innovation-2014

FACULTY OPPORTUNITY AWARDSMost successful Faculty Opportunity Award (FOA)recipients receive from $5,000 to $20,000 each. Forthe university, these investments yield impressivereturns, according to Thomas Piechota, vice presidentfor Research and Economic Development. Duringfiscal years 2012 and 2013, for example, theprogram’s $600,000 awarded generated almost $4million in external funding, a return of $5.70 for every dollar invested, he notes. “We believe in investing in research at UNLV,” says Piechota “These FacultyOpportunity Awards are generating real results in the form of proposals forexternal funding as well as publication of research findings and developmentof intellectual property with commercialization potential. We have some verygifted researchers who need a modest investment in order to gather data orinformation; in turn, this can produce huge returns in the form of scholarship,grants, and industry-sponsored research for UNLV.” Below are four examplesof projects that recently received Faculty Opportunity Awards.OTHERWORLDLYINVESTIGATIONSData from NASA’s MarsExploration Program ishelping Elisabeth Hausrathunderstand how soil andwater might have onceinteracted on the surfaceof our solar system’smost-Earthlike neighbor.ELISABETH HAUSRATHGEOSCIENCEELISABETH (LIBBY) HAUSRATH GREW UPin the desert, a circumstance that made it easyfor her to appreciate how water, our planet’smost important chemical compound,profoundly affects even the most moisturechallengedof locales.For Hausrath, now an assistant professor ofgeoscience at UNLV, that appreciationeventually led to a doctorate focused onaqueous geochemistry from Penn State.Because her studies there happened to coincidewith the Mars Rover landing — an event thatproved the now desertous Red Planet mayhave once been wet — she quite naturallybegan to think about slipping the surly bondsof Earth (figuratively) to conduct her research.Today, due in part to her UNLV FacultyOpportunity Award, Hausrath is working tointerpret data from NASA’s Mars ExplorationProgram to investigate how soil and watermight have once interacted on the surface ofour solar system’s most-Earthlike neighbor.“My research program aims to betterunderstand chemical weathering and soilformation on Earth and on Mars,” she says.“The Mars Exploration Program results inincreasing amounts of fascinating data fromMars. Our goal is to help interpret andunderstand these data and their implicationsfor Mars as a potentially habitable planet.”Funding from the Faculty OpportunityAward, Hausrath says, was key to laying thescientific groundwork necessary for attractingthe extramural support that such timeintensiveresearch demands.“In order to get larger, multi-year grants, it isreally helpful to have preliminary data — atleast a few results showing that an idea ispromising — and that the proposed researchapproach is appropriate,” she says. She currentlyhas two multi-year proposals pending withNASA resulting from the FOA award and isvery hopeful that they will be funded.The internal award has also allowed her topublish more widely in her field and to morefully support students working in her laboratory.One particularly fruitful area for Hausrathand her team involves analyses of clay minerals.Because these minerals — also known ashydrous aluminium phyllosilicates — form inthe presence of water, they are of intenseinterest to scientists studying habitability.“Our research on transitions in clay-mineralchemistry, particularly the work of Ph.D.student Seth Gainey and master’s studentMichael Steiner, is yielding fascinating resultsthat may help us better interpret the potentialhabitability of clay-mineral-containing Martianenvironments,” Hausrath says. “This project isproviding new insights that could lead tofurther studies conducted at UNLV or otherinstitutions.”Her work has implications closer to home aswell, she adds, ticking off a list of investigationsthat have also generated enthusiasm amongthe funding agencies supporting her work.R. MARSH STARKS22 / INNOVATION2014