Leela Arava, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Wayne State University, received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, the organization’s most prestigious accolade for up-and-coming researchers. The five-year, $519,241 grant will support Arava’s exploration in next-generation battery technology that can revolutionize energy storage systems.

  The Community Health Pipeline, a research and outreach program led by Noel Kulik, Ph.D., CHES, received funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund for a second year. The award is worth $262,784. “We are thrilled to learn that the Michigan Health Endowment Fund has continued to invest in our food justice and food access work with youth in the community,” said Kulik, who is an assistant professor in the Division of Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies (KHS) at Wayne State’s College of Education. “The funding for year two will allow us to expand our program reach to include all youth in the city of Detroit, strengthen our relationships with current partners and help us broaden our relationships to include the HUDA Clinic, Generation with Promise, Project Healthy Community, and University of Detroit Mercy’s chapter of Campus Kitchen.” Kulik’s project will continue to support Detroit high school students as they become agents of change in the areas of food systems, health equity and food access. The Community Health Pipeline includes five pillars — education, experience, apprenticeships, leadership and career development — that build upon each other. Participants learn about making healthy food choices and apply their knowledge by purchasing local produce at farmers markets. Later, they complete paid internships related to food production, handling and marketing; community engagement; nutrition education; and programs supporting food security. During the fifth pillar, Wayne State University students mentor the youth as they identify a food-related health issue in their community and design community health interventions. By the time they have completed the project, the high school students have a better understanding of community health careers and the college application process. In its second year, the Community Health Pipeline has partnered with Connect Detroit’s Grow Detroit’s Young Talent program and the Detroit Health Department to create the first food and nutrition track for youth employment within the city. This collaboration will provide paid training to approximately 150 Detroit high school students for seven weeks in July and August. Opportunities for youth include growing, harvesting and selling produce at Drew Farm; providing support through healthy cooking demonstrations and education via farmers markets at Wayne State University, Sowing Seeds Growing Futures, Community Health and Social Services Center, The Henry Ford, Banglatown and Eastern Market; promoting Fair Food Network’s Double Up Food Bucks program; providing enrichment activities at United Way for Southeastern Michigan’s Meet Up and Eat Up sites; and more. The Community Health Pipeline will also expand education initiatives and include social entrepreneurship, skill development and community health career exposure to engage youth and encourage community economic development. For the Community Health Pipeline, Kulik works with Nate McCaughtry, Ph.D., director of the Center for Health and Community Impact and professor and assistant dean of the KHS, along with KHS assistant professors Rachael Dombrowski, Ph.D., and Whitney Moore, Ph.D. “I am excited about the success the Community Health Pipeline had in its first year,” said McCaughtry. “I am looking forward to its expansion this year to reach more youth with college access and career-training, and to collaborate with additional food-system organizations throughout the city.”  Last year, the Community Health Pipeline reached an estimated 4,600 students through its nutrition education and experience at Detroit farmers markets and urban farms. In October 2017, the Community Health Pipeline launched a college and career readiness program to provide high school students information on how to apply to college, FAFSA, and scholarships. The two finalist teams presented their work at the Detroit Food Policy Council conference in March 2018.   About the Center for Health and Community Impact The mission of the Center for Health and Community Impact is to improve community health and vitality through leadership and advancement of research, programs and policies for healthy living. The Center works with community partners to develop and lead culturally relevant, evidence-based and sustainable programs that transform the heathy living opportunities for families, neighborhoods and organizations to promote a holistic approach to health and social equity across the lifespan. Through its efforts, educators, clinicians, practitioners, evaluators, researchers and community leaders at Wayne State University advance health and social equity at local, regional and national levels. The center’s programs have directly impacted more than 150,000 youth and families and 500 educators and health practitioners across 350 community organizations. For more information, visit coe.wayne.edu/centerforhealthandcommunityimpact.  About the College of Education For more than a century, the Wayne State University College of Education has prepared effective urban educators who are reflective, innovative and committed to diversity. Its Teacher Education Division boasts one of the most comprehensive, well-established programs in the country, and all four academic divisions offer a range of undergraduate and graduate degrees in nearly 30 program areas, including learning design and technology, leadership and policy, kinesiology, sport administration, education evaluation and research, health education and educational psychology, and counseling. To learn more, visit coe.wayne.edu.     About Wayne State University Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering nearly 350 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to more than 27,000 students. For more information, visit wayne.edu.  About the Michigan Health Endowment Fund The Michigan Health Endowment Fund works to improve the health and wellness of Michigan residents and reduce the cost of healthcare, with a special focus on children and seniors. More information about the Michigan Health Endowment Fund can be found at mhealthfund.com. About the Michigan Fitness Foundation The Michigan Fitness Foundation strives to cultivate a culture of health to transform the status quo and improve the health of all Michiganders. Its mission is to inspire active lifestyles and healthy food choices in the places we live, work and play. The Michigan Fitness Foundation focuses on increasing access to healthy food and low-cost physical activity opportunities, expanding nutrition and physical education, and shaping places to make the healthy choice the easy choice. Learn more at michiganfitness.org. About Connect Detroit and Grow Detroit’s Young Talent Founded in 2001 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization under the name City Connect Detroit by local foundation and civic leaders, Connect Detroit today helps Detroit-area nonprofit organizations and governments work together to solve local problems. This organization mobilizes much-needed funding so these groups and its constituents can be empowered to reach common goals for the greater good of the community. Connect Detroit has tackled and continues to pursue collaboration opportunities surrounding a variety of issues affecting children, youth and families. The nonprofit has been instrumental in creating platforms and partnerships for community health and community development initiatives, too. To date, the organization has managed and led more than four-dozen community change initiatives and mobilized more than $140 million in support of this work. Several Connect Detroit-driven initiatives became self-sustaining and grew into standalone initiatives outside of Connect Detroit. For more information, go to connectdetroit.org.

Pai-Yen Chen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, the organization’s most prestigious accolade for up-and-coming researchers in science and engineering. 

Kristin O'Donovan, assistant professor of political science will explore the limits on policy learning about disaster mitigation after a community has experienced a disaster. 

Communities attempt to learn from experiencing disasters such as Hurricane Harvey, but often those lessons do not lead to policy changes that could reduce future risks. With the help of a $55,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Kristin O’Donovan, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University, will explore the limits on policy learning about disaster mitigation after a community has experienced a disaster. O’Donovan will also seek to understand why one community may be more vulnerable to a disaster than its neighbor. According to O’Donovan, local governments often attempt to engage in learning about how to reduce future disaster risks, but find it difficult to see change enacted. Her project will aim to identify the constraints on and proponents of policy learning after disasters. Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas in August 2017, presents a unique case for understanding the limits on policy learning because of the range of communities it affected in southeast Texas. O’Donovan and her team will collect data through interviews with local government officials — mayors, emergency managers and city planners— in communities affected by Hurricane Harvey. “How local governments consider information and make decisions about future disaster risk is critical to understanding vulnerability,” said O’Donovan. “This research is exciting because it will shed new light on why some communities may be more vulnerable to a disaster than others. What we learn has the potential to help communities bounce back more easily after disasters. “ Research will focus on the types of sources a community looks to for information, whether the information received is credible and whether local government officials tend to be myopic in their approaches. The project, Constraints on Policy Learning After Disaster, was funded by NSF’s Rapid Response Research grant program. The award number is 1763218.          Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

The Barth Syndrome Foundation recently announced awardees from its 2017 grant cycle. Miriam Greenberg, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University and a resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan, received a one-year, $50,000 grant for the project, “Cardiolipin activates pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) – a potential new target for treatment of Barth syndrome.” Barth syndrome (BTHS) is a rare and life-threatening, X-linked genetic disorder that primarily affects males and is passed from mother to son; women who are carriers do not show symptoms of the disorder. Fifty percent of children born to a mother who is a carrier will inherit the defective gene, and all daughters born to an affected man will be carriers. BTHS is caused by a mutation in the tafazzin gene that results in decreased production of cardiolipin, an essential lipid for energy metabolism. BTHS causes cardiomyopathy, a disorder of the heart muscle; neutropenia, a reduction in the number of white blood cells; hypotonia, reduced muscle tone; undeveloped skeletal muscles and muscle weakness; delayed growth; decreased stamina; physical disability; and methylglutaconic aciduria, an increase in an organic acid that is characteristic of abnormal mitochondrial function. Greenberg and her team will test the hypothesis that cardiolipin (CL) deficiency results in a deviation of the metabolic pathway for energy production, specifically due to decreased activity of the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH).   “We aim to reveal a new direction for BTHS treatment based on activation of PDH and/or supplementation of deficient metabolites,” said Greenberg. “The outcome of our study may reveal a new direction for Barth syndrome treatment based on activation of PDH and/or supplementation of deficient metabolites.”        Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research institutions in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Wayne State University honored students at its second annual 25 Under 25 recognition on March 22 at the Gem Theatre. The award honors students in the Mike Ilitch School of Business.

The Nursing Master’s (MSN) and Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs at Wayne State University’s (WSU) College of Nursing have been listed among the United States’ top 50 graduate school rankings by the U.S. News and World Report for 2019.

The Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL), an initiative of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School, will advance the cause of racial equity with the support of a $2.4 million grant awarded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. 

Jeffrey Taub, M.D., oncology research category winner, drew inspiration from his own childhood bout with cancer when he decided to become a pediatric oncologist. 

Casey Simlar receives the Financial Executives International Academic Award from the president of Wayne State University, Dr. M. Roy Wilson.

Wayne State University in Detroit has announced a $2.4 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to expand a racial equity initiative at its law school.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded Wayne State University Law School a $2.4 million grant for phase two of its Detroit Equity Action Lab, an initiative to advance the cause of racial equity.

“This project really has the heart of Wayne State in it, and it builds on the best of what our faculty and staff across campus are doing to promote the success of our students,” said Jeffrey Potoff, principal investigator on the ACCESS project and associate dean for academic and student affairs in the Wayne State University College of Engineering.

Firefighters face potential exposure to various hazardous chemicals that increase their risk for numerous health issues. During responses to fires or other hazardous events, they may be exposed to, inhale or ingest toxic gases, vapors or particles. In particular, heavy metal exposure is a major public health issue with firefighters in postindustrial cities such as Detroit. Lead and cadmium are examples of such exposures. Cadmium, a poisonous metal that has been used to electroplate materials to protect them from corrosion, was heavily used in the automobile industry and is a major source of contamination in Detroit. In addition, over 90 percent of buildings in Detroit were built prior to 1980 and are likely to contain lead-based paints. One adverse health outcome associated with long-term environmental exposure to lead and cadmium is hearing loss. Hearing loss has devastating effects on an individual as it significantly affects quality of life and productivity. With the help of funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, a Wayne State University professor is researching gene-environment interactions to determine the association between environmental exposure to lead and cadmium and hearing loss in Detroit firefighters. The nearly $400,000, three-year research project, “Heavy metal exposure, genetic predisposition and auditory dysfunction: A cross-sectional study in a high-risk urban cohort,” will be led by Samson Jamesdaniel, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at Wayne State University. Jamesdaniel “We plan to test the hearing of 200 firefighters from the City of Detroit, assay bone lead and urinary cadmium levels, and assess the frequency of two distinct variants of an antioxidant gene (SOD2) in order to determine the interactions among environmental exposure to heavy metals, genetic factors and hearing loss,” said Jamesdaniel. According to Jamesdaniel, the outcomes of this research are expected to provide a platform for development of preventive measures for minimizing harmful exposure to multiple environmental ototoxicants and reducing the risk of hearing impairment in high-risk populations. In particular, the study is expected to directly benefit firefighters by identifying the environmental risk factors and genetic susceptibilities that contribute to hearing impairment. “The ultimate goal will be to apply this knowledge to human remediation studies in this vulnerable population, and identify preventative measures that will protect firefighters and others from hearing loss caused by environmental exposure,” said Jamesdaniel. The grant number for this National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences project is ES028750. About Wayne State University Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.

Wayne State's College of Nursing is one of 31 schools of nursing selected to receive a grant to increase the number of nurses holding Ph.D.s. The selected schools comprise the fifth cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholars program, which provides financial support, mentoring and leadership development to nurses who commit to earn their Ph.D. in three years.

The Michigan Health Endowment Fund has awarded more than $256,000 to Wayne State University to help prevent frailty in older African Americans in Metro Detroit. The project, called “Frailty Prevention in Older African Americans,” will pilot an evidence-based, integrative approach to preventing frailty. Indicators of frailty include unintentional weight loss, weakness, exhaustion, and low physical activity; having two or more of these indicators increases an older adult’s risk for early death and disability. Heather Fritz, assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy and the Institute of Gerontology, will lead the project. “Despite the significant financial and social consequences to frailty, barriers impede our ability to reach those most at risk,” said Fritz. “Thanks to the generosity of the Health Fund, this project will focus on community-dwelling, pre-frail older African Americans to prevent frailty, promote independence and improve physical, social, and emotional health among community dwelling older adults.” The two-year project begins in March 2018 and will partner with the Rosa Parks Geriatric Center of Excellence to identify up to 150 pre-frail African American older adults in the area. The model will offer participants customized rehabilitative and lifestyle behavior change interventions before frailty develops, with the ultimate goal of establishing a new occupational therapy model within the primary care system. Between 10 and 25 percent of older adults experience frailty in later life, and approximately 50 percent of older adults are considered “pre-frail,” or beginning to demonstrate characteristics associated with frailty. Without intervention, pre-frail older adults are two to three times more likely to develop frailty within three to seven years than non-frail elders. This award is part of the Michigan Health Endowment Fund’s larger Healthy Aging initiative for seniors. “If we can prevent frailty before it develops, we can maintain our independence and participate more fully in society as we age,” said Kari Sederburg, senior program officer with the Health Fund. “The Health Fund is pleased to support Wayne State University’s important work, which has the potential to improve older adults’ quality of life and save on healthcare costs.” About the Michigan Health Endowment Fund The Michigan Health Endowment Fund works to improve the health and wellness of Michigan residents and reduce the cost of healthcare, with a special focus on children and seniors. More information about the Health Fund can be found at mhealthfund.com. About Wayne State University Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu. Wayne State is in the midst of a $750 million fundraising campaign, Pivotal Moments, which will end in 2018 in conjunction with the university’s 150th anniversary. Every gift to every area of the university counts toward its ambitious goal.

A team of Wayne State researchers have received a grant from the National Institute of Justice to study how particular neighborhoods affect the stress and performance of Detroit Police Department officers. The team — comprised of faculty members from the criminal justice, psychology and health care sciences departments — will use the nearly $569,000 grant to collect data from up to 400 DPD officers.

Musicians, poets, even a video game maker are among the 63 finalists for the 2017 Detroit Knight Arts Challenge sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.       Wayne State University, Department of Art and Art History: To explore the connection of politics and printing by publishing a book on the Detroit Print Co-op, which produced noteworthy and beautifully designed publications on leftist politics in the city.

Wayne State University has received a $3.05 million grant from the National Institute of Health for a five-year trial focused on helping parents and other caretakers assist diabetic adolescents to complete their daily care.