For many professors, the lifeblood of their research is grant money from institutions outside the academic sphere — money that enables them to devote resources toward cutting-edge scholarship and exploration. Below is a list of some new grants received during the 2006-2007 academic year that will fund new research at CUA in the coming semesters:

• Ian Pegg

  Sandra Hanson

  Jessica Ramella-Roman

  CUA’s Vitreous State Laboratory, under the direction of Physics Professor Ian Pegg, received six grants totaling nearly $8 million to continue research and development related to the conversion of nuclear waste into stable glass and to improve such processing at two Department of Energy sites. He was also awarded a one-year grant totaling $108,000 from the Department of Transportation for cement and fly ash research.
  
  
• Biology Professor Venigalla Rao received a three-year grant totaling $480,000 from the Henry Jackson Foundation for a project to prepare high-quality AIDS vaccine candidates and to produce successful HIV vaccine antigens.
  
  
• Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Otto Wilson received a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER grant totaling $450,000 to study materials to help heal damaged bone.
  
  
• Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Lu Sun received a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER grant totaling $410,000 to study vehicle-highway interaction. The research will help to improve the design and management of highway infrastructures.
  
  
• Sociology Professor Sandra Hanson received a three-year grant totaling $255,649 from the National Science Foundation to study the dynamics of gender, race and science education among Asian-American women.
  
  
• Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Jessica Ramella-Roman received a $230,000 Early Career Award from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation to fund two years of research related to measuring oxygen levels in the retinas of diabetes patients. This research will attempt to determine the relationship between oxygen flow and the vision loss that often results from diabetes.
  
  
• CUA’s Metropolitan College received a $220,482 grant from the D.C. Department of Employment Services for a flagship Washington-area program that will prepare workers to advance professionally in the health care and hospitality industries.
  
  
• Law Professor Marshall Breger received a four-year grant totaling $165,000 from the Luso-American Development Foundation for a project titled “Initiative for Portuguese and American Legal Dialogue.”
  
  
• Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Jessica Ramella-Roman and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Joseph Hidler received a $150,000 grant from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to study complications from pressure sores — one of the biggest problems facing spinal cord injury victims.
  
  
• Research Associate Professor of Physics Glenn Wahlgren received a $127,383 grant from NASA to study the dynamics of stellar atmospheres through ultraviolet spectroscopy.
  
  
• Adjunct Professor of Physics Norman Ness received $100,000 from NASA to analyze and interpret data from the interstellar missions Voyager 1 and 2.