The winners of the CEHD Research Acceleration seed grant program have been announced. The program is open to all CEHD faculty and P&A researchers and awards are given in two classes of projects: Developmental and “Jump Start.”

The Developmental Project award of $200,000 over two years was presented to Gerald August (FSOS), Timothy Piehler (FSOS), and Mimi Choy-Brown (SSW) for their project, “Using Mobile Health Technology to Optimize Evidence-Based Treatment of Youth Depression.”

The goal of the Developmental Project program is to grow existing interdisciplinary partnerships and support novel studies that break new ground or extend previous work in new directions.

Three “Jump Start” Project proposals of $25,000 each went to:

• Katie Pekel (OLPD), Sara Kemper (CAREI), and Ellina Xiong (CAREI), in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Education’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Center for “Piloting an Intervention to Support Culturally Responsive School Leadership in Minnesota Schools”
  
• Ceema Samimi (SSW), Alex Fink (SSW), Terresa Moses (CDES), and Catherine Squires (HHH), in partnership with the Twin Cities Innovation Alliance and the Science Museum of Minnesota for “Unsettling Observation: Reimagining digital school safety”
  
• Renata Ticha (ICI), Brian Abery (ICI), Vassilios Morellas (Electrical & Computer Engineering), and Maryam Mahmoudi (ICI) for “Enhancing physical activity among older adults using Nao, a socially assistive robot (SAR)”

The goal of the Jump Start Project program is to support research at the early stages of project development to obtain pilot data for future grant submissions.