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CSUF Garners More Than $6.5 Million in Grants, Contracts

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Cal State Fullerton reported receiving more than $6.5 million in awards, grants and contracts in June 2020 for assisting local small businesses struggling amid the pandemic, and for research on topics ranging from earthquakes to the relationship between attitudes on casual sex and rape myth acceptance.

One notable award is the $3,673,073 in funding from the U.S. Small Business Administration to Michael Daniel, regional director of the campus’ Small Business Development Center, for the Orange County/Inland Empire Small Business Development Center COVID-19 Funding project. The SBDC continues to provide coronavirus relief for small businesses in Orange County and the Inland Empire.

Another significant grant is the $2,371,523 award to Deborah Diep, director of the Center for Demographic Research, from Orange County Interests for the Development of Demographic Data and Support Products project. This funding continues the work of the center, which provides accurate and timely population, housing and employment data for Orange County.

Other recipients include:

Murtadha Khakoo, professor of physics: an additional $144,458 from the National Science Foundation for the project “RUI: Low Energy Electron Scattering from Fundamental Molecular and Atomic Targets.”

Yu Bai, assistant professor of computer engineering: $139,941 from the U.S. Army Research Office for the “Edge-Based Machine Intelligence Architecture for In-Situ Video Processing Using Binarized Neural Networks” project.

Wylie Ahmed, assistant professor of physics: $84,131 from the National Science Foundation for the project titled “Collaborative Research: Enzyme-Powered, Programmable Active Matter.” 

Jennifer Burnaford, associate professor of biological science: $53,472 award from the University of California, Santa Cruz, for her project “Monitoring Diversity and Dynamics of California Rocky Intertidal Communities.” 

Michael Groves, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry: $16,005 in first-year funding of a three-year award from the American Chemical Society for the project titled “Calculating Reaction Barriers for Benzene Hydroxylation to Phenol Using Graphene Based Catalysts.”

Laura Gil-Trejo, director of the Social Science Research Center: an additional $15,000 from the Sonoma County Junior College District on behalf of Santa Rosa Junior College for the 2020 Survey of Former Community College Students project.   

Sinan Akciz, assistant professor of geological sciences: $13,323 in total from the University of Southern California, Southern California Earthquake Center, with $10,323 for the “Revised and Expanded Chronology of Whittier Fault Earthquakes Through Dating Archived Samples From the Olinda Creek Site, Brea, California” project and $3,000 for “Modeling the Rupture Dynamics of Strong Ground Acceleration (>1g) in Fault Stepovers.”

David Sandner, professor of English, comparative literature and linguistics: $5,000 award from the Cal Humanities for the “Zines to the Future! (Re) Making SoCal Futures” project.  

Aaron Goetz, professor of psychology: $1,495 from the Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology for the “Do Attitudes Toward Others Having Casual Sex Predict Rape Myth Acceptance?” project.

Contact: Karen Lindell, klindell@fullerton.edu