Office of Research and Sponsored Programs Announces 2016 Grant Recipients

The Cal State East Bay Office of Research and Sponsored Programs announced this month that three professors and the university’s Hayward Promise Neighborhood initiative would be receiving several grants for various projects and programming. According to letters from Jeffery Seitz, interim associate vice president of ORSP, recipients were awarded the grants due to the high quality of their proposals, relevance of each project's’ goal and the confidence that each sponsor has in the recipient’s ability to complete the proposed work.

Cristian Gaedicke, assistant professor, engineering

Gaedicke received an award from Chevron for $750,000 to fund the CSUEB Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement program and an additional $51,421 for the Discover Engineering Contra Costra program. The MESA program engages educationally disadvantaged students so they excel in math and science and graduate with math-based degrees.

Carolyn Nelson, principal investigator — Hayward Promise Neighborhood

The Hayward Promise Neighborhood initiative is a program that aims to improve the lives and academics of more than 10,000 residents and 5,100 students in the ethnically diverse, low-income Jackson Triangle neighborhood. Due to its success supporting and motivating underserved students, HPN was selected as one of 18 recipients nationwide to receive $500,000 from AT&T through the Aspire Connect to Success Competition.

Brian Perry, assistant professor, biological sciences

Perry received a $252,349 grant from the National Science Foundation for his project entitled “Collaborative Research: Plant and Fungal Diversity of Tafea Province, Vanuatu.” The professor’s work involves identifying and cataloguing fungal endophytes — microscopic fungi that live inside plants. 

Farzad Shahbodaghlou, associate professor, engineering

Shahbodaghlou received two awards this year. The first was a $61,505.21 grant from Contra Costa Economic Partnership for a project entitled 2016 Discover Engineering Contra Costa. And the second, a grant from Chevron for $150,000, will benefit a program called “Discover Engineering: Ambassador.”