The Faculty Opportunity Awards program, inaugurated in 2012, is designed to support faculty research that shows potential for continued external funding. It also aims to provide the financial support investigators need to complete significant scholarly and creative works.

This year, faculty scientists and scholars submitted 44 proposals in three categories: Individual Investigator Awards, Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research Awards, and the In novation Technology Award. Faculty-led panels reviewed the proposals and made funding recommendations, while a selection panel that included members of the CoRE Council and the Research Council offered additional input. Thomas Piechota, vice president for research and economic development, then made final award recommendations to UNLV President Len Jessup.

Of the proposals selected, 12 were Individual Investigator Awards, a category that included awards for such faculty members as Jaeyun Moon, an assistant professor of mechanical en gineering who specializes in advanced materi als for energy applications; Arya Udry, an assis tant professor of geosciences who is exploring volcanic activity on distant planets; and Jenni fer Grim, a celebrated flute soloist and assistant professor of music who is exploring how flutes were played in Baroque-period performances.

Seven awardees were named in the Collab orative Interdisciplinary Research – Emerging Areas Seed Grants area. Among the groups selected was one including faculty members David Hatchett, Clemens Heske, Paul Forster, Balakrishnan Naduvalath, and Laszlo Nemeth, all from UNLV’s department of chemistry and biochemistry. The team is developing elec trochemical processes that could advance efforts to convert CO 2 into liquid fuels, a quest with energy generation and carbon-reduction implications that was recently called “one of the most important contemporary energy and environmental challenges.”

Jun Yong Kang, an assistant professor of organic chemistry, received the Innovation Technology Award funding. His work in volves synthesizing a chemical compound, Gamma-aminophosphonate, that has shown promise as a therapeutic agent.

The Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research Awards – Center Of Excellence Challenge Grant went to Kwang Kim and Paul Oh in the Department of Mechanical Engineering for their “Center for Excellence in Consumer Robotics.”