Under ND-ACES, several areas of spin-off and emerging research that expand the reach and capacity of ND-ACES and increase the opportunity for sustainability are made available each year to faculty (particularly early career, TCU, PUI, or MCU) in the form of seed awards that focus on high-risk, high-impact emerging areas or gaps in the current biosciences research that will also be linked to PROmoting Sustainable Partnerships in Education and Research (PROSPER) activities. Awards may range from a few months to 1 year, with related funding allocated. Faculty receiving awards will be incorporated into CCBSE and be encouraged to participate in the programmatic efforts of PROSPER.

Year Two

1. Ali S. Alshami, Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering, UND, joined the CCBSE Material Design Pillar. His project is: Fabrication of Hierarchically Porous Slit3-Releasing PLGA/hydroxyapatite Composite Scaffold for Bone Tissue Engineering.
2. Estelle Leclerc, Associate Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences, NDSU, joined the Cellular Systems Pillar. Her project is: Enhancing the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents using RAGE inhibitors in innovative 3D spheroid co-cultures.
3. Yen Lee Loh, Associate Professor, Physics and Astrophysics, UND, AND Manu, Associate Professor, Biology, UND, joined the Computational Approaches Pillar. Their project is: Machine learning approaches to build predictive models of heterogeneous gene regulatory networks.
4. Stefan Vetter, Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences, NDSU, joined the Cellular Systems Pillar. His project is: Investigating the role of extracellular matrix aging in cancer cell adhesion to 3D-scaffolds.
5. Danling Wang, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, NDSU, joined the Materials Design Pillar. Her project is: New functionalized nanocomposites based smart sensing techniques for real-time guidance of cancer treatment and early cancer detection.

Year One

1. Yongki Choi, Associate Professor, Physics, NDSU, joins the CCBSE Material Design Pillar. His project is: Nanosensing of cancer biomarkers associated with metastatic propensity
2. Michael Kjelland, Assistant Professor, Biology, Mayville State University, joins the CCBSE Materials Design Pillar. His project is: 3D Bioprinting Using Porcine Collagen Matrix Scaffolding for 3D Pancreatic Cancer and Mesenchymal Stem Cell Culture, Treatment/Differentiation, and Cryopreservation
3. Motoki Takaku, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Sciences, UND, joins the CCBSE Cellular Systems Pillar and Xusheng Wang, Assistant Professor, Biology, UND, joins the Computational Approaches Pillar. Their project is: Early cancer detection by cell-free chromatin and machine learning
4. Ravi Kiran Yellavajjala, Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, NDSU, joins the Computational Approaches Pillar. His project is: A Complex-step Decoder for Interpreting Cancer Cell Growth Images

Under ND-ACES, awards are made to support early career faculty researchers. Funds can be used for additional graduate students and domestic travel to assist in fast tracking research and outreach efforts within the ND-ACES Center for Cellular Biointerfaces in Science and Engineering (CCBSE) and/or PROmoting Sustainable Partnerships in Education and Research (PROSPER).

1. Jiha Kim, Cellular Systems (NDSU) to expand her current research collaborations to include 1) Mohi Quadir (Materials Design, NDSU), who will prepare soft scaffolds and test their feasibility for the cancer cells working with Kim and her team using commercially available cell lines to test the optimized condition for the PDOs and 2) Sanku Mallik (Materials Design, NDSU), who leads an activity to design and prepared polymer nanoparticles to deliver anticancer drugs on cancer cells on hard and soft material scaffolds working with Kim's team to test it on PDOs to address tumor heterogeneity and potential toward personalized medicine. Once generated, the PDOs from this project will be shared with Hilde van Gijssel (Cellular Systems, VCSU) and Colin Combs (Cellular Systems, UND) to further optimize long-term (greater than 1 month) viable patient-derived organoid (PDO) lines.
2. Trung Bao Le, Computational Approaches (NDSU) to expand his current research collaborations to include 1) Amada Haage (Cellular Systems, UND) to bring graduate students to her lab to work on cellular dynamics imaging to obtain validation data for the code and 2) extend his collaboration with Kerry Hartman (Cellular Systems, NHSC) to bring HPC training to undergraduate students at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College (NHSC).
3. Wenjie Xia Computational Approaches (NDSU) to expand his current research collaborations to include Jerome Delhommelle (Computational Approaches, UND) on the implementation of different machine learning algorithms into the multiscale modeling of polymer-clay nanocomposites.

To underscore the importance of collaborations in the sustainability of the ND-ACES effort, travel seed awards are available to ND-ACES Center for Cellular Biointerfaces in Science and Engineering (CCBSE) senior personnel. A collaboration is the extension or development of a research-based engagement (directly aligned with the CCBSE applicant’s ND-ACES activities) with a non-CCBSE researcher affiliated with an academic institution or national laboratory.

The Doctoral STEM Teaching/Research Assistantship is supported by the NSF-funded award New Discoveries in the Advanced Interface of Computation, Engineering, and Science (ND-ACES). This assistantship is designed to strengthen North Dakota’s STEM ecosystem by building a diverse pool of effective educators, skilled researchers, and engaged students. More specifically, the assistant ship will (a) strengthen doctoral students’ experience in undergraduate STEM education, and (b) reduce the instructional workload of ND-ACES faculty at non-research universities, thereby allowing them to devote additional time to research.

Under ND-ACES, Graduate Student Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Assistantship awards were designed to 1) increase graduate students’ understanding of advance research computing - hardware and software, 2) provide CI support to NDSU and UND researchers, and 3) help develop CI educational modules for use in informing and training undergraduate and graduate students and faculty, at NDSU, UND, and the TCUs, PUIs, and MCU located in the state. Awardees work 10 hours per week in NDSU's Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology (CCAST) or UND Computational Research Center (CRC) and 10 hours per week under their major advisor.

Under ND-ACES, the distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates (dREU) program gives undergraduates from TCUs, PUIs, MCU, and RUs the opportunity to work alongside research center NSF RII Track-1 faculty on cutting-edge projects.

Under ND-ACES, the Undergraduate Research Assistantship program gives junior and senior undergraduate students - from the 10 ND EPSCoR ND-ACES CCBSE participating campuses, the opportunity to complete a STEM bachelor’s degree while working in the center alongside NSF Track-1 faculty researchers on cutting-edge research projects.

The ND EPSCoR National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded RII Track-1 cooperative agreement New Discoveries in the Advanced Interface of Computation, Engineering, and Science (ND-ACES) Rural Student Teaching Experience (RSTE) program provides unique learning experiences for up to two teacher candidates. The goal of the RSTE program is to provide an exceptional learning experience for teacher candidates in a rural school and community while they complete the requirements of their undergraduate programs.