Asbury, Bilén, and Knecht receive Multidisciplinary Research Seed Grant
Professor of Chemistry John Asbury; Professor of Engineering Design, Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering Sven Bilén; and Assistant Teaching Professor Sean Knecht recently received a grant from the Penn State College of Engineering Multidisciplinary Research Seed Grants program.
The team received their grant for a project entitled “Temporally and spatially resolved measurement of plasma-generated reactive species through liquid.” As part of the project, Asbury plans to use time-resolved infrared spectroscopy to study the reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) that form in liquids from exposure to the low temperature plasma sources developed by Bilén and Knecht. The team hopes to discover how the properties of the plasma and its interaction with liquids influence the formation of RONS species, which have been found to have therapeutic benefits in a variety of medical and biochemical applications.
The Multidisciplinary Research Seed Grants program supports research that will increase the competitiveness of faculty in attracting high-impact multidisciplinary and center-level research funding from the state and federal government, from industry or from research-oriented foundations. Faculty are encouraged to foster new partnerships with colleagues from differing fields who have complementary technical expertise. The program recently awarded more than $300,000 to six project teams, including the Asbury, Bilén, and Knecht’s project.
Multidisciplinary Research Seed Grants provide up to $60,000 over one year to support undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral candidates, small equipment, software, user facility fees, and materials and supplies. More information about the program can be found here.