Grants or Gifts Relating to Women in Higher Education

Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.

The University of California, Los Angeles received a $4.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for research on how environmental pollution affects placenta development in pregnant women. The research will be under the direction of Sherin Davaskar, the Mattel Executive Endowed Chair in pediatrics at the university.

Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, are participating in a $1.4 million grant program funded by the National Science Foundation that will examine the persistence of women faculty in engineering. The study will be conducted by Ebony McGee of Vanderbilt University and Monica Cox and Joyce Main of Purdue University.

The University of Pittsburgh is leading a consortium of four universities in research on developing tools for tracking placenta health in real time during pregnancies. The program is funded by an $804,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. Other institutions participating in the research are Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania State University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis received a three-year, $344,224 grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for programs to support prenatal care for women who are at-risk of having preterm births. The Strong Start for Mothers and Newborns Program at the UTHSC is under the direction of Linda Moses-Simmons, an assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology.

The University of Alaska in Fairbanks received a three-year $1.1 million grant for its BRIGHT Girls program. BRIGHT is an acronym for Budding Research Investigators in Geosciences, Habitat and Technology. The grant will support a 10-day free summer academy in each of the next three years for girls in grades 9-12. The goal of the program is to boost interest among girls in pursuing degrees in geophysics and technology. The program is under the direction of Laura Connor a research assistant professor of science education. Dr. Connor earned a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona.

The University of Massachusetts is leading a five-year, $3.5 million grant program funded by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences to study breast cancer risk in relation to environmental exposure to chemicals founds in cosmetics and household products.