Noteworthy: Research grants, awards and publications

A man with short black hair and glasses in a gray blazer is pictured in a classroom.
UAlbany's Mehmet Yigit was awarded $1.95 million to support his research to integrate DNA nanotechnology and synthetic biology into AI-driven applications for pathogen detection and RNA-based precision therapeutics. (Photo by Patrick Dodson)

ALBANY, N.Y. (Jan. 30, 2025) — The latest developments on University at Albany faculty and staff who are receiving research grants, awards and other noteworthy attention.

  • Elise Andaya, associate professor of anthropology, won a Senior Book Prize from the Association for Feminist Anthropology for her book, Pregnant at Work: Low-Wage Workers, Power, and Temporal Injustice, which was published last year by New York University Press.
  • Arun Richard Chandrasekaran, senior research scientist in the RNA Institute, received a $190,000 equipment supplement from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. The grant will be used toward the purchase of a biomolecular laser imager to advance research on programmable DNA nanostructures as biomedical and structural scaffolds. The instrument will enable fluorescence imaging to support Chandrasekaran's work on DNA and RNA nanotechnology, with applications in data storage, crystallography and drug delivery.
  • Miyeun Jung, a PhD student in Rockefeller College’s Department of Public Administration & Policy, received the Samuels Center Doctoral Fellowship, an unrestricted research grant of $5,000 from Baruch College’s Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Jung recently won the first place Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management Student Paper Award from the Korean Association of Policy Studies.
  • Associate Professor of English Eric Keenaghan has received one of the highest honors in literary studies for his collaborative work on The Muriel Rukeyser Era: Selected Prose, published last year by Cornell University Press. The Modern Language Association of America selected Keenaghan and fellow editor, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, professor of gender studies and women’s writing at the University of Bristol, for the 14th Modern Language Association Prize for Bibliographical or Archival Scholarship for their work on the book, which made much of the poet and activist’s prose available for the first time since it was originally published.
  • Igor Lednev, Williams-Raycheff Endowed Professor of Chemistry, was awarded $556,572 from the U.S. Department of Justice to develop a portable instrument that uses Raman spectroscopy to detect and identify gunshot residue at a crime scene.
  • Paul Morgan, director of the Institute for Social and Health Equity and Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Behavior, received the Kauffman-Hallahan-Pullen Distinguished Researcher Award from the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division of Research. This award recognizes research that improves services or education provided to children with specialized needs, with a focus on translating that research into practice.
  • Cara Pager, associate professor in the Biological Sciences and the RNA Institute, has been awarded $151,000 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to support her research into the molecular virology, transmission and pathogenesis of Ilheus virus, an understudied mosquito-borne flavivirus that causes disease in humans, as well as other animals and birds.
  • Mehmet Yigit, associate professor in Chemistry and the RNA Institute, has been awarded $1.95 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to support his research exploring ways to integrate DNA nanotechnology and synthetic biology into AI-driven applications for pathogen detection and RNA-based precision therapeutics. The funding, a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for Established Investigators, affords recipients broad flexibility to bolster multiple avenues of inquiry across their research program.