Three women faculty in the College of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Natural Resources will receive the first FORWARD Leap Research Grant awards. The recipients are Carrie Hammer, assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences; Birgit Pruess, assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary and Microbiological Sciences; and Kim Vonnahme, assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences.  

The awards, funded by the National Science Foundation Advance grant, are designed to support the advancement (tenure and promotion) of tenure‐track and tenured faculty women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines by providing research grants to seed proposals with strong potential to lead to greater funding opportunities from federal sources such as National Science Foundation or National Institutes of Health.

External reviewers with well-established careers in STEM research reviewed the proposals submitted in the first round of funding. After receiving the external reviewers comments, the final decisions for awards were made by an internal review committee.

An information session about the Leap Research Grant program and the next round of proposal submissions will be Wednesday, March 25, at 3:30 p.m. in Memorial Union Arikara room.

The new call for proposals will be posted at www.ndsu.edu/forward beginning March 25. Go to the “Funding Opportunities and the Leap Research Grants” link on the Web site for more information about submitting proposals.

For more information, contact Canan Bilen-Green at canan.bilen.green@ndsu.edu or 1‐7040 or Charlene Wolf-Hall at charlene.hall@ndsu.edu or 1‐6387.