AY 2024–2025 Rutgers Research Council Awards Recipients

The Individual Fulcrum Awards Program is tailored to individual researchers and those in the creative arts who are testing out new ideas to accelerate their scientific inquiry, program of research and scholarship, or creative production. This year's Individual Fulcrum awards total $107,177.

Award Winners

Daniel Asen
Associate Professor, History, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–Newark
Project Title: Spy Stories and Police States: The Sino-American Journey of Frank Yee

Onur Bilgen
Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace, School of Engineering, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Project Title: BATMAN: A Multipurpose Bat Management System for Wind Turbines and Large Infrastructure.

Jeff Boyd
Associate Professor, Biochemistry and Microbiology, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Project Title: Iron Ion Homeostasis in the Bacterial Pathogen Staphylococcus Aureus

Jeffrey Lawrence
Associate Professor, English, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–New Brunswick 
Project Title: Reading American Literature in Spanish: A Publishing and Translation Initiative

Kimele Persaud
Assistant Professor, Psychology, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–Newark
Project Title: Exceeding Expectations: Evaluating the Impact of Expectation-Violations on Learning and Memory in Young Children

Dane Parker
Assistant Professor, Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine, New Jersey Medical School–RBHS
Project Title: The Role of SLPI in Pulmonary Infection to Staphylococcus Aureus

Karen Smith
Assistant Professor, Psychology, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–Newark
Project Title: Loneliness and Social Perception in Early Childhood

The Research on Social and Racial Justice Award, inspired by President Holloway’s Equity Report and the university’s commitment to fostering excellence in and as a beloved community, supports academic research on racial and social justice in all domains of intellectual, social, artistic, and environmental life. Funding for this year's Social and Racial Justice Awards totals $57,185.

Award Winners

Julio Alicea
Assistant Professor, Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, College Of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–Camden
Project Title: The School as a Racialized and Gendered Workplace: A Study of School Leader and Staff Experiences Across Public and Private K-12 Contexts

Alex Hinton
Distinguished Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–Newark
Project Title: You Will Not Replace Us!” Great Replacement, Xenophobia, and Polarization in the U.S.

Lisa Lewis
Professor, Nursing, School of Nursing, Rutgers–Camden
Project Title: Images of HIMB: Exploring Black Men’s Management of Hypertension Through Photovoice

Ebony Ruhland
Associate Professor, Criminal Justice, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers–Newark
Project Title: Examining the Prison Re-Entry Experience and Post-Incarceration Strains Using a Community Participatory Action Research Approach

The Collaborative Multidisciplinary Award offers the opportunity for a group of faculty members across disciplines to work together on a new, shared problem or line of research. Since complex intellectual and social problems often require multiple perspectives and viewpoints to solve them, the program is designed to foster and reward creative and collaborative interdisciplinary work. This year, funding this year for the Collaborative Multidisciplinary Awards totals $75,000.

Award Winners

Vitaly Podzorov 
Professor, Physics and Astronomy, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Project Title: Structural and Electronic Phase Transitions in Hybrid Quantum Materials

Rohit Ramachandran
Professor, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, School of Engineering, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Project Title: Toward Next-Generation “Intelligent” Pharmaceutical Drug Product Manufacturing for Efficient Patient Healthcare

Chinghsin Wu
Associate Teaching Professor, Art History, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers–Camden
Project Title: The Materiality, History, and Art of Japanese Woodblock Prints at the Stedman Art Gallery at Rutgers-Camden

The Engaged Climate Action Award is designed to support faculty whose work addresses the global climate crisis and its solutions at a variety of scales. This year, funding for the Engaged Climate Action Award totals $6,610.

Award Winner

Frank Gallagher
Associate Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Project Title: Provisioning Services of Secondary Forest Ecological Systems

Cleopatra Charles
Associate Professor, Public Affairs and Administration, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers–Newark
Project Title: Financial Leadership for the Arts: Sustainable Strategies for Creative Organizations

Chie Ikeya
Associate Professor, History, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutger–New Brunswick
Project Title: Interasian Intimacies across Religion, Race, and Colonialism

Nancy Rao
Distinguished Professor, Music, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Project Title: Chinese Opera Theater in 19th-Century America

Eric Blanc
Assistant Professor, Labor Studies and Employee Relations, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers–New Brunswick
Project Title: We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Can Transform America