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News Release

Last modified: Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Web site details $16.98 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for IU researchers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 15, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University today (Sept. 15) announced the creation of a Web site -- www.stimulus.iu.edu -- to provide information about federal grants the university has received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Through Aug. 31, IU has received $16,980,925 through 57 projects funded by the federal economic stimulus act. Awards will continue to be announced over the next several months. Also today, the IU School of Medicine announced that more than 42 of its researchers have received more than $12 million in ARRA funds.

More than $6.7 million, $6,756,940, came to IU through 17 grants from the National Science Foundation alone.

The Web site groups the projects into three themes: Health, Science and Technology, and Education. Drop-down menus will enable users to search projects by theme, funding agency and campus. Additional information, including project summaries, photos and videos, will be included when available.

The site will be updated regularly.

As part of the nearly $800 billion federal program, more than $21.5 billion will be awarded through federal agencies and the majority will be awarded to colleges and universities.

So far, three IU campuses are participating in projects funded entirely or in part by ARRA grants, according to Robert B. Schnabel, IU interim vice president for research and dean of the School of Informatics.

"The quality of these funded projects makes a powerful statement about the talent and research capabilities of the faculty and staff at IU," Schnabel said. "Besides highlighting their efforts, this new Web site will keep the public informed about the investments being made in Indiana with their tax dollars.

"In addition to strengthening research initiatives with the potential to improve the lives of Hoosiers, this funding will help IU continue to attract and retain top researchers in fields vital to the vision for our state," Schnabel added.

"These research grants funded by the economic stimulus legislation demonstrate the quality of the university's research team," said D. Craig Brater, M.D., Walter J. Daly Professor and dean of the IU School of Medicine. "These awards not only are supporting science that will translate into better health and a stronger economy for Hoosiers, but are creating, and saving, many important laboratory research jobs."

Examples of funding that IU has received thus far include:

• A $237,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for a project directed by Karmen Yoder, IU School of Medicine assistant professor of radiology, who will use modern imaging technologies to study the central mechanisms of pain in the brain for victims of fibromyalgia.
• A three-year $467,071 grant from the National Science Foundation, that will enable Lisa Gershkoff-Stowe, IU Bloomington associate professor of speech and hearing sciences, to investigate young children's developing ability to retrieve words for naming during a period of time when their vocabulary is rapidly expanding.
• A $97,780 grant from the National Institutes of Health, to David Giedroc, IU Bloomington professor of chemistry, to support a postdoctoral fellow, Faith Jacobsen, in her studies of Streptococcus pneumonia, a bacterial pathogen responsible for such human diseases as pneumonia and meningitis. Giedroc's team researches how Streptococcus pneumoniae acquires nutrients during the course of an infection. The specific nutrients under investigation are the essential minerals zinc and manganese. The acquisition of these metals represents an important battleground in human host-bacterial pathogen interactions since both zinc and manganese, whether they are limiting or in excess, can be detrimental to the survival of the invading microbe.
• A three-year $420,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to Ilan Levine, associate professor of physics and astronomy at IU South Bend, to continue his work on detecting dark matter. The search for dark matter is one of the big challenges for astrophysics today.

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