In FY 2003 the NSF provided 347 awards totaling over $69 million to 36 institutions in the state of Minnesota as well as $249,000 in fellowships.
Institutions in Minnesota receiving NSF support in FY 2003 included the Adventium, Saint Olaf College, Augsburg College, St. Cloud State University, the Science Museum of Minnesota, Itasca Community College, Macalester College, MicroHouse, and the University of St. Thomas.
University of Minnesota–Materials Research Science and Engineering Center — The MRSEC at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities supports an interdisciplinary research program with over twenty faculty participants from the departments of chemical engineering and materials science, electrical and computer engineering, physics, and chemistry. The Center's research is organized into three interdisciplinary research groups: microstructured polymers, crystalline organic semiconductors, and magnetic heterostructures. This research benefits from extensive materials synthesis and characterization facilities that include microscopy, X-ray scattering, polymer synthesis, rheology molecular characterization, and tissue mechanics. The MRSEC operates a broad education and outreach program that includes summer research fellowships for faculty-student teams from four-year colleges, fellowships for individual Native American students, research experiences for undergraduates and for teachers.
Dynamic, Long-term Interactions Among Climate, Vegetation, Carbon Accumulation, Fire, and Permafrost in Northern Biomes — Predicting and mitigating the effects of climate warming requires an integrated program of teaching, research, and community outreach. This CAREER research program at Carleton College focuses on understanding the interactions among vegetation, climate change, and disturbances in northern biomes. Interactions among these variables will likely produce complex vegetation dynamics over the next century that are different than models assuming simple correlations between climate and vegetation. This work examines long-term records in peat and lake sediments to reconstruct the temporal and spatial interactions of these processes at local, regional and subcontinental scales. The research will be integrated into a new global change ecology curriculum including courses in ecosystem ecology, paleoecology, global change biology and plant physiological ecology.
Small Business Innovation Research — An NSF SBIR award to RheoSense supports the development of a novel MEMS sensor plate containing monolithic miniature capacitive pressure sensors. Previous research has shown that the sensor plate can be used to accurately measure the first and second normal stress differences, which are important nonlinear elastic flow properties of various classes of viscoelastic liquids. One version will be optimized for measurements at lower pressures and another version optimized for measurements on molten commercial thermoplastics at higher temperatures and pressures. This novel sensor plate will meet the critical market need for an inexpensive instrument for fully characterizing shear flow properties of molten thermoplastics.
Interpreting the Cretaceous Paleo-Environment of the Cedar Mountain Formation — This eight-week Research Experience for Undergraduates project at Gustavus Adolphus College will provide participants with an exceptional opportunity to contribute to timely research in sedimentary geology. They will investigate, through field research, the sedimentary history of fossil-bearing Lower Cretaceous strata of the Cedar Mountain Formation in northeast and central Utah. This award will continue a four-year program in student-centered research in and around Dinosaur National Monument. The results of this project will be highly significant to North American paleontologists and will thus provide student participants with an immediate sense of the relevance of their research.
