Nine submissions were selected by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Nutrition & Obesity Research Center as the most creative ideas for grant proposals in obesity-related research. To collect the cash prizes, the winners must submit their proposal to an extramural sponsoring authority by Nov. 5, 2013.
This unique Creativity is a Decision competition, now in its third year, is open to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty and staff. Twenty-five applicants submitted one-page proposals this year.
These faculty were selected to receive $5,000 for their proposed projects:
- Diptiman Chanda, Ph.D., Curing Childhood Obesity by in utero Stem Cell Transplantation;
- Gareth Dutton, Ph.D., Alternating Caloric Goals during Treatment to Improve Long-Term Outcomes;
- Monika Safford, M.D., Sound Bites to Healthier Eating;
- Victor Darley-Usmar, Ph.D., Assessing Obesity and Therapeutic Efficacy by Defining a Bioenergetic Health Index; and
- Thomas van Groen, Ph.D., The influence of the gut microbiome on development and cognition.
These post-doctoral fellows were selected to receive $2,500 for their proposed projects:
- Tonia Schwartz, Ph.D., Are populations evolutionarily adapted to fluctuations in their environment? Experiments using natural populations and fluorescently tagged lineages of Daphnia; and
- Michael Sandel, Ph.D.; Genomic Determinants of Body Composition and Cellular Metabolism in Baikal Skulpins.
The selected pre-doctoral students were selected to receive $1,000 for their proposed projects:
- William Neumeier, M.S., Caloric Intake with Heuristics, Exercise and Weight Stratification (CHEWS); and
- Sarah Katherine Sweatt, M.S., Does a eucaloric high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet improve metabolic outcomes and increase free-living physical activity?