ASCEND Initiative
2024 Collaboration Grant Awards
Project Title: ATTTNT: A Land Reparations Network from Baltimore to Jackson
Institutional Partner: Morgan State University
Lead Collaborators: Keller Easterling and Samia Kirchner
Project Scope: The project uses GIS protocols to assess and link various land types and trusts to cities and organizations like HBCUs and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives while mapping a 3,000-mile stretch of public land from Maine to the Mississippi and re-examining this land through the lens of Black and Indigenous resistance and Black land over the past 150 years.
Project Title: Civilizations of Color
Institutional Partner: Tuskegee University
Lead Collaborators: Mae-ling Lokko, Kwesi Daniels, Amma Asamoah, Sasha Duerr, and Mark Aronson
Project Scope: This project combines Tuskegee University’s legacy research on plant and forestry by-products with Yale’s work on regenerative color for biogenic building materials to innovate biogenic coloring practices.
Project Title: Development of Selective Sorbents based on Conductive Biocarbon-Biopolymer Blends
Institutional Partner: Tuskegee University
Lead Collaborators: Vijaya Rangari and Julie Zimmerman
Project Scope: Students will enhance their expertise in creating and analyzing selective sorbents from waste materials such as chitosan and agricultural carbon, aiming to develop environmentally friendly options for removing arsenate and other contaminants from wastewater.
Project Title: EmpowerHERed
Institutional Partner: Tuskegee University
Lead Collaborators: Ijeoma Opara, Gwendolyn Jones Benson and Jaleah Rutledge
Project Scope: This project aims to investigate barriers and facilitators to reducing sexual and reproductive health disparities among Black girls and women in Alabama’s Black Belt region. It focuses on HIV/AIDS/STI education, maternal health challenges, and community mobilization.
Project Title: HBCU QISE Short Course Series
Institutional Partner: North Carolina A&T State University
Lead Collaborators: Raymond E Samuel, Steven Girvin, Kanav Setia, Florian Carle and Yudan Chen
Project Scope: NC A&T, Yale Quantum Institute (YQI), and qBraid Limited will launch the HBCU QISE Short Course Series to bolster quantum information science & engineering (QISE) capabilities at HBCUs.
Project Title: Intersectional Analysis of Sexual Risk Behaviors Among LGBTQ Students: HBCUs vs PWIs and Implications for STIs/HIV Intervention
Institutional Partner: North Carolina A&T State University
Lead Collaborators: Zahra Fazli Khalaf, Sharon Parker, Camryn Goins and Trace Kershaw
Project Scope: This project aims to develop and test innovative methods to understand and address challenges regarding a surge in sexual risk behaviors among emerging adults, contributing to a majority of new STIs and a significant portion of new HIV cases, especially impacting minority and marginalized groups, focusing on the intersection of individual factors, social networks, and campus environments at PWIs and HBCUs.
Project Name: Neuroimaging and Machine Learning
Institutional Partner: Morgan State University
Lead Collaborators: Dustin Scheinost, Fahmi Khalifa
Project Scope: This project aims to address racial disparities in mental health outcomes using novel machine learning frameworks that account for racial heteroscedasticity in health measures. By integrating factors like perceived discrimination and anti-Black bias prevalence, the project aims to enhance predictive accuracy and advance health equity.
Project Name: Particle Acceleration and Emission in Relativistic
Institutional Partner: North Carolina A& State University
Lead Collaborators: Paolo Coppi, Meg Urry, and Athina Meli
Project Scope:The Particle Acceleration and Emission in Relativistic project puts emphasis on Particle acceleration being pivotal in high-energy astrophysics, driving diverse cosmic phenomena from radio waves to gamma rays and cosmic rays. Understanding these mechanisms, central to active galactic nuclei and supernovas, remains a major challenge.
Project Name: Precise Strain Engineering of 2D Heterostructures Using Opto-Active Polymer Templates
Institutional Partner: North Carolina A&T State University
Lead Collaborators: Peijun Guo and Jerald E. Dumas
Project Scope: The Precise Strain Engineering of 2D Heterostructures Using Opto-Active Polymer Templates project will enhance 2D van der Waals heterostructures for intelligent infrared sensing through strain engineering by developing a light-responsive polyurethane/DQ-gelatin composite to control strain in graphene monolayers using light exposure.
Project Name: Security and Privacy in Machine Learning Systems
Institutional Partner: Tuskegee University
Lead Collaborators: Katerina Sotiraki, Fan Wu, Kushagra Kushagra, and S. Keith Hargrove
Project Scope: Our project aims to develop efficient systems tailored for real-world scenarios, focusing on achieving private machine learning amidst adversarial input corruption. We will investigate defenses for corrupted inputs in tasks such as linear and logistic regression, balancing security with privacy constraints.
Project Name: Structural and Magnetic Properties of Metal-Oxide Nanoparticles
Institutional Partner: Tuskegee University
Lead Collaborators: Vijaya Rangari, Charles H. Ahn and Sohrab Ismail-Beigi
This project synthesizes air-stable metal oxide nanoparticles (BaTiO3, BiFeO3, Fe2NiO4, CoFe2O2) using microwave or nano-milling techniques. The project will characterize and model these nanoparticles to understand their modified properties at the nanoscale and potentially discover new phenomena.