UA notebook

Funding to support earthquake studies

FAYETTEVILLE -- Two civil engineering professors have received grant funding to advance research on how structures can better withstand earthquakes.

Clinton Wood has been awarded a $93,000 National Science Foundation grant to gather data related to the September earthquake centered near Puebla, Mexico. The Associated Press has reported that 369 people died because of the earthquake, with a majority of the deaths occurring in Mexico City.

"This is great opportunity for us to turn the tragedy in Mexico City into knowledge that will hopefully save lives in future seismic events," Wood said in a statement released by UA.

Gary Prinz has received the 2018 Milek Faculty Fellowship Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction's Committee on Research. The $200,000 fellowship will help Prinz study ways for steel to be used in various structural designs and the resilience of steel structural elements in relation to earthquakes, according to UA.

Brain-injury project nets $375,000 grant

FAYETTEVILLE -- A $375,000 National Science Foundation grant will help two biomedical engineering researchers build a device to simulate the effects of repeated injuries on the human brain.

Grant recipients Kartik Balachandran and Jeffrey Wolchok are building a physical model of what's known as the blood-brain barrier.

"It's a miniature version of a blood-brain-barrier that we can impact over and over again and study the results," Balachandran said in a statement released by UA.

The three-year project will focus on injuries such as concussions. The blood-brain barrier keeps out substances with potential for harming the brain, according to the National Cancer Institute, but can also keep out drug treatments.

Studying the blood-brain barrier will help with the development of drug treatments for brain injuries, according to UA.

Metro on 06/03/2018

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