Innovative Ideas Reap Big Rewards for Junior Faculty

An internal grant program at the University of Virginia is giving choice young faculty in the sciences, engineering and medicine a career boost. 

The Fund for Excellence in Science and Technology (FEST) Distinguished Young Investigator Grant program is administered through the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies (VPRGS) and aims to reward faculty in their first three years at U.Va. with funding for their pioneering research proposals.  The idea behind this grant program is to support promising faculty in their early endeavors, thus enhancing their research capabilities and making them more competitive for future, external funding.

The FEST Distinguished Young Investigator Grant program was initiated by the VPRGS in 2004 and accepts proposals on an annual basis.  The application process is highly competitive.  The review committee uses a number of criteria to judge the applicants, including an emphasis on innovative proposals and the likelihood of attracting external recognition.  In 2006 there were 39 applicants and four awardees.

Steve Majewski, Associate Professor of Astronomy, has evaluated the last three rounds of FEST proposals.  He remarked on the significance of the award, “FEST fulfills a unique role in providing early career funding for nascent ideas with potentially large impact; it provides critical funding at a strategic time in the life of a scientific program when funds are traditionally difficult to get from other sources.  Such funding can make the difference in the success of this research, by allowing early testing and shakedown of hypotheses, allowing them to mature to a point where critical leverage is gained for further funding at the national level.” 

The 2006 FEST Distinguished Young Investigator Grant winners were recently announced.  Four awards of $50,000 each will be made to the following faculty:

• Xiaowei Lu (Cell Biology, School of Medicine):  “Regulation of sensory hair cell morphogenesis by Wnt/planar cell polarity signaling”
• Jill Venton (Chemistry, College of Arts & Sciences):  “Monitoring fast neurochemical changes using capillary electrophoresis with electrochemical detection”
• Benton Calhoun (Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science):  “An ultra-low energy voltage dithered processor core for medical sensing applications”
• Silvia Salinas Blemker (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science):  “A multi-scale computational model of skeletal muscle”