The University of Arkansas at Little Rock College of Arts, Letters, and Sciences awarded $12,000 in Summer Research Fellowship Grants to four professors who are spending their summer breaks performing unique research.

The grant winners include Qingfang He, professor of biology; John Nichols, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy; David Bayliss, assistant professor of geography in the Department of History; and Fusheng Tang, associate professor of biology. 

The first grant recipient, He, received $4,000 to fund research materials and to present his research project, “Toward Sustainable Production of Biofuels and Plant Nutraceuticals in Cyanobacteria” at a conference.

For his project, “Enhanced Superconductivity in Flexible Thin Films,” Nichols received $4,000 to support the acquisition of materials for investigation of the superconducting properties MgB2 and its dependence on strain, temperature, and magnetic field by manipulating the stain state of MgB2 by flexing or bending the sample.

Meanwhile, Bayliss received a $1,298 grant to travel to Colorado Springs, Colorado, the home of a geospatial solutions firm that is the direct descendant of Sanborn Map Company, a provider of fire insurance maps.

Bayliss will view archival materials related to Daniel Alfred Sanborn, surveyor and founder of the Sanborn Map Co., and the formation and transformation of his company over the course of a century. The research will be used in his upcoming article, “Delimiting Risk and Reward: An Historical Geography of Insurance Mapping in the United States.”

The final grant recipient, Tang, received a $2,702 grant to support his continued research of the oxysterol-binding protein Osh6 as a pro-longevity protein and its relation to age-dependent diseases like cancer. The summer fellowship will fund the publication of his research as well as the use of genome editing, a state-of-the-art technology in genetic engineering, in future research.