$1.8M Awarded to 15 Faculty in Research Growth Awards

The newly established Saint Louis University Research Institute will award its first round of funding: $1.8 million in grants to accelerate research growth at the University.

Launched in September 2018 through the largest gift received in the history of SLU, given generously by Dr. Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield, the SLU Research Institute will further SLU’s goal of becoming the world’s leading Jesuit research university.

More Than 100 Proposals Received 

Through a Research Growth Fund competition, the Research Institute invited SLU faculty to submit proposals that would propel SLU’s research forward. Fifteen of the 114 proposals submitted were selected to receive funding totaling $1.8 million.

The Research Growth Fund is designed to be a flexible source of funding to help faculty across the University achieve their research and scholarship ambitions — progressing toward the goals for which the Research Institute was designed.

Over the course of ten years, the Research Institute will further our ambition of becoming a national and international model in promoting teaching, learning and research that exemplify discovery, transformative outcomes and engaged citizenship in a global society.

Ken Olliff, vice president for research at SLU and director of the Research Institute

“The SLU Research Institute serves as a platform for advancing research initiatives that will help our region and beyond,” said Ken Olliff, vice president for research at SLU and director of the Research Institute. “Over the course of ten years, the Research Institute will further our ambition of becoming a national and international model in promoting teaching, learning and research that exemplify discovery, transformative outcomes and
engaged citizenship in a global society — as called for in our five year strategic plan.”

Funded Projects at a Glance

Among the faculty and projects awarded funding through the Research Growth Institute are:

• Amanda Cox, Ph.D., associate professor in Parks College of Engineering, Aviation, and Technology, who will use advanced geospatial techniques to develop novel methods for computing water volume in reservoirs. This will enable engineers to accurately estimate reservoir volumes that will in turn facilitate water resources managers to optimally prepare for water supply and storage needs.
• Bruce O’Neill, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology and anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, who aims to push urban studies beyond the well established horizontal coordinates of center and periphery to rethink class formation vertically, from the underground up. O’Neill will complete fieldwork below the sidewalks of post-socialist Bucharest, Romania in Metro stations, underground parking garages, basements and cellars, and the offices of city planners and private developers, to track the reimagining of underground urbanism in support of an emergent middle class.
• Ryan Teague, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular microbiology and immunology, who will develop new mechanistic studies in animal models and complementary analysis of human tissues from cancer treatments. The goal is to demystify the controversy around obesity and the effectiveness of cancer treatments to provide fresh insight for improving treatment options in all patients.
• Jeff Scherrer, Ph.D., professor of family and community medicine, and colleagues, who will utilize health datasets and state-of-the-art analytic methods to tackle pressing research questions derived from studies into the effectiveness of various medications. Additionally, the team will conduct research on predictors for seeking treatment for specific conditions and studies on the outcomes of disease management.
• Debra Cashion, Ph.D., MLIS, digital humanities librarian at Pius XII Library, who will create a digital humanities research environment for the study of Vatican manuscripts, including (but not limited to) the 37,000  presently in the process of digitization by the Vatican Film Library from microfilms made by SLU at the Vatican in the 1950s. The METAscripta environment will not only enable online access to these, but also provide innovative discovery and crowd-sourcing tools to collect information about Vatican manuscripts, of which approximately 60,000 lack catalog records and thus remain inaccessible for study.