2025 Grant Awardees

October 7, 2025, through March 31, 2026 | $100,000 awarded: $20,000 per researcher x 5 new projects

The GREAT program provides seed grants to support new areas of research for faculty at UTSA, to assemble preliminary data that can be used to seek extramural funding and advance UTSA’s status as an R1 Institution.

College of Sciences

Truman Gamblin, Ph.D., Department of Neuroscience, Regenerative and Developmental Biology (NRDB)
Structural approach for developing Alzheimer's disease therapeutics

Lindsey Macpherson, Ph.D., Department of Neuroscience, Regenerative and Developmental Biology (NRDB)
Developing a taste organoid and gustatory neuron co-culture system "Tongue in a dish"

Brian Laub, Ph.D., Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Synchronicity and sensitivity of river habitat to hydrologic disturbances

College of Liberal and Fine Arts

Rebecca Bria, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology
Ecological and Ritual Knowledge Sharing in the Rise of Andean Civilization

Juliet Wiersema, Ph.D., Department of Art and Art History
Pentimenti and Pigments Project: A Collaborative Arts-Science Investigation with the Library of Congress

October 7, 2024, through September 30, 2025 | $250,000 awarded: $125,000 per team ($50,000 UTSA; $75,000 SwRI)

The CONNECT Program is a joint effort between UTSA and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). The program encourages interaction between investigators in support of the acquisitions of established extramural, peer-reviewed research funding. This agreement provides unprecedented opportunities for researchers to work together in addressing issues of mutual interest and need.

Stanton McHardy, Ph.D., UTSA, and Shawn T. Blumberg, Ph.D., SwRI
Universal Synthetic Platform to Access New Antibiotics: A Roadmap to Head off the Antibiotic Resistance Crisis

Morteza Seidi, Ph.D., UTSA and Daniel J. Portillo, Ph.D., SwRI
Advancing Helmet Technology

October 7, 2024, through March 31, 2026 | $80,000 awarded: $5,000 per researcher x 16 new research projects

The Internal Research Awards (INTRA) program is part of the UTSA Office of Research's coordinated efforts to promote research and scholarship of the highest quality. This program offers experience in identifying and submitting applications to potential funding sources, provides preliminary data to support applications for extramural funding, and enhances scholarly and creative activities.

Alvarez College of Business

Binay Adhikari, Ph.D., Department of Finance
Globally Diverse Boards: Do foreign directors enhance global expansion?

David Beheshti, Ph.D., Department of Economics
The Population-Level Casual Impact of PrEP on HIV – Why Aren’t HIV Diagnoses Declining Faster?

Yuanxiong Guo, Ph.D., Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security
Towards Efficient and Trustworthy Orbital Edge Intelligence, Isil Koyuncu Kilci, Ph.D., Department of Management Science and Statistics, Casual Inference for Post-Transport Patient Acuity Using the National Emergency Medical Services Dataset

Yeonjoo Park, Ph.D., Department of Management Science and Statistics
Deep learning approaches to functional data analysis: Applications from data reconstruction to predictive modeling

Hilal Pataci, Ph.D., Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security
Deciphering Cybersecurity Risks in Annual Statements: A Benchmark for Assessment and Removal of Boilerplate

Nishant Vishwamitra, Ph.D., Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security
Enhancing Collaborative Sensemaking in Digital Sleuthing Through Social Medica Analysis and Automated Image Triage

Min Wang, Ph.D., Department of Management Science and Statistics
A novel Bayesian Kriging approach for quality design: to test or not to test?

Kai Xu, Ph.D., Department of Management Science and Statistics
The Impact of Geopolitical Conflict on Foreign Direct Investment

Anastasia Zervou, Ph.D., Department of Economics
Monetary policy, financing frictions, and the response of the labor market

College of Health, Community, and Policy

Chien-Jen Chiang, Ph.D., Department of Social Work
Navigating the Child Welfare Maze: Assessing Service Needs, Referrals, Receipts, and Outcomes for Latino Families

Itamar Lerner, Ph.D., Department of Psychology
The relationships between real-life stress and physiological measurements of sleep and physical activity

Se-Woong Park, Ph.D., Department of Kinesiology
Identifying perception-action couplings in practice-induced timing

Mastaka Umeda, Ph.D., Department of Kinesiology
Biopsychological mechanism of the adverse effect of racial discrimination on pain sensitivity and buffering effect of physical activity in Asian American adults
College of Education and Human Development

Devon Romero, Ph.D., Department of Counseling
Counselors Fight Against Modern-Day Slavery: A Sex Trafficking Project

College of Liberal and Fine Arts

Jamon Halvaksz, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology
Unraveling Urban Resilience: Investigating Interconnections in Pacific Island States

October 7, 2024, through March 31, 2026, | $100,000 awarded: $25,000 per researcher x 4 new research projects

The Transdisciplinary Teams (T2) Program provides seed grants to support UTSA faculty members to engage in scholarly research activities that foster transdisciplinary collaborations. The primary goal of these awards is to assemble teams of researchers from different disciplines that will establish a foundation to seek extramural funding.

Team

• Yongli Gao, Ph.D., College of Science, Department of Earth and Planetary Science
• Jefferey Hutchinson, Ph.D., College of Science, Department of Integrative Biology
• Wendell Griffith, Ph.D., College of Science, Department of Chemistry

Team

• Kaushik Mitra, Ph.D., College of Science, Department of Earth and Planetary Science
• Shrihari Sankarasubramanian, Ph.D., Kleese College of Engineering, Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, Electrochemical Deconvolution of Oxyhalogen Intermediates and Implications for Martian Geochemistry

Team

• Daniel Pineda, Ph.D., Kleese College of Engineering and Integrated Design, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Xinting Yu, Ph.D., College of Science, Department of Physics and Astronomy
  Enabling studies of Titan’s atmosphere with in-situ laser absorption spectroscopy of organonitrogen compounds undergoing chemical reactions

Team

• Carolina Vivas Valencia, Ph.D., Kleese College of Engineering and Integrated Design, Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering
• Leslie Neely, Ph.D., College of Education and Human Development, Department of Educational Psychology
  Using Machine Learning and Data Analytic Frameworks to Estimate Medication Use for Managing Challenging Behavior in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Texas