REVIEW

A report of research activities for fiscal year 1996-1997

Produced by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

Welcome Letter

Awards

Table 1: Awards by Campus Area FY97
Table 2: Awards by Major Funding Source FY97
Table 3: Ten Years of Funding: Grant and Contract Awards FY88 to FY97
Table 4: Dollars Awarded by Type: FY96 vs. FY97

Focus on Faculty - Brenda Anne Wilson, Ph.D.
Focus on Faculty - Betty Yung, Ph.D.
Figure 1: Dollar Amount Awarded by Major Funding Source
Figure 2: Number of Awards by Major Funding Source

Focus on Faculty - G. Allen Burton, Ph.D.
Figure 3: Dollar Amount Awarded by Campus Area
Figure 4: Number of Awards by Type 1987-88 vs. 1996-97
Figure 5: Dollars Awarded by Type 1987-97
Figure 6: Proposals vs. Awards 1987-97
Figure 7: Ten Years of Funding 1987-97

Focus on Faculty - Fred D. Garber, Ph.D.

Expenditures

Table 5: Federally Financed R&D Expenditures at Ohio Universities and Colleges 1989-95

Sponsors

1996-97 Grant and Contract Awards Sponsor List

Overview of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

A report of research activities for fiscal year 1996-1997

Spring 1998

Dear Colleagues:

On behalf of Wright State University and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, it is a pleasure for me to present this report of research activities for the fiscal year 1996-97, Research in Review. As the title implies, we've tried to combine current successes with some funding history to give our readers a perspective on the steady and significant rise in Wright State University's external funding.

As one of the "three legs of the stool," research plays a key role in the mission of Wright State University. Cutting-edge research undergirds the excellence of our educational programs and enhances the reputation of Wright State University in the community and nationally. It contributes to the economic growth of our region and state. Students benefit in numerous ways: as active participants, from the expertise of their instructors, and through access to world-class laboratories. Students' access to the latest research results, whether it be in the laboratory, classroom, or in one-on-one discussion, helps better prepare them to embark on their future careers.

For the period July 1, 1996 to June 30, 1997 (FY97), Wright State University set a new record for external funding, receiving $31,336,991 in awards. Research and Development projects accounted for $17.7 million or 56 percent of this total, with the Department of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health, as the leading sponsor. Industrial firms provided in excess of $3.8 million or almost 12 percent of the FY 97 funding. Among Ohio's public universities, Wright State University ranks third in R&D expenditures for science and engineering based on federal FY95 data (the latest available) from the National Science Foundation.

Proposal submission numbers for FY97 climbed, too. The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs processed and submitted 720 proposals (vs. 651 proposals in FY96) on behalf of 208 faculty and staff. During the year, 535 projects were funded, compared to 457 awards in FY96.

The faculty of Wright State University has been remarkably successful in meeting the funding challenges that face researchers today. We congratulate them for providing the best possible education to their studentsthe researchers of the future.

Joseph F. Thomas, Jr.
Associate Provost for Research and
Dean, School of Graduate Studies

Table 1: Awards by Campus Area FY97

Table 2: Awards by Major Funding Source FY97

Table 3: Ten Years of Funding: Grant and Contract Awards FY88 to FY97

Table 4: Dollars Awarded by Type: FY96 vs. FY97

Brenda Anne Wilson, Ph.D.
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Dr. Brenda Wilson represents the best and brightest group of new researchers recruited by Wright State University in recent years. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University (M.S. and Ph.D.), Dr. Wilson served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty of the WSU Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1993. By 1996, she had been granted a five- year National Institutes of Health FIRST (First Independent Research Support and Transition) Award, and was in the enviable position of having to decline a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for similar work.

While Dr. Wilson's post-doctoral work focused on the structure-function of the diphtheria toxin, the impetus for her NIH-funded project stems from her personal encounter with thePasteurella multocida (P. multocida) toxin. Veterinarians and those in the cattle industry have long known of and dreaded outbreaks of P. multocida among livestock and other domestic and wild animals. Progressive and deadly, this disease causes animals to suffer serious respiratory problems, with symptoms of pneumonia. Significant economic losses result if the outbreak reaches epidemic proportions. It is anticipated that 60% to 70% of animals carry the bacteria. In rare cases it can be transmitted to humans. Dr. Wilson became the unfortunate victim of this rare transmission in 1989 when she contracted the disease. She traces the transmission to a combination of a sore throat and a chance visit to a petting zoo. With excellent medical care at one of the world's finest teaching hospitals, she recovered from this life-threatening encounter. She now describes her "vendetta" against P. multocida as one of the driving forces behind her research.

The study of a bacterial protein toxin such as P. multocida requires an understanding, on the molecular level, of its structure (what it looks like and how it behaves) and its impact on the cell. What is it doing that allows it to cause damage to whatever cell it comes in contact with? To examine this question, Dr. Wilson and her laboratory staff make mutants of the toxins to see what allows them to recognize cells and what part of the toxin causes damage to the cells. Also puzzling is how the toxin can continue to damage the cells once the bacteria have been treated with antibiotics and have literally disappeared.

Further complicating the P. multocida study is the sheer size of the toxin. Composed of 1,285 amino acids, the first 500 of these amino acids have been identified as the "activity domain," or the group that interacts with the target. The remaining 785 amino acids are the "receptor binding domain" that recognize the cells and allow it to enter the cells. Once the toxin has entered the cells, it transforms them into something different from their original purpose. Dr. Wilson is also studying the process that leads to these cell changes.

As bacteria are known to cause diseases, the ultimate goal is to understand their structure and function to develop therapeutic measures to cure or prevent the diseases. Structural knowledge of P. multocida could lead to application to other types of bacteria-toxin-cell damage cycles and potential treatment methods.

A collaboration with Dr. Mengfei Ho, also in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has combined the forces of two laboratories in work on a project funded by the American Cancer Society. Their efforts center on kinases--enzymes involved in the regulation of activity inside the cells. While highly activated in cancer, blocking a specific kinase could reduce the growth of cancer cells. The current focus of their joint research is the Raf kinase, which is involved in leukemia. Normally activated in response to growth hormones, something goes awry in cancer cells so that the Raf kinase is switched on all the time. The Wilson and Ho labs are studying the proteins and use computer modeling, with the goal of developing "designer" drugs to be used to target and block active kinases.

Betty Yung, Ph.D.
School of Professional Psychology

A unsettling pattern of violent behavior in the schools, among increasingly younger perpetrators, has not gone unnoticed by state health agencies and university educators. There is a critical need to reduce or stop the rising level of violence among children and adolescents. Compounding this need is the current lack of professionals who are prepared to work with troubled youth. The Violence Prevention Training Institute (VPTI) project, directed by Dr. Betty Yung of the Wright State University School of Professional Psychology, attempts to address these needs by training groups of youth service providers in techniques of violence prevention.

Funded by a three-year grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Education Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program, the VPTI is one of two such undertakings in the country supported by federal funds. How can VPTI make a difference in what has become a frightening societal problem? By "training the trainers" and working in small groups, participants are immersed in violence prevention techniques that can be taken back to their home communities.

As recent events have unfortunately demonstrated, youth homicide is most prevalent in the southern United States and is not confined to large urban centers. Fighting, gun- carrying, and assaultive violence in rural areas either matches or exceeds this behavior in large cities. The training groups currently represent 14 states and are geographically concentrated in the South.

The intensive curriculum includes a one-week residency in Dayton where violence reduction methods are taught. The Dayton core training is followed by mini-pilot projects, which bring together trainees and a small group of older children or adolescents for real "hands-on" experiences. At the conclusion of the program, graduates will then have one year in which to conduct three training sessions to target audiences composed of personnel from health agencies, schools or community agencies, school nurses, counselors or other health or mental health workers.

The cycle continues as the knowledge gained from the VPTI experience is passed along to other professionals who work with troubled adolescents. Targeted children are ages 10 to 18, who exhibit aggressive behavior or who find themselves frequent victims of bullies. High-risk children are taught anger management techniques by the VPTI graduates--to be able to express anger appropriately when giving negative feedback, to react appropriately when receiving negative feedback, to come to a compromise by negotiating, and to be able to assess a situation to decide if there are dangers.

The program's success relies on its small group approach. To preserve the quality of the material presented, training groups are limited to 12. The intensive training sessions result in a very high comfort level for trainee graduates as they pass their VPTI expertise along to the next group of professionals. To date, the cooperating states have been enormously supportive of the training endeavors. The state of Wisconsin, whose representatives serve a sizable population of Native American youth, have garnered financial support from one of the tribes to continue the program. South Carolina officials are pairing the training with a gun safety-storage lock incentive. State partnerships such as these contribute to positive outcomes and a commitment to reaching out to troubled adolescents.

Youth violence has become such a commonplace occurrence that it is no longer seen as a criminal justice issue, but rather a public health issue. Concern for children and their welfare are universal themes. With a mix of time-tested curriculum materials, staff dedication, expertise, and a commitment by state agencies, the first important steps are in place to stem the tide of violence. While it is a sad commentary that such programs would be necessary, Dr. Betty Yung and her colleagues have identified the need and can boast encouraging results from the VPTI method.

FY97 = July 1, 1996 - June 30, 1997

FY88 = July 1, 1987 - June 30, 1988

FY97 = July 1, 1996 - June 30, 1997

FY88 = July 1, 1987 - June 30, 1988

G. Allen Burton, Ph.D.
Institute for Environmental Quality

While most of us seek the refuge of shelter during inclement weather conditions, Wright State University's Dr. G. Allen Burton relishes conditions such as these as opportunities to study contaminant fate and effects. Dr. Burton, Professor of Biological Sciences, and Director of WSU's Institute for Environmental Quality, is a prolific grantwriter and a successful researcher, whose students benefit from real-life environmental situations. Using a wide range of aquatic organisms, Dr. Burton and his colleagues combine basic and applied science techniques to examine complex ecosystems.

Dr. Burton will tell you that stormwater (any "wet weather" runoff) often contains toxicants. Establishing field sites (which run the gamut from agricultural river basins to industrial and municipal sites), Dr. Burton and his students brave the elements to expose these aquatic organisms to real-world conditions (extreme heat, cold, thunderstorms, turbidity) and determine if stressors (such as toxicants) are present. This method, called "in-situ" testing, has the advantage of producing results that are more realistic than laboratory exposures.

Dr. Burton's interests center on sediment and stormwater contaminants, and he is the recent recipient of a three-year $449,448 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for his project, "Sediment Contamination Assessment Methods: Validation of Standardized and Novel Approaches." This collaborative effort to determine whether freshwater sediment criteria and standard US EPA acute and chronic toxicity and bioaccumulation tests are appropriate indicators of ecological risk, will also take advantage of the expertise of two other WSU faculty, Dr. Daniel Krane (Biological Sciences) and Dr. Thomas Tiernan (Brehm Laboratory). In addition, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory and Colorado State University will have a hand in the success of this project.

Dr. Burton's travels in the name of research have taken him to all corners of the earth. Since 1996, Dr. Burton has given keynote addresses at conferences in Italy, Finland, Australia, Mexico and Portugal, in addition to a memorable four weeks in Antarctica during the fall of 1997. Working with a team of scientists from New Zealand to study contamination, he experienced the coldest Antarctic spring on record, with temperatures hovering at -10 degrees and wind gusts of 50 to 90 miles per hour. Unfortunately, Antarctica shares some of the same environmental problems as the rest of the world as a result of spills of hazardous materials and global warming. Increased UV exposure, due to the hole in the ozone layer, is reacting with contamination from the bases on Antarctica, causing increased toxicity.

FY97 = July 1, 1996 - June 30, 1997

FY88 = July 1, 1987 - June 30, 1988

FY97 = July 1, 1996 - June 30, 1997

*Dollars in thousands

*Dollars in thousands

Fred D. Garber, Ph.D.
Electrical Engineering

Proximity to Wright Patterson Air Force Base is a plus for Wright State University, particularly because WSU has a resourceful, energetic contingent of faculty poised to take advantage of research opportunities, literally in their own "back yard." Dr. Fred D. Garber of the Department of Electrical Engineering exemplifies the type of researcher whose cutting-edge work satisfies a need for high-tech drama and real-world application. His main emphasis has been in the area of Automatic Target Recognition (ATR).

Imagine a massive game of "Where's Waldo?" and you have an idea of the concept of ATR. Using computer processing to identify and distinguish target signatures in sensor data, the Department of Defense funds most of the research in this area at WSU. Besides Garber, members of the ATR team at WSU include Computer Science and Engineering faculty, Drs. A. Ardeshir Goshtasby, Jack S. Jean, Mateen M. Rizki, and Karen Tomko, and Electrical Engineering faculty, Drs. Lang Hong, William McCormick, Arnab K. Shaw, and Kefu Xue.

The ultimate goal of this work is to provide the U.S. Air Force with "situational awareness." If computers can be made to detect and recognize targets automatically (finding Waldo in the mass of confusion), a pilot's workload can be significantly reduced. Likewise, the precision and effectiveness of the pilot's weapons can be enhanced. As Dr. Garber describes the scenario, with today's technology, the person with the best chance of winning in the battlefield is the one with the superior situational awareness from sensor interpretation.

While you would not imagine that descriptions of enemy targets would be public data, compact discs with titles such as "Public Targets" and "Public Clutter" are made available to scientists working on the problem of distinguishing tanks from trees in the enemy landscape. These enemy weapon images provide invaluable assistance in computer modeling and developing initial results, useful as a foundation for grant application submissions. Garber emphasizes algorithm development in his work on detecting and recognizing targets.

How do you filter out the trees, buildings, or grass ("clutter") from the tanks ("targets")? While many of us have heard of Doppler radar in relation to meteorology, the Doppler effect is useful in distinguishing the characteristics of objects. We know that tanks and missiles move and trees are stationary. The Doppler effect describes the change in the frequency of waves in relation to the source and the observer. Short wavelengths and long wavelengths give us a lot of information about what is on the ground, camouflaged by leaves and branches.

Even as ATR techniques are refined, the pilot remains the final decision maker in firing a weapon or holding back. The best technological information in the world is no substitute for the experienced pilot's senses or thought processes.

ATR is not confined to the military, either. Knowledge gained from the defense research has application in the medical field, for instance. The human intervention rule applies just as well here, too. A CAT scan may provide excellent clinical data with respect to tissue density, but the sole use of this data would not be sufficient to independently make a life-or-death decision. Interpretation by a physician, taking into account a patient's history and current scientific findings, combined with the CAT scan, would provide the basis for decision making.

Whether the scenario be in a war room or an operating room, sifting the clutter from the target has application for a variety of uses. Dr. Garber enjoys the challenge of ATR because he finds it "fascinating and challenging." The efforts of Garber and the ATR collaborators, at WSU and other institutions (University of Dayton, University of Cincinnati, and The Ohio State University) may someday give our Air Force the advantage of situational awareness that could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

SOURCE: National Science Foundation/SRS, Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges, Fiscal Year 1995

The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (RSP) works with faculty and staff at Wright State University (WSU) to increase externally funded research and other sponsored programs. RSP staff members provide the following services:

Identification of External Sources of Funding

WSU subscribes to SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network), an electronic funding database of thousands of funding opportunities, available through the World Wide Web (WWW). In addition, WSU is a member of the Community of Science (COS), a resource for scientific information on the WWW. Membership in COS offers to WSU faculty a Funding Opportunities database, an Expertise database, "Faculty Match" software, "Funding Alert" e-mailed reminder system, and access to other COS databases. RSP also maintains a library of reference materials and monitors federal, state, and local newsletters, and publications for funding opportunities.

Dissemination of Funding Information

RSP produces Funding Update, a monthly bulletin of upcoming deadlines for funding programs, and Research News, a newsletter published three times per academic year, which covers grants awarded and related topics of interest. RSP maintains a computerized research interest profile database of over 600 WSU faculty and staff.

Liaison with Sponsors

RSP staff members serve as liaisons with public and private sponsors to discuss preliminary proposals, study and interpret program priorities and funding levels, observe trends in federal and non-federal programs; monitor proposals that have been submitted and attempt to expedite their review; stimulate interest in WSU by providing sponsors with information about faculty and staff research interests; and arrange for sponsors to visit WSU to discuss their funding programs.

Proposal Development and Preparation

RSP staff will help faculty develop preproposals, review proposals for completeness and proper assembly, interpret guidelines and regulations, present workshops on grantseeking, and assist faculty in locating alternative sources of funding.

Budget Preparation

RSP offers expertise in developing and reviewing final budget drafts that accurately reflect grant expenses, comply with university regulations and meet agency guidelines, and assists in setting up computerized spreadsheets to develop multi-year budgets.

Institutional Authorization

RSP is the central office for the institutional review process for requests for external support; staff will obtain the appropriate necessary signatures.

Proposal Transmittal

RSP will make the necessary copies of the proposal, mail the proposal to the agency and maintain files for tracking submissions.

Institutional Compliance

RSP staff checks for proper review and approval of all research involving animal use, human subjects, hazardous wastes, radioactive materials, recombinant DNA, and security classifications.

RSP administers the Institutional Review Board, the Institutional Biosafety Committee, the Laboratory Animal Care and Use Committee, and acts as a liaison with the University Radiation Safety Committee, and the Biological Chemical Health and Safety Committee.

Contract Negotiations

RSP staff is authorized to negotiate the terms of awards with potential sponsors.

Administration of Externally Funded Programs

Following award notification, RSP will establish a budget and account number for the project, assist the project director in the orderly administration of the project, act as liaison between the sponsor and Principal Investigator (PI), keep the PI apprised of technical reports due dates, finalize all budget transfers and prepare and submit fiscal reports.

Administration of Internally Funded Programs

RSP coordinates WSU's four internal grant programs: Research Initiation Grants, Professional Development Grants, Research Challenge and Research Travel.

Technology Transfer

RSP is the initial contact for information on copyrights and patents. WSU enlists the assistance of various technology transfer programs to help faculty in the evaluation, patenting and licensing of inventions.

Government Security

RSP is the clearinghouse for all government security matters involving WSU employees. RSP processes security clearances, monitors security activities and processes passes and credentials for individuals working on Department of Defense contracts and for research conducted on federal property.

Wright State University
3640 Colonel Glenn Highway
122 Allyn Hall
Dayton, Ohio 45435-0001
Telephone: (937) 775-2425
Fax: (937) 775-3781
e-mail: rsp@wright.edu
URL: http://www.wright.edu/rsp/

Dean, School of Graduate Studies, and Associate Provost for Research
Joseph F. Thomas, Jr., Ph.D.; <jthomas@wright.edu>

Director, Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
William K. Sellers, Ph.D.; <william.sellers@wright.edu>

RSP Staff

Research in Review is edited and produced by Ellen Reinsch Friese and Jan Power.