UT Receives Nearly $700K from National Science Foundation for Research

It was a productive summer for sciences at The University of Tampa.

The College of Natural and Health Sciences (CNHS) announced that its faculty recently received nearly $700,000 in three-year grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to do research on genetics, dark matter, and epidemics and wildlife.

The three grants that were funded, along with the principal investigator and grant amount, include:

Gene sequencing instrumentation used by several research programs, by Tasha Belfiore, assistant professor of biology, for $74,001. The co-principal investigators include Jeffry Fasick, assistant professor of biology, Heather Masonjones, professor of biology, Michael Middlebrooks, assistant professor of biology, and Kristine White, assistant professor of biology.
“Managing epidemics in wildlife with acquired resistance,” by Taegan McMahon, assistant professor of biology, for $206,276.
“Testing the Lambda Cold Dark Matter Paradigm with Dwarf Satellites of Low-mass Galaxies,” by Denija Crnojevic, assistant professor of physics, for $411,986.

Paul Greenwood, dean of CNHS, said faculty research at UT is particularly valuable since it opens up sophisticated research opportunities for students to work closely with faculty outside the classroom. He also noted that all the principal investigators of each of these awards are UT women. According to NSF, approximately one in four proposals to NSF are submitted by women, with the same proportion of NSF awards being held by females.

CNHS at UT is a diverse group of six departments and more than 20 majors. The departments are the Department of Biology, the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics, the Department of Health Sciences and Human Performance, the Department of Nursing, the Department of Sport Management and the Department of Physician Assistant Medicine (to begin accepting students for Fall 2019).