless exhibition to K-12 classrooms through developing digital teaching resources and curricula. 

Kerry Ratigan, Associate Professor of Political Science, was awarded a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange for her research on two related questions: (1) How has Chinese investment shaped South Americans’ views of China? (2) How do state and non-state actors influence Chinese firm behavior? The primary aim for this project is to write a book on the social and political effects of China’s economic engagement with Latin America. To this end, Ratigan will conduct intensive qualitative fieldwork in several South American countries and China.

Matteo Riondato, Associate Professor of Computer Science, received a National Science Foundation CAREER award for the project: Statistically-Sound Knowledge Discovery from Data. The project entails the development of efficient algorithms to solve the computational and statistical challenges of modern scientific practice. Thanks to this funding, many undergraduates will be involved in research through Riondato's group, the Amherst College Data Mammoths. Outreach components of the project include collaborations with the Wistariahurst Museum and the Holyoke Public Library.

Rebecca Totton, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology, received a Grant-in-Aid award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for the project: Being Asian in America: Mental and Physical Health Outcomes of Racial Assignment Incongruity Amongst Asian Minorities. 

Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, received a grant from the American Academy of Poets to build capacity for the Museum's merchandising efforts in order to support learning experiences. With this award, the Museum will enhance the earning power of the Museum shop so that its revenues can more adequately sustain its current and future mission-based programming.

Ren Wiscons, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was awarded an NSF LEAPS-MPS grant for the project: Conformational Inversion in Heterotriangulenes for Ferroelectric Switching.

Robert Benedetto, William J. Walker Professor of Mathematics, was awarded supplemental funding for an existing National Science Foundation grant supporting the study of problems in arithmetic dynamics. The suplemental funding will support additional students joining Professor Benedetto's undergraduate research project in Summer 2022.

Rachel Bernard, Assistant Professor of Geology, received a National Science Foundation EAGER award to fund a conference that convenes stakeholders in Washington D.C. for the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark First National Conference on Minority Participation in Earth Science and Mineral Engineering. 

Anthony Bishop, Professor of Chemistry, was awarded a National Institutes of Health grant in support of his project: "Target-specific inhibition and activation of protein tyrosine phosphatases". The study aims to expand the range of PTP-domain cysteines that can be targeted for potent and selective allosteric control of PTP activity and will provide a novel strategy for increasing the efficacy of anti-cancer immunotherapy.

Lisa Brooks, Henry S. Poler '59 Presidential Teaching Professor of English and American Studies, was appointed as the 2022-2023 Mellon Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence of the American Antiquarian Society. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Society annually invites a highly distinguished senior scholar to take up long-term residence at the Society to do research and writing on a major project, to engage in the collegial life of the Society, and to serve as an anchor for the AAS fellowship program as a whole, and especially as a mentor to the younger scholars in residence.  

Kaylee Brow, Assistant Farm Manager, received the 2022 Local Farmer Award from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, which will support the purchase of a Jang Push Seeder for the Book & Plow Farm.

Jack Cheney, Samuel A. Hitchcock Professor of Mineralogy and Geology, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty, received a grant from the George Norman Albree Trust to support the full participation of two students and partial participation of a third in the Summer 2022 STEM Incubator program. Led by Brittney Bailey, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Christopher Durr, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Marc Edwards, Assistant Professor of Biology, the STEM Incubator program provides students from under-represented groups with early research experiences to strengthen their research and professional skills and lay the groundwork for a career in the sciences.

Guy Cote, Manager of Electrical and Mechanical Trades, received two grants from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, via the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. The awards are made through the Massachusetts Electric Vehicle Incentive Program (MassEVIP) Multi-Unit Dwelling & Educational Campus Charging Program and they support vehicle charging stations at Converse Hall and at Orr Rink.

Kate Follette, Assistant Professor of Astronomy, was awarded the Cottrell Scholarship Award from the Research Corporation for the project: Moving Forward – Towards Accurate Recovery and Interpretation of Accreting Protoplanets and a Socially Just Undergraduate Astronomy Curriculum. The project aims to move us toward reliably detecting and accurately interpreting the observational signatures of accreting protoplanets. At the same time, Follette will integrate into the Astronomy major sequence at Amherst College activities designed to increase sense of belonging, acknowledge the benefits of equity, normalize struggle, instill growth mindset, and foster collaboration.

Amanda Folsom, Professor of Mathematics, was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for the RUI project: “Harmonic Maass Forms and Quantum Modular Forms”, to study the theory and applications of harmonic Maass forms, their holomorphic parts called mock modular forms, quantum modular forms, and related functions. In addition to Professor Folsom’s research, some projects in this proposal will be carried out by Amherst College undergraduate student researchers, working under Professor Folsom’s guidance.

Jonathan Friedman, Professor of Physics, received a continuation of funding from the National Science Foundation for his project: RUI: Clock Transitions, Coherence, and Quantum Dynamics in Molecular Nanomagnets. The research will study the quantum dynamics of chemically synthesized molecular nanomagnets using microwave spectroscopy. The work will involve active participation of undergraduate students.

Professor Friedman also received a Cottrell Plus SEED award from Research Corporation for Science Advancement for his research on Spin-Clock Transitions in Silica Defects. The research endeavors to understand the origin of a recently discovered “clock transition” in silica samples in which the coherence of quantum information stored in the system is enhanced near zero magnetic field when probed using microwave radiation. 

Victor Guevara, Assistant Professor of Geology, was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for the collaborative research project: Understanding the Tectonic and Petrological Processes Controlling Iron Oxide-Apatite Mineralization in a Mesoproterozoic Collisional Orogen. The results of this work will ultimately advance our understanding of the tectonic mechanisms responsible for IOA genesis in collisional mountain belts.

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, Associate Professor of Black Studies and History, received a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship 2022-2023. Professor Herbin-Triant will spend the fellowship year working on the book project: Spindles & Slavery: Abolitionists, Anti-Abolitionists, and the Business of Manufacturing Cotton Grown by the Enslaved.

Nicholas Holschuh, Assistant Professor of Geology, received two National Science Foundation collaborative research awards for "Coldex -The Center for Oldest Ice Exploration" (with Oregon State University) and "i-HARP -- Harnessing the Data and Model Revolution in the Polar Regions" (with University of Maryland).

Nicholas Horton, Beitzel Professor in Technology and Society (Statistics and Data Science), received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for research exploring the association between common eating disorders and risk of developing type 2 diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, and gastroesophageal reflux disease. Through this research, Professor Horton seeks to understand whether the more common eating disorders, and their component behaviors of binge eating and purging, increase the risk of developing T2D and digestive diseases in middle age.

Larry Hunter, Stone Professor of Natural Sciences (Physics), received a National Science Foundation RUI grant for the project "Searching for Optical Cycling in TlF and Long-Range Spin-Spin Interactions." Funds will support ongoing experiments to measure optical cycling in thallium fluoride and to search for long-range spin-spin interactions.

Jeeyon Jeong, Assistant Professor of Biology, received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant for the research project: Investigation of the Cellular and Physiological Effects of Chloroplast/Mitochondrial Iron Export in Plants. This project will build a foundation for Professor Jeong’s long-term career development as a molecular biologist committed to advancing knowledge of iron homeostasis in plants and as an educator devoted to training next generation scientists.

Jallicia Jolly, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies and of Black Studies, has been awarded a Ford Foundation 2022 Postdoctoral Fellowship that will support the completion of her first book manuscript, which is titled "Ill Erotics: Black Caribbean Women and Self-Making in Times of HIV/AIDS," which is under contract with University of California Press.

Sally Kim, Assistant Professor of Biology, and Marc Edwards, Assistant Professor of Biology, were awarded a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation for acquisition of an integrated Zeiss 980 microscope with Airyscan 2 and FCS to create an advanced microscopy center. The advanced imaging capabilities of this instrument are expected to transform life science research at Amherst, opening new opportunities for student research and promoting interdisciplinary exploration of the microscopic world.

Anna Martini, Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies, received funding from the Water Resources Research Center to “Assess the Effectiveness of Floodplain Reconnection, a Growing Practice in River Restoration'', pertaining to the restoration of the floodplain to the Fearing Brook in Amherst. The funded project included Professor Martini’s hydrogeology class (Spring 21), and SURF undergraduate fellow (Summer 21) in a unique opportunity in which Amherst College students participated in an active town restoration project.

Maria Rello, Associate Athletic Director, Director of Sports Medicine, Senior Woman Administrator and Deputy Title IX Coordinator, received a two year NCAA Division III Ethnic Minorities and Women’s Internship Grant to provide professional development and other opportunities to an intern in the position of Assistant to the Athletic Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  

Yael Rice, Assistant Professor of Art & the History of Art and of Asian Languages and Civilizations, was awarded a grant from the Persian Heritage Foundation to digitize the Taza Akhbar, an Illustrated History of the Kings of Kabul. Completed in 1817, the manuscript is the only known copy of this text and includes an unusual emphasis on and rich detail about the urban topography of Afghanistan and the ethnography of its “peoples.” The Taza Akhbar manuscript is a striking example of an imperial-style chronicle; digitizing it will make it available to anyone interested in the history of Afghanistan and British imperialism in the region.

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a  summer institute for school teachers that will examine punishment and its uses and meanings in American society.

Brooke Steinhauser, Program Director at the Emily Dickinson Museum, received two grants in support of the annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival - one from the Beveridge Family Foundation, Inc., and a second from the Mass Cultural Council. The Emily Dickinson Museum also received a Mass Cultural Council operating funds grant.

Scott Smitson, Chamberlain Fellow and Visiting Professor in the department of Political Science, received a grant from the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation in support of his Chamberlain Fellowship at Amherst College for Academic year 2022-2023.

Olufemi Vaughan, Alfred Sargent Lee '41 and Mary Farley Ames Lee Professor of Black Studies, has been named a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow for his project titled "“Letters, Kinship, and Social Mobility in Nigeria,1926–1994.” The project is based on about three thousand family letters from Femi's late father’s library that focus on real-life family stories in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. Guggenheim fellowships are awarded on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.

Amy Wagaman, Associate Professor of Statistics, and Lee Spector, Professor of Computer Science, received a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation for acquisition of a High Performance Computing (HPC) System for interdisciplinary research and teaching. The system will enable Amherst faculty to expose students to applications of machine learning technology and artificial intelligence, and is expected to be used by faculty and student researchers in 8 academic departments.

Karamatou A. Yacoubou Djima, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, was awarded a National Science Foundation LEAPS-MPS grant for the project: "Uncovering and Exploiting Multiscale Structures in Data using Diffusion-based Representation and Optimal Sampling". In addition to funding research, the award will support Professor Yacoubou Djima's efforts to train and mentor undergraduate research students, particularly students from underrepresented groups with less exposure to careers in science and technology. 

*Are you an Amherst College faculty member or staff who has received an award that is not recorded here?
Get in touch with us.

Congratulations to Amherst’s faculty grant awardees in 2019-2020.

Professor Lisa Brooks (English, American Studies) won a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which will support research on her new project, "Tracking Molsemsis: An Indigenous and Environmental History of Eastern Coyote.” [Read the press release.] She also won an ACLS Fellowship for the same project.

Professor Ellen Boucher (History) won an ACLS Burkhardt fellowship in support of her project, "Be Prepared: Risk and the Neoliberal Sensibility in Modern Britain."

Professor Nusrat Chowdhury (Anthropology) will be a scholar at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study during academic year 2020-2021.

Professor Lawrence Douglas (Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought) won a Berlin Prize Fellowship for spring 2021 in support of his project, Aggression, Atrocity, and the “Verbrecherstaat.”  

Congratulations to Amherst’s faculty grant awardees in 2018-2019:

Professor Christopher Grobe (English) won an ACLS Burkhardt fellowship in support of his next book, Imitation Games, which will tell the conjoined cultural history of two experiments in the art of seeming human: realist acting and artificial intelligence.  

Professor Christopher Van den Berg (Classics) won two grants: the ACLS Burkhardt fellowship and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. Both will support his next book: Critical Turns: The Criticism, History, and Theory of Literature at Rome.

Professor Amelia Worsley (English) won a Corpus Christi Visiting Fellowship to support work on her next book, Lonely Poets and Their Publics: Being Alone Together in British Romantic Poetry.

Professor Eleonora Mattiacci (Political Science) won a grant from the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges to support her work on researching and teaching security in the cyber age.

The National Science Foundation awarded multi-year grants to the following faculty:

Professor David Hanneke (Physics & Astronomy) – “Driving forbidden vibrational overtones in trapped molecular ions" (two-year grant)

Professor Amanda Folsom (Mathematics & Statistics) – “Harmonic Maass Forms, Mock Modular Forms, and Quantum Modular Forms: Theory and Applications” (two-year grant)

Professor Helen Leung (Chemistry) – “Shape Matters: Using the Preferred Structures of Gas-Phase Heterodimers to Investigate Intermolecular Forces and for Chiral Analysis” (three-year grant)

Did you receive a fellowship, research grant or award this year that is not listed above? Please let us know—we’d love to celebrate your success with you!

Congratulations to Amherst’s faculty grant awardees in 2017-2018:

Professor Solsiree Del Moral (American Studies) won an ACLS Burkhardt fellowship to continue her study of the history of street children incarcerated in adult jails, prisons, and correctional institutions in post-World War II Puerto Rico.

Professor Kerry Ratigan (Political Science) won another grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange to study Chinese citizens’ attitudes toward social welfare programs in China.

Both Professor Eleonora Mattiacci (Political Science) and Professor Vanessa Walker (History) won Stanton Foundation fellowships to develop new courses on timely topics. Professor Mattiacci’s spring 2019 course will focus on political leaders’ responses to nuclear security. Professor Walker’s spring 2019 course will focus on human rights and national security.

Professor Lloyd Barba (Latinx and Latin American Studies) won a grant from the Louisville Institute to finish his manuscript on “Fields of Faith: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California.”

Professor Amanda Folsom (Mathematics & Statistics) won an award from the Simons Foundation for her project “Harmonic Maass Forms and Mock Modular Forms: Theory and Applications.”

The National Science Foundation awarded multi-year grants to the following faculty:

Professor Michael Ching (Mathematics & Statistics) – “Calculus of Functors and Applications in Homotopy Theory” (three-year grant)

Professor Michael Cohen (Psychology) – “Isolating the neural mechanisms of perceptual awareness from post-perceptual processes” (subawardee with Reed College)

Professor David Hall (Physics & Astronomy) – “Topological Defects and Textures in Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensates” (four-year grant)

Professor Larry Hunter (Physics & Astronomy) – “A Search for Long-Range Spin-Spin Interactions and Optical Forces in TlF” (three-year grant)

Professor Jonathan Friedman (Physics & Astronomy) – “Forbidden Transitions and Quantum Dynamics in Molecular Nanomagnets” (three-year grant)

Professor Jeeyon Jeong (Biology) – “Mitochondrial Ferroportin and Iron Homeostasis in Plants” (three-year grant)

Did you receive a fellowship, research grant or award this year that is not listed above? Please let us know—we’d love to celebrate your success with you!

September 2018

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This summer, the National Science Foundation awarded Prof. Jeeyon Jeong a $462,395 grant to support her experiments on “iron homeostasis,” or how molecular iron is stored and transported within plant cells. Over the next three years, Jeong's lab will study how a plant’s naturally occurring iron-management systems affect its ability to thrive. The results ultimately may help with biofortification, or the breeding of more robust crops with more of the nutrients that humans need.  

Read more about Jeong's NSF award.

 April 2018

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Moumita Dasgupta, a teaching fellow in experimental physics, has been awarded a $30,000 grant by the Federal Transportation Administration. The funds will allow her and her team to look at the impacts of public transportation barriers on low-income patients' access to health care.

Read more about Moumita's FTA grant here

August 2017

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Congratulations to Prof. Alexandra Purdy, who won a $513,187 collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation to study how gut bacteria affect the health of their host organisms. Over the next four years, the Purdy lab will shed new light on the role of the microbiome in causing organisms to thrive or decline.

Read more about Purdy's NSF award.

April 2017

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Edward “Ted” Melillo, associate professor of history and environmental studies, is Amherst's latest recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's New Directions Fellowship. Melillo will spend the next fifteen months learning the Hawaiian language as part of his research on the fascinating connections between Massachusetts and the Pacific World. 

More about Melillo's Mellon grant.

January 2017

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Assistant Professor of Physics, Ashley Carter, has won a five-year, $500,000 grant through the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Program. Part of the award will support her research on biophysics and DNA folding. The rest will support her broader goals, to recruit and train new students in her field. For the next five summers, the NSF grant will financially support a post-baccalaureate researcher and undergraduates in Carter's lab.

Read more about Carter's NSF grant.

April 2016

The Carnegie Corporation of New York named Lawrence Douglas, James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, and Katharine Sims, assistant professor of economics, two of among only 33 Andrew Carnegie Fellows from colleges and universities across the nation.

Douglas will use his fellowship to continue his groundbreaking exploration of the law and human rights, while Sims will use hers to better understand the intersection of economic and environmental policies in four countries. 

Amity Gaige, visiting writer, was named a Guggenheim Fellow, and Lisa Brooks, associate professor of English and American studies, was awarded a Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship. Gaige is the author of three books, O My Darling, The Folded World, and Schroder. During the fellowship period, she hopes to give her writing “the kind of sustained attention that is required to metamorphose an idea into a [new] novel." 

Brooks, a well-known scholar of Native American history, will use her fellowship to build a website for educators and students about King Philip’s War from 1675 to 1676. Using full-color digital maps, primary sources, a story map and other documents as curricular resources, the website will guide teachers of K-12 through the historical geography of the war.

Read more about Carnege, Guggenheim, Whiting awards.

June 2015

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Assistant Professor of Physics Ashley Carter and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Sheila Jaswal were recently awarded funding for research that seeks to understand how biological material folds. Carter received a Cottrell College Science Award of $40,000 for her project “Optical Trapping Assay to Study Histone Replacement During Spermiogenesis,” while Jaswal received $20,000 from the Webster Foundation for her research into the “Development of Hydrogen Exchange Mass Spectrometry Methodology to Map Protein Landscapes.”

Carter studies how DNA folds in sperm cells. Usually, a strand of DNA folds around a protein called a histone, and tags on the histone determine where the folding is more compacted. However, in sperm, 85 percent of these histones are removed and replaced with protamine to make the sperm nucleus as small as possible. Incorrect histone replacement can lead to male infertility and to changes in the folding of the genetic material that gets passed on to the next generation.

“I’m really excited about the science of how DNA mechanically folds inside a sperm cell,” says Carter. “It’s such a basic, simple question, but it has so much importance in epigenetics [the way genes are expressed] and infertility that I wonder why no one’s done it before.”

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Read more about Carter and Jaswals's awards.