2022 Dean for Research Innovation Funds

Sustainability of Our Planet

• Daniel Sigman, Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences and an oceanographer and geochemist, in collaboration with Curtis Deutsch, professor of geosciences and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, and Laure Resplandy, assistant professor of geosciences and the High Meadows Environmental Institute will investigate the potential for open-ocean seaweed farming to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

New Ideas in the Natural Sciences

• Elizabeth Niespolo, assistant professor of geosciences, will explore how dinosaur eggshells provide insights into the ecology and environment that existed during the age of the dinosaurs.
• Catherine Jensen Peña, assistant professor of neuroscience, will lead a study of the brain activity and biological mechanisms underlying paternal behavior in African striped mice.
• Marissa Weichman, assistant professor of chemistry, will develop methods for measuring the quantum states of molecules called endofullerenes, a family of hollow carbon cages in which a guest atom or molecule is trapped. 

New Industrial Collaborations

• Jeroen Tromp, the Blair Professor of Geology, will explore the use of ultrasonic imaging techniques to detect the presence of tiny diamonds in igneous rock. Tromp and his team will collaborate with scientists at De Beers.

New Ideas in the Humanities

• Anna Arabindan-Kesson, associate professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies will lead a team developing ArtHx, a research project and online website that examines how British colonial attitudes permeated medicine, art and conceptions of race, both historically and today.

New Ideas in the Social Sciences

• Ryo Morimoto, assistant professor of anthropology and the Richard Stockton Bicentennial Preceptor, will lead student researchers from the Nuclear Princeton project in the exploration of Princeton University’s history of nuclear science research and related intergenerational struggles among the Navajo community. 
• João Biehl, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology, Chair of the Department of Anthropology, and director of the Brazil LAB, and Agustín Fuentes, professor of anthropology, will explore how to combine the ecological knowledge and practices of Amazonian Indigenous peoples with conservation sciences and anthropological perspectives to reshape ideas of conservation and better protect the Amazonian ecosystem.