Research and Scholarship News
Amazing things are happening in Research and Scholarship at Bates! From recently awarded grants to new publications to upcoming opportunities and workshops, there’s always something going on!
Upcoming ORSP Events and Workshops
Enjoy your summer! Check back in Fall for 2026-2027 events.
Feed Your Mind
Thanks for a fantastic 2025-2026 Feed Your Mind series! Check back next Fall for information about the 2026-2027 series
Recently Awarded Grants
Congratulations to the following faculty, who were recently awarded funding to support their research and scholarship! For a complete list of all awards received by Bates College organized by Funder please visit the Awards to Bates College page.
- Dylan Freas receives funding from the American Chemical Society
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Dylan Freas has received an Undergraduate New Investigator research grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund to support his project entitled “Synthetic Approaches Toward Hydrolytically Degradable Polyethylene Glycol and Poly(2-Oxazoline)s.” Congratulations, Dylan!
This work is supported by the donors of ACS Petroleum Research Fund under Undergraduate New Investigator Grant 70210-UNI7.
- Tristan Koepke receives funding from the Maine Humanities Council
Assistant Professor of Dance
Tristan Koepke has an award from the Maine Humanities Council to support his project “ENIGMA: Open Rehearsal and Public Discussion on Choreography, Archives, and the Humanities.” Congratulations, Tristan!
This program/project is supported in part by a Mini-grant from the Maine Humanities Council.
- Ifrah Shahi receives NIH Maine INBRE Research Award
Assistant Professor of Biology
Ifrah Shahi has received a 2 year research project grant through the Maine IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) for her project “Investigating the Kingella kingae Type IV Pili Response to Host-Derived Stimuli.” Congratulations, Ifrah!
Funded by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (award P20GM103423 via subaward from Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratories). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
- Geneva Laurita receives Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award
Geneva Laurita was awarded the prestigious Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Congratulations, Geneva! More…
- Carrie Diaz Eaton receives continued funding from Hewlett Foundation
Congratulations to Carrie Diaz Eaton, who has received a $1,000,000 2-year grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to continue the development and work of the RIOS Institute, a virtual synthesis center that provides community support, training, professional development, and open access curricular resources opportunities to STEM educations and institutional leaders.
- Bates Dance Festival receives Funding to Support the 2026 Festival
The Bates Dance Festival has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts ($25,000) and the Maine Arts Commission ($5,000) to support the 2026 Bates Dance Festival and its general operating and programming. If you see BDF Director Shoni Currier on campus, please congratulate her!
- Nick Balascio receives National Science Foundation grant
Associate Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences
Nick Balascio, in collaboration with colleagues at the College of William and Mary, received $22,527 from the National Science Foundation for his project, “Managing Sustainment of Forests and Fisheries.”
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2445367. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
- Bates Dance Festival receives National Arts Relief Fund award
The National Arts Relief Fund from Americans for the Arts has awarded the Bates Dance Festival a grant for $17,500 in support of its general operating and programming. If you see BDF Director Shoni Currier on campus, please congratulate her!
- Asha Tamirisa receives LEF Foundation award
Associate Professor of Music
Congratulations to Asha Tamirisa, Associate Professor of Music, who has received funding from the LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund Early Development Grant program! The funding will support the initial stages of a new project, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, which will be a documentary using wildfire smoke as a material, metaphor, and method to explore attitudes towards climate change.
Assoc. Prof. Asha Tamirisa performs for an audience.
Photo by Tim Buggee
This work is support by a grant from the LEF Moving Image Fund.
- Justin Baumann awarded funding from Maine EPSCoR
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Congratulations to Justin Baumann, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, who has received funding from the University of Maine‘s National Science Foundation EPSCoR eRISE II program to support his project studying mussel populations in the intertidal zones of the Gulf of Maine. This award will fund genetic sequencing of mussels collected by Bates undergrads over the past summer to identify subpopulations of mussels that may be better able to adapt to changing water temperatures. Collection and analysis of the mussels and sequencing data will be part of the honors theses of two seniors in Justin’s lab this year.
Assist. Prof. Justin Baumann This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OIA-2412130 to the University of Maine. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
- Eric LeFlore awarded funding for Bobcat research
Assistant Professor of Biology
Eric LeFlore, Assistant Professor of Biology, has received funding from the University of Maine‘s National Science Foundation EPSCoR eRISE II program to support his project comparing surveying techniques for Maine bobcats. The funding will support the purchase of additional wildlife cameras, a need identified by preliminary studies, and strengthen collaborations with colleagues at the University of Maine Orono and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, while setting the stage for a long-overdue assessment of bobcat distributions in Maine. In addition, the grant will support three undergraduate students, providing an opportunity for paid scientific training in a field-based wildlife ecology and conservation biology research program. Congratulations, Eric!
Bobcats captured by wildlife camera. Photo courtesy of Eric LeFlore This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OIA-2412130 to the University of Maine. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
- Yun Garrison receives American Psychological Foundation award
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Dr. Yun Garrison, Assistant Professor of Psychology, has been awarded a grant from the American Psychological Foundation to develop a new psychological measure that explores people’s sense of collective hope in the aftermath of community trauma. This project is part of her ongoing community-engaged scholarship dedicated to fostering healing and growth within the Lewiston-Auburn community. Psychology students from her Community-Based Research Methods and Community-Based Thesis Seminar courses are collaborating with her, gaining hands-on experience in advancing research that bridges psychological science and community resilience. Through this work, she aims to make collective hope more visible, speakable, and actionable as a resource for healing and resilience.
Assist. Prof. Yun Garrison This project was supported by a grant from the American Psychological Foundation
- Jason Castro receives NIH INBRE pilot funding
Associate Professor of Neuroscience
Congratulations to Jason Castro, Associate Professor of Neuroscience on his recent NIH Maine INBRE pilot funding award. The central goal of the project is to use graph neural networks (GNNs), a type of deep learning architecture to understand how molecular features of smells are represented as maps of activity in the brain. In the process, Jason hopes to be able to address a debate in the field of olfaction between two competing hypotheses about how the brain encodes smells – the “ecological” coding hypothesis, which predicts that the brain organizes molecules by their shared behavioral relevance or ecological utility (e.g. ‘predator’, ‘prey’, ‘food’, ‘fermented’ odors), vs. the “physicochemical” coding hypothesis, which predicts that smells are organized by intrinsic chemical properties (functional group, molecular weight, polarity, etc).
This pilot funding supports the migration of Jason’s research toward an exclusive focus on neural computation and provides support for several undergraduates with different levels of computational experience.
Research reported in this publication was supported by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103423
- Sandra Goff receives NSF HEGS funding
Associate Professor of Economics
Congratulations to Associate Professor of Economics Sandra Goff, who has received a National Science Foundation award from the Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program (HEGS) to support her research on programs that compensate landowners who manage their land for ecological services. Read more…
Assoc. Prof. Sandra Goff This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2447385. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
- Ryan Cole receives NSF EMBRACE grant
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Congratulations to Ryan Cole, who has received a grant from the National Science Foundation EMpowering BRoader Academic Capacity and Education (EMBRACE) program. The project, entitled EMBRACE-AGS-Growth: Advancing Temperature-Dependent Absorption Models to Support Next-Generation Remote Sensing, involves the development of a low-temperature spectroscopy facility at Bates to enable sensitive studies of methane spectra in the laboratory. The project will support a collaboration with researchers at UC Boulder who will perform similar experiments in a high-temperature test environments to enable broadband, high accuracy methane reference spectroscopy over temperatures spanning -40 to over 700°C. Funding from the project will support several Bates undergraduate researchers, and through the collaboration with UC Boulder, provide Bates students with technical training on state-of-the-art, NSF-funded laboratory and field-measurement resources.
Assist. Prof. Ryan Cole This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2432506. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
View All Grants awarded to Bates faculty organized by Funder