June 2025 Grants and Awards
AI-Driven Multiscale Computational Framework for Corrosion-Induced Degradation of High-Temperature Alloys
Principal Investigator:
Sol I. Lim
Assistant Professor
Industrial and Systems Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$90,000
Sponsor:
InnoVital Systems Inc
Bacterial Suppression of Ant
Principal Investigator:
Mark A. Williams
Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Total Anticipated:
$5,320
Sponsor:
Virginia Soybean Board
Building Accessibility Evaluation for Inclusive Flood Response: Integrating Foundation Models and Value-Based Methods
Principal Investigator:
Christiana C. Garcia
Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical and ComputerEngineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$45,000
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative
CAREER: Transformation Potential of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Drinking Water Distribution Systems (NSF 2338480)
Principal Investigator:
Kirin E. Furst
Associate Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$549,998
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
CCI Experiential Learning
Principal Investigator:
John L. Reid
Assistant Professor
School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Total Anticipated:
$13,000
Sponsor:
Friends of Nachusa Grasslands
Clinch Massif Aerial Imagery Analysis
Principal Investigator:
Yang Yi
Professor
Institute for Advanced Computing Academic Affairs
Institute for Advanced Computing
Total Anticipated:
$59,632
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Coding for Fault Tolerance and Quantum-Safe Cryptography
Principal Investigator:
Eric R. Day
Manager, Insect Identification Lab
Department of Entomology
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Total Anticipated:
$1,775
Sponsor:
Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
Collaborative Research: Advances in African Crust and Upper Mantle Dynamics From Seismology, Geodesy, and Geodynamics
Principal Investigator:
Celine Hin
Associate Professor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$5,500
Sponsor:
Virginia Space Grant Consortium
Collaborative Research: Faculty and Student Practices That Shape the Regulation of Teamwork, Psychological Safety, and Conflict in First-Year Engineering Teams
Principal Investigator:
Rolf Mueller
Raymond E. and Shirley B. Lynn Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$5,000
Sponsor:
Virginia Space Grant Consortium
Constraining Mantle Anelasticity Using S Wave Amplitudes
Principal Investigator:
Ying Zhou
Associate Professor
Department of Geosciences
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$228,014
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Cyberinfrastructure Platform LAFireKG: Learning From Los Angeles Fires With Knowledge Graphs, Remote Sensing, and Large Language Models
Principal Investigator:
Yulia Gel
Professor
Department of Statistics
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$74,627
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Defining a New Standard for IIoT Wireless Security
Principal Investigator:
Jacob R. Grohs
Associate Professor
Department of Engineering Education
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$30,000
Sponsor:
Virtual Library of Virginia
Disinfection Resiliency and Microbial Risk in Drinking Water Distribution Systems During Extreme Heat Disasters (NSF 2242705)
Principal Investigator:
Bradley A. Davis
Research Associate Professor
Virginia Tech National Security Institute
Total Anticipated:
$350,000
Sponsor:
United States Naval Surface Warfare Center
Disrupted Mechanosensing as a Novel Control Strategy for the Disease Vector, Aedes Aegypti
Principal Investigator:
Jyotishka Datta
Assistant Professor
Department of Statistics
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$450,000
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Evaluating Land Use Change and Livelihood Responses to Large Investments for High-Value Agriculture: Managing Risks in the Era of the Green Morocco Plan
Principal Investigator:
Shannon L. Farris
Assistant Professor
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
Total Anticipated:
$75,000
Sponsor:
Virginia Center on Aging
Evolving Zero-Trust for O-RAN Defense: Interpretable and Verifiable AI for 5G NTN Fake Base Station Detection
Principal Investigator:
Carla V. Finkielstein
Professor
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
Total Anticipated:
$64,463
Sponsor:
Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health
Exotic Woodboring Beetle Survey 2025
Principal Investigator:
Tanya LeRoith
Associate Professor
Veterinary Medical Research and Graduate Studies
College of Veterinary Medicine
Total Anticipated:
$30,566
Sponsor:
United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service
Flashbang Impairment Reduction via Synchronized Timing (FIRST)
Principal Investigator:
Christopher B. Williams
L.S. Randolph Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$2,999,319
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Futureproofing Consensus Protocols for Blockchain and More: Constructing Quantum-Resistant Threshold (Ring) Signatures
Principal Investigator:
Kirin E. Furst
Associate Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$385,353
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Heavy-Tailed Priors for Robust Bayesian Inference in Ecology, Machine Learning, and Astronomy
Principal Investigator:
Ryan S. Senger
Associate Professor
Department of Biological Systems Engineering
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Total Anticipated:
$425,118
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Helicopter Seat-Integrated Power Assist Device (Phase II SBIR)
Principal Investigator:
Ruichuan Zhang
Assistant Professor
Myers-Lawson School of Construction
Total Anticipated:
$550,000
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Helping Underrepresented Students Navigate the Tech Hiring Pipeline
Principal Investigator:
Dwayne C. Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$5,000
Sponsor:
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
High-Throughput Biological Phenotyping Using Novel Raman/SERS Devices
Principal Investigator:
Gretchen L. Matthews
Professor and Director, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Department of Mathematics
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$60,000
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Impact of Prenatal and Postnatal Factors on Mother and Child Health
Principal Investigator:
Stanley Grant
Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$1,800,390
Sponsor:
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Integrated Viral Hepatitis Surveillance, Prevention, and Special Project Funding for Virginia
Principal Investigator:
Mark V. Huerta
Assistant Professor
Department of Engineering Education
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$186,903
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Machine Learning-Enabled Acoustic Sensing Capabilities With Integrated Sensor Dynamics for GPS-Denied Environments
Principal Investigator:
Elinor Benami
Assistant Professor
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Total Anticipated:
$124,294
Sponsor:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Neuromuscular Adaptation to Exercise in Alzheimer's Disease
Principal Investigator:
Elizabeth Nyboer
Assistant Professor
Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation
College of Natural Resources and Environment
Total Anticipated:
$113,151.70
Sponsor:
Great Lakes Fisheries Commission
Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Program, OWMP FY2026
Principal Investigator:
Sarah Arpin
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$44,096
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Physical and Simulated Test Cases of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Principal Investigator:
Alaa Salman A. Algargoosh
Assistant Professor
School of Architecture
Total Anticipated:
$59,974
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Physical and Simulated Test Cases of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Principal Investigator:
Andrea L'Afflitto
Associate Professor
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$3,450
Sponsor:
Virginia Space Grant Consortium
Protecting AI With Security Guarantees Using Confidential Virtual Machines With GPUs
Principal Investigator:
Ming Jin
Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$60,000
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Protist Oxygen Sensing in Human Disease
Principal Investigator:
Ira Blader
Professor
Veterinary Medical Research and Graduate Studies
College of Veterinary Medicine
Total Anticipated:
$1,713,370
Sponsor:
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Resilient Intelligent and Secured Edge IoT
Principal Investigator:
Wenjie Xiong
Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$60,000
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Robotic Additive Manufacturing of Volumetrically Oriented Multi-Functional Composites via Digital Twin-Informed Optimization
Principal Investigator:
Alan J. Michaels
Professor
Virginia Tech National Security Institute
Total Anticipated:
$50,000
Sponsor:
Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Node
Securing Embodied Systems Against Adversarial Audio Through Physical Acoustics
Principal Investigator:
Megan Wawro
Professor
Department of Mathematics
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$499,502
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Student Understanding of Linear Algebra Across Quantum Sciences
Principal Investigator:
Kevin B. Kochersberger
Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
College of Engineering
Total Anticipated:
$5,002
Sponsor:
Clinch Coalition
The Bimiizii Project: Indigenous Relationships With Sea Lamprey in the Great Lakes
Principal Investigator:
Sweta Agrawal
Assistant Professor
School of Neuroscience
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$5,000
Sponsor:
Oak Ridge Associated Universities Inc
The Effects of Bison Reintroduction on Tallgrass Prairie Plant Diversity and Soil C & N
Principal Investigator:
Ira Blader
Professor
Veterinary Medical Research and Graduate Studies
College of Veterinary Medicine
Total Anticipated:
$1,713,370
Sponsor:
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
The Role of Dendritic Mitochondria in Alzheimer's Disease Synapse Dysfunction
Principal Investigator:
Joshua C. Drake
Assistant Professor
Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Total Anticipated:
$608,948
Sponsor:
National Institue on Aging
Tools and Resources to Facilitate Adoption of Engineering Mechanics OER
Principal Investigator:
D. S. Stamps
Associate Professor
Department of Geosciences
College of Science
Total Anticipated:
$454,000
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle RF Surveys
Principal Investigator:
Bradley A. Davis
Research Associate Professor
Virginia Tech National Security Institute
Total Anticipated:
$689,024
Sponsor:
United States Naval Research Laboratory
Weed Management in Soybean, 2025
Principal Investigator:
Vijay Singh
Assistant Professor
Eastern Shore Agricultural Research and Extension Center
Agriculture Experiment Station
Total Anticipated:
$21,414
Sponsor:
Virginia Soybean Board
What's in Our Water? Promoting Well Water Stewardship Through Youth Education
Principal Investigator:
Leigh Anne H. Krometis
Professor
Department of Biological Systems Engineering
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Total Anticipated:
$133,331
Sponsor:
Virginia Environmental Endowment