Dec

More than $1.5 million awarded to Smithsonian scholars

The Smithsonian Provost has announced the Scholarly Studies Awards for FY2019.

The process was highly competitive, and the overall quality of proposals was excellent. The Provost received 91 proposals and made 30 awards, distributing more than $1.5M to support Smithsonian scholarship.

Special thanks are owed to the Smithsonian staff who volunteered their time and expertise to review the proposals and who made the difficult ranking decisions. This program is only possible because of their efforts. And of course thanks to every scholar who submitted a proposal. The range and creativity of your research is truly impressive.

Congratulations to the following recipients:

Freer | Sackler

Debra Diamond: Cultural Landscapes in Udaipur Painting
Jennifer Giaccai and Stephen Allee: Distinguishing Chinese Inks with Raman Spectroscopy

Museum Conservation Institute

Katharyn Hanson: Smithsonian’s cuneiform tablets – Where are they from? And how can they help law enforcement?
Asher Newsome: Non-proximate Ambient Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Large, Intact Cultural Heritage Objects
Ed Vicenzi and Thomas Lam: SEM-based micro-XRF: A new tool for compositional analysis and imaging of museum specimens

National Air and Space Museum

Dorothy Cochraine and Margaret Weitekamp: Forty-Five Years of Women Military Aviation: Perspectives and Oral Histories on Film

National Museum of American History

Amanda Moniz: Isabella Graham, Founding Philanthropist

National Museum of Natural History

Vicki Funk: Evolution of Plant Phenotype as a Response to the Environment
Conrad Labandeira and S. Augusta Maccracken: Plant-insect associations and paleoecology of the Cerro del Pueblo Formation (Late Cretaceous, 72.5 Ma) of Mexico
Karen Osborn: From strange eyes to stranger brains: using micro-CT to reconstruct the visual systems of deep-sea crustaceans

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Crawford Alexander Mann: Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Thomas Dame and Charles Lada: Beyond CO: A Pilot Survey of HCN with the CfA Millimeter-Wave Telescope
Andrea Dupree and Christian Johnson: Seeking the Origin of the Globular Clusters
Michael McCarthy and Carl Gottlieb: Understanding Interstellar Aromatic Chemistry
John Raymond and Chengcai Shen: The Heating and Energy Budget of Corona Mass Ejections
Katherine Reeves and Samaiyah Farid: Characterizing the Energy Budget of Two Kinds of Solar Coronal Jets
Jenna Samra and Adam Foster: Atomic Spectroscopy at Infrared Wavelengths using the SAO EBIT
Guillermo Torres: Using Gaia and Eclipsing Binaries to Constrain the Mass-Luminosity Relation at the Bottom of the Main Sequence

Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and The National Zoo

Justin Calabrese and Autumn-Lynn Harrison: The bigger they come, the farther they fall: How size-dependent underestimation of home ranges affects umbrella species conservation strategies
Pierre Comizzoli and Olga Amelkina: Understanding mechanisms of cellular stress response to develop long-term preservation of living tissues at room temperatures
Rob Fleischer and Sara Kaiser: Functional genetic diversity and relatedness in declining and rare grasshopper sparrow populations in the Caribbean
Brian Gratwick and Roberto Ibanez: Investigating pathogen resistance, variation and heritability in endangered Panamanian frogs
Jesus Maldonado and Michael Campana: Investigating patterns and processes of mammalian evolution in an emblematic biodiversity hotspot
Michael Power and Carly Muletz Wolz: Phylogenetic and dietary factors influencing milk microbial community structure
Scott Sillett and Michael Hallworth: Does winter habitat quality affect the phenology of seasonal events for a migratory songbird wintering in the Caribbean?
David Wildt: Understanding endocrine control of egg production for improved reproductive health of cranes.

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Jenny Carney and Katrina Lohan: Human-mediated transfer of marine microorganisms by ships: Assessing current management gaps
Whitman Miller and Rachel Collin (STRI): Modeling Biological and Physical Drivers of Coastal Acidification in Temperate and Tropical Waters *

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Whitman Miller (SERC) and Rachel Collin: Modeling Biological and Physical Drivers of Coastal Acidification in Temperate and Tropical Waters *
Owen McMillan and Michael Logan: Using Experimental Islands to Explore Adaptive Responses to Rapid Environmental Change

* This single proposal is listed under each collaborator’s unit.

This list is also available at the Office of the Provost PRISM site.