FBF is absoltuely delighted to sponsor 21 outstanding projects for 2023-24! Congratulations to the grantees!
Project span Applied Science, Engineering, Exact Science, Humanities and Social Science and many of the projects take an interdiscipinary approach. For a full overview of this year's funded projects, click here.
Low-temperature thermochronometry data are useful for answering a variety of geologic questions. However, interpretations made from such data rely on complex relationships between physical and chemical behavior at the mineral scale, combined with information related to the overall geologic history. This collaboration will (1) update program models used to interpret low-temperature thermochronometric data, (2) host a workshop focused on educating the geologic research community on how to best use such models, and (3) share analytical and lab expertise for new systems being built in...
The microwaves produced shortly after the Big Bang have traveled across nearly the entire visible universe before reaching the Earth today, their paths having been slightly deflected by the gravity field of the dark matter encountered along the way. This distortion both encodes valuable information about the dark (and regular) matter, and obscures properties of the Big Bang itself. How best to extract this information and unobscure the earliest moments in time given increasingly precise instrumental measurements is an open question, one which the teams involved in this proposal are...
The piperidine moiety is prevalent in a wide range of medicines that address human ailments. Despite the well-established efficacy of piperidine-containing drugs, there is a continued need to identify derivatives that possess even more potency and selectivity to overcome challenges such as side-effects. The introduction of substituents on the piperidine skeleton in these medicinally-active small molecules can imbue them with novel or more pronounced activity and selectivity. In this collaboration, we propose a way to derivatize piperidines at one of the resident C–H groups on the...
Our objective is to initiate a strong collaboration aiming at developing and deploying novel tomographic methods for imaging localized structures in the deep Earth that are either blurred out or not visible in the current global models.
UC PI: Barbara Romanowicz Department of Earth and Planetary Science, UC Berkeley
While the islands of Hawaii are considered a paradise to study the interplay between ecology and evolution, colonization of caves by spiders has received surprisingly little attention. Thanks to an extensive dataset already gathered on the field and in Museum collections, we started analyzing the relationships between above- and below-ground species of wolf spiders. This project, through a strong collaboration between Rennes and Berkeley, aims at understanding why colonization of Hawaiian caves repeatedly occurred, and how this was translated in terms of morphological adaptations (...
Plant-feeding insects are extraordinarily diverse as a result of their co-diversification with their host plants over 400 million years. One of the major adaptations necessary for herbivorous feeding is the ability to preferentially feed on the appropriate host plants, but how taste evolves in herbivorous insects is not well understood at molecular genetic and neurophysiological levels. Our research project will closely examine how chemoreceptors expressed in the peripheral nervous system have evolved to change neural responses, and how this ultimately shifts behavioral responses to...
This new trans-Atlantic collaborative network will aim to answer questions regarding the health effects of polyphenol consumption on cardiometabolic health. We aim to evaluate the capacity of polyphenols to prevent dysfunctions induced by western-type diet consumption that result in the development of CVD and metabolic diseases. Our project will initiate scientific exchanges aiming to define a new research strategy on polyphenols and human health by performing integrated system biology analyses of existing knowledge but also by using mutual knowledge more integrated analyses of...
Small GTPases are small protein switches that cycle between "on" states and "off" states and are key stop or go deciders in many important cellular tasks, such as growth or death. There are many distinct versions of these proteins in cells, each with a specific task or pathway. This project will investigate why proteins that interact with a GTPase in one pathway are specifically paired to their distinct GTPase and do not cross talk with GTPases in other pathways. This is a key unanswered question of major biomedical importance.
Despite its importance for genome maintenance, the basic mechanism by which this homologous molecule is identified amidst the genome remains elusive. We tackle this fundamental gap in our understanding of homologous recombination, as well as the poorly characterized role in this process of conserved protein of clinical significance. To this end, we combine in vitro protein biochemistry (Heyer lab) and novel physical assays to monitor intermediates and steps of the repair reaction in cells (Piazza lab).
