Kaufman Foundation Grants in biology, chemistry and physics
The Charles E. Kaufman Foundation offers grants to support research in biology, chemistry and physics at academic institutions in Pennsylvania.Proposals are required to address basic (fundamental, pure) questions addressing core principles in biology, physics and chemistry or at the disciplinary boundaries between these fields. Applied or clinical studies will not be supported. Competitive applications are expected to be rich in innovative ideas and approaches with the potential for generating transformative intellectual advances.Continue reading →
Finding out what others are reading over coffee on a weekend morning can be a reminder of the thrill of being part of an academic community, especially one dedicated to the notion that ideas really matter, not just in theory but in practice. Intellectual thrill-seeking in service to humanity.
Last weekend, a colleague shared this essay by historians Anthony Grafton and James Grossman. In addition to useful critique of some “zombie platitudes about higher ed that stalk the Internet,” Grafton and Grossman make a compelling case for the central importance of student research in the formation of young minds. These are, I would add, the minds of the people to whom we intend to hand over the proverbial keys, so the stakes are high.
Playing with materials, the design decisions based on responses from material processes are integral to the art of craft. The embodied knowledge of making is gained through the physical interaction with materials, searching for an order rooted in history, perception and materiality.[1]
Creativity in architecture can be based on the transformation of matter. Different from the formal imagination, the material imagination can give rise to images provoked solely and directly from an immediate confrontation, interpretation, and manipulation of matter. These images may be assigned a category by the eye but only the hand truly reveals them. They depend on visceral readings that are projected through qualities such as mass, material surface, texture, or light, space, and time.
What if we used the term “nature” instead of “environment”? What would it look like to have a department of nature studies? Why do we so frequently turn to silent depictions of nature, while medieval literature and natural philosophy found it thinkable to personify Nature as a talkative woman? What do we lose when we no longer let nature speak?
“ARPA-E has released a Funding Opportunity Announcement for its newest program, GENerators for Small Electrical and Thermal Systems (GENSETS). The program will fund the development of disruptive generator technologies that will enable widespread deployment of residential combined heat and power systems. The ARPA-E GENSETS program seeks transformative generators/engines with 1 kW of electrical output that have high efficiency, long life, low cost, and low emissions.
The deadline to submit a Concept Paper is December 1, 2014. Additional information, including the full Funding Opportunity Announcement and how to find project teaming partners, is available on ARPA-E’s online application portal, ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://bit.ly/GENSETSFOA).”
The National Science Foundation is currently soliciting proposals for their PFI: Building Innovation Capacity (BIC) program under the topic of Smart Service Systems. This is a limited submission with an institutional limit of two. Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) program supports academia-industry partnerships to focus on post-discovery, academic-led research that advances, adapts and integrates technology into a human-centered smart service system and builds innovation capacity:
The second lecture in the PostHUMANities series organized by Lehigh’s Humanities Center, was given by Prof. David Bates, chair of the Rhetoric Department at Berkeley University. His lecture, part of a project provisionally titled Human Insight: An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence, examined the history of artificial intelligence and cybernetics.
In a talk that spoke to historians of science and technology, media theorists, cognitive scientists, and anyone interested in the relationship between cognition and technology in a digital world, Prof. Bates argued that philosophical and scientific discourses of the mind and of technology both depend on analogies between cognitive processes and computational systems. Professor Bates highlighted the ways in which the brain has been seen to function like a machine and, inversely, machines have been understood to operate much like minds—from the early modern period to today. Continue reading David Bates at the Humanities Center PostHUMANities series→
The Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) funding opportunity from the Department of Defense is now accepting white papers for research grants for nineteen listed topics (also copied below). MURI efforts involve teams of researchers (from one or more institutions) investigating high priority topics and opportunities that intersect more than one traditional technical discipline.
Thank you to everyone to who participated in the recent Instrumentation Idea Exchange. Moving forward, the timeline for the two funding opportunities for laboratory equipment for research is shown below.
Tomorrow (Wednesday, 10/8), we will be holding an information session on the Accelerator Grant Program in the Humanities Center (West Packer Avenue, Across from the Packer House). Light refreshments will be provided. Please feel free to bring your lunch and your questions about the program.
Also, please be aware that the dates for the Accelerator Grant Program have been updated. The new dates are:
