UPDATE: FACULTY RESEARCH GRANTS AND AWARDS

In this last of a three-part series, Bryn Mawr Now gives readers an overview of recent awards to support research by members of the faculty. Today, we'll take a brief look at projects developed by Associate Professor of Social Work and Social Research Julia Littel, Associate Professor of Physics Elizabeth McCormack, Visiting Professor of Social Work and Social Research Sanford Schram, Professor of Biology Margaret Hollyday and Professor of Chemistry Michelle Francl. For a more complete list of grants and awards made to faculty members during the 2003-04 academic year, see the Provost's Web page.

Associate Professor of Social Work and Social Research Julia Littel was awarded a grant of $18,000 by the National Board of Health and Welfare of Sweden for her project "Impacts of Multisystemic Treatment on Youth Outcomes." The grant will fund a research project Littell developed under the aegis of the Campbell Collaboration, a nonprofit organization founded in 2000 to gather and evaluate evidence of the effectiveness of various social interventions. Littell's project, which is also funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, involves a systematic review of studies of the effectiveness of multisystemic treatment on outcomes for youth in the juvenile-justice, mental-health and child-welfare systems.

"Multisystemic treatment," Littell explains, "is a brief, intensive intervention for kids who are in trouble; it works with the family, the school, the whole community." Her research group will review and synthesize available evidence of the treatment's effectiveness. "We'll be looking at experimental evidence from randomized, controlled trials in which kids who get into MST programs are compared to kids who don't."

The sort of systematic review Littell's research group is undertaking is a rigorous synthesis of results of published and unpublished studies, usually on the effects of a treatment or intervention. Systematic reviews often involve meta-analysis, or statistical synthesis of results across multiple studies. Meta-analysis can be used to sort or weight results of individual studies by their methodological rigor, size, precision and other factors.

Littell has presented the project to audiences in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen, Denmark, Berkeley, Calif., New Orleans, La., and Baltimore, Md., since she undertook the review. In February, she became a member of the International Steering Group and co-chair of the Social Welfare Coordinating Group of the Campbell Collaboration.

Associate Professor of Physics Elizabeth McCormack was awarded continuing funding for her project "Structure and Dynamics in Highly Excited Molecular States" from the National Science Foundation in the amount of $70,156.

McCormack's research uses a sensitive technique that involves multiple lasers to investigate ways in which constituent particles in small molecules affect one another. The project focuses on investigating spin interactions . Spin , not to be confused with rotational motion, is an intrinsic property of fundamental particles. The nucleus of an atom, which is usually composed of a number of particles, has a cumulative nuclear spin that is calculated by adding together the spins of all its individual protons and neutrons. The nuclear spin of a molecule, in turn, equals the sum of the nuclear spins of its constituent atoms. Understanding the interaction between the spins of electrons and the spins of nuclei in molecular systems is important in several fields. A recent example is the effort to understand the role of spin interections in making extremely cold samples of molecules.

"Molecules are a wonderful quantum-mechanical laboratory because their complexity means that they can do things that atoms can't," says McCormack. "For instance, the nuclei of a molecule can exist in several different states of vibration and rotation." McCormack and her team are using laser light to bring the nuclei of molecules to highly excited vibrational states and then measuring the effect of the nuclear vibration on the interaction of nuclear and electronic spins.

Investigating spin interaction becomes more difficult — and more interesting — as the structures studied become more complex, McCormack explains. "Schrödinger's equation, the quantum-mechanical equation used to predict the behavior of interacting particles, can be solved analytically only for a two-particle system. For molecular systems with multiple particles, the Schrödinger equation cannot be solved exactly. Rather, approximate methods are used and the results then compared to experimental measurements to understand the nature of the interactions. One such semi-empirical approach called MQDT, or multichannel quantum defect theory, has been very effective in providing insight into molcular structure and dynamics. It is this theory that McCormack and her team hope to test for its abilities to describe spin intereactions in molecules."

The NSF grant paid for equipment that allows McCormack to use a new technique called time-resolved, resonant four-wave mixing spectroscopy to measure the effects of highly excited nuclear states on spin interaction in molecules. The results are then compared to MQDT predictions, ultimately providing confirmation of quantum-mechanical theory. 

"Four-wave mixing is a difficult technique," McCormack says, "but it works where other methods don't. Because it involves multiple lasers, it also allows researchers to study molecules in a state-selective manner, which greatly simplifies the interpretation of the measurements." McCormack and her team hope to provide data that is of fundamental interest to molecular physics in general.

Visiting Professor of Social Work and Social Research Sanford Schram has been awarded a grant of $49,600 from the City of Philadelphia to fund a research project that he and doctoral students Corey Shdaimah and Roland Stahl are conducting in partnership with the Women's Community Revitalization Project, a Philadelphia advocacy organization. The project focuses on the impact of home-repair and maintenance programs on low-income Philadelphians' access to housing [see full story at http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/2004-01-22/homeowners.shtml].

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