by Elizabeth Boyle

Five OU-COMers recently received more than $1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and American Heart Association (AHA) for a variety of research projects, including one that will help scientists understand the evolution of dinosaurs and another that might help children in Kenya orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

“Research is certainly one of our major thrusts in the college, and we’re making a particular effort to increase federal funding,” says Jack Blazyk, Ph.D., associate dean for research and grants.

The five new grants brought in $1,110,476 in external funding to the college in just the past month, which makes Blazyk optimistic about the future.

“These grants will enable our faculty to do high-level research, and they will enhance the stature of the medical school and the university. We hope that this is the start of something big,” he says.

Audrone Biknevicius, Ph.D., an associate professor of anatomy in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, will travel to Australia to conduct much of her NSF-funded research. Biknevicius, the co-principal investigator in this study, and Stephen Reilly, Ph.D., the principal investigator and an associate professor of biological sciences, received a $363,243, three-year grant to research the locomotor evolution of mammals. The team will examine marsupials, such as opossums, and primitive placental animals, such as hedgehogs and rats, Biknevicius says. One feature that distinguishes these two groups of animals is that most marsupials have epipubic bones, a pair of bones projecting into the abdominal wall from the underside of the pelvis. Reilly has hypothesized that the epipubic bones constrain the way animals can move. The researchers hope to learn whether the absence of the bones was an evolutionary advantage, which may explain why placental mammals are more abundant than marsupial mammals.

Susan Williams, Ph.D., currently a gross anatomy instructor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, received two NSF grants. She’ll use a $181,277, three-year grant to study how feeding styles change as animals grow, and how that relates to the growth and function of the muscles and bones in the face. She will study goats and alpacas, supplied by Ohio State University’s veterinary school, because they differ markedly in the structure of their jaws and yet are more or less similar in how they feed and what they eat, she explained. These animals also typically engage in tens of thousands of chew per day soon after weaning, which may impact how their facial muscles and bones develop.

Williams, who will start a tenure-track position as assistant professor of biomedical sciences on July 1, also received a $8,964, one-year grant for a pilot study in which she and her colleagues will develop a new system for researching how jaw muscles perform during normal feeding in the wild. The development of this system will be an important addition to the tools used by functional morphologists, because it will allow researchers to investigate animals in their natural environments rather than in controlled laboratory settings, she explained. With co-principal investigators Ken Glander of Duke University and Chris Vinyard of Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Williams will examine howler monkeys, but eventually hopes to expand this project to include other animals as well.

Gillian Ice, Ph.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of biological anthropology and gerontology in the Department of Social Medicine, received a $265,000, three-year NSF grant to study the impact of caregiving and gender on the nutritional status of Luo elders in Kenya. The high mortality rate of adults with HIV/AIDS has produced 11 million orphans, and care of them has been left largely to the elderly, according to Ice. In a previous study, Ice learned that female caregivers were more likely to be undernourished than female non-caregivers, but male caregivers were better nourished than male non-caregivers. Her new study will look at what might drive those gender differences and the impact of caregiving so that ultimately, authorities can develop interventions to enable grandparents to care for orphaned grandchildren.

Yang Li, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neuroscience in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, says he hopes his research will help with the development of treatment for ischemic stroke, the third leading cause of death in the United States. Li received a $121,000, two-year grant from the AHA, Ohio Valley Affiliate, to study the role of zinc in ischemic stroke, which occurs when blood from the heart and lungs can’t reach the brain due to a blocked artery. After as little as three minutes of blood loss to the brain, brain function can be lost. Li and his lab assistant, doctoral student Christian Stork, want to determine whether calcium overload in ischemia is actually zinc overload.

Lawrence Witmer, Ph.D., an associate professor of anatomy in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, received a $171,262, three-year grant from NSF. See the story on Witmer’s research and grant here.