Research

Jennifer Oliva, an associate professor of law and public health at West Virginia University, will be a visiting research scholar at Harvard Law School in spring 2019.

Yanfang (Fanny) Ye, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering at West Virginia University, has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to enhance security for machine learning mechanisms. The award comes with more than $237,000 in funding over a three-year period.

Vinod Kulathumani, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at West Virginia University, is part of a research team that has been selected as a finalist for the R&D 100 Award. The award, known as the “Oscars of Innovation,” honor the top 100 proven technological advances of the past year as determined by a panel selected by “R&D Magazine.”

West Virginia University’s array of programs to create, encourage and support entrepreneurship and the innovation economy in the state got a boost Friday as the Board of Governors approved $1.8 million to lease and renovate space for the College of Business and Economics Startup Engine, the University’s first startup accelerator program.

A research team from West Virginia University has been selected as a finalist for the Awards for Composites Excellence. Hota GangaRao, the Maurice and JoAnn Wadsworth Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, and doctoral candidate Praveen Majjigapu, have been named finalists in the Most Creative Application category for their NextGen Composite System.

Diabetics are at least twice as likely as nondiabetics to die of heart disease. They’re also at a greater risk of heart attack. With a two-year, $53,000 fellowship from the American Heart Association, Quincy Hathaway, a doctoral candidate in the West Virginia University School of Medicine, is examining how a certain protein, called PNPase, influences mitochondria’s performance in heart cells.

West Virginia often feels the ravages of hurricanes and tropical storms that hit U.S. coasts hundreds of miles away like Florence did last weekend in North Carolina. To address flooding and other water-related issues, WVU researchers will present their work at the 2018 West Virginia State Water Conference Sept. 27-28 at the Morgantown Marriott.

A West Virginia University astronomer is working to locate the origin of fast radio bursts coming from outside the Milky Way Galaxy. Sarah Burke-Spolaor, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has accepted a distinguished fellowship with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Azrieli Global Scholars Program

Two West Virginia University School of Medicine researchers have received $2.38 million from the National Institutes of Health to build a one-of-a-kind pre-clinical imaging system that integrates PET-scan technology with a magnet-based imaging system that’s akin to MRI.

A West Virginia University graduate student is studying how certain cells affect the development of this part of the brain, and therefore, how they could affect how quickly and accurately the brain processes sounds.