Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) Awards for
2005

**PI:** Richard D. Alba

**Institution:** SUNY at Albany

**Proposal Number:** 0529921

**Proposal Title:** The Children of Immigrants in Schools

**NSF DIR/DIV:** SBE/SES

**Countries Involved:** UK, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden

**Budget:** \$1,538,062

**Summary Statement:** This proposal addresses compelling questions that
deal with issues of common concern among collaborating nations, that is,
what are the drivers of success/failure of immigrant children in
schools, which ultimately lead to incorporation of immigrant communities
into society.

**PI:** Gregg J. Bluth

**Institution:** Michigan Technological University

**Proposal Number:** 0530109

**Proposal Title:** Remote Sensing for Hazard Mitigation and Resource
Protection in Pacific Latin America

**NSF DIR/DIV:** GEO/EAR

**Countries Involved:** Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua

**Budget:** \$2,200,000

**Summary Statement:** This proposal develops a partnership between
Michigan Tech, the USGS, and governmental organizations in four Latin
American countries in order to conduct a series of collaborative
volcanic and hydrogeologic studies using remote sensing.

**PI:** Don J. DeGroot

**Institution:** University of Massachusetts at Amherst

**Proposal Number:** 0530151

**Proposal Title:** Developing International Protocols for Offshore
Sediments and their Role in Geohazards: Characterization, Assessment,
and Mitigation

**NSF DIR/DIV:** ENG/CMS

**Countries Involved:** Norway, Australia

**Budget:** \$2,341,579

**Summary Statement:** This project will form an international
collaboration among experts in geosciences, geotechnical engineering and
disaster mitigation to: 1) characterize seabed sediment properties as
they relate to offshore geohazards, 2) develop geostatistical tools to
assess the spatial variability of sediments relative to critical coastal
regions, 3) propose solutions to mitigate the potential damage from
these geohazards, 4) promote sustainable solutions for future
infrastructure development in these zones, 5) develop protocols to
assist policymakers with regulations that govern coastal and offshore
sites, and 6) develop educational resources and international
interactions to train future geologists and engineers in offshore
geohazards.

**PI:** John C. Eichelberger

**Institution:** University of Alaska at Fairbanks

**Proposal Number:** 0530278

**Proposal Title:** Partnership in Research and Education in Volcanology

**NSF DIR/DIV:** GEO/EAR

**Countries Involved:** Russia, Japan

**Budget:** \$2,169,223

**Summary Statement:** The PI proposes a program in which US, Russian
and Japanese scientists and students together address an important
problem in volcanology of immediate relevance: the devastating cone
collapse/blast sequence and its aftermath that beset Mount St Helens in
1980 and remarkably analogous systems of Kamchatka: Sheveluch in 1964,
and Bezymianny in 1956.

**PI:** M. Faghri

**Institution:** University of Rhode Island

**Proposal Number:** 0530203

**Proposal Title:** Partnership in Research and Education in
Microfluidic Technology and Applications

**NSF DIR/DIV:** ENG/CTS

**Countries Involved:** Germany

**Budget:** \$2,369,238

**Summary Statement:** The goal of this project is to develop a new
multidisciplinary and multinational research team model that will
internationalize engineering education and research. In this approach,
the partner institutions will work collaboratively to: 1) develop
sustainable, multidisciplinary international research opportunities from
the undergraduate through graduate level, 2) capitalize on complementary
research strengths to create innovative discoveries, 3) create
international internship opportunities for graduate students, 4) provide
graduate level practitioners with a rich international research
experience to increase their desire and ability to compete in the global
marketplace.

**PI:** Frederick Jelinek

**Institution:** Johns Hopkins University

**Proposal Number:** 0530118

**Proposal Title:** Collaborative Investigation of Meaning
Representations in Language Understanding

**NSF DIR/DIV:** CISE/IIS

**Countries Involved:** Czech Republic, Germany

**Budget:** \$2,498,407

**Summary Statement:** The PI proposes to investigate formal
representations of linguistic meaning for utilization in machine
translation (MT) and speech reconstruction systems. Such investigations
comprise a significant departure from tradition in statistical MT and
automatic speech recognition (ASR). This international partnership will
educate students in linguistic formalisms pioneered in Europe, and train
them in their application to problems in natural language processing.

**PI:** Jerald B. Johnson

**Institution:** Brigham Young University

**Proposal Number:** 0530267

**Proposal Title:** Speciation in Patagonia: Establishing Sustainable
International Collaborations in Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation
Biology

**NSF DIR/DIV:** BIO/DEB

**Countries Involved:** Argentina, Chile

**Budget:** \$2,119,588

**Summary Statement:** This project will focus on reconstructing
phylogeographic histories of at least 16 distinct species (or species
complexes) that occupy the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and
Chile. They will use molecular markers (mtDNA and nuclear DNA sequences
and microsatellites) and morphometric data to reconstruct population
histories of three fish species, two large complexes of lizard species,
two frog species, two freshwater crab species, and two plant species.

**PI:** Junichiro Kono

**Institution:** William Marsh Rice University

**Proposal Number:** 0530220

**Proposal Title:** Ultrafast and Nonlinear Optics in 6.1-Angstrom
Semiconductors

**NSF DIR/DIV:** ENG/ECS; MPS/DMR

**Countries Involved:** Japan

**Budget:** \$2,200,000

**Summary Statement:** This research program will investigate the
ultrafast and nonlinear optical properties of quantum structures based
on 6.1-angstrom semiconductors (InAs, GaSb, AlSb). These semiconductors
are nearly lattice-matched and can be epitaxially grown to form
heterostructures. Though they possess promising properties for
application in next-generation devices, there has been little
exploration of their optical properties, especially in the time domain
and at high laser intensities.

**PI:** Andrew A. Nyblade

**Institution:** Pennsylvania State University

**Proposal Number:** 0530062

**Proposal Title:** AfricaArray: Imaging the African Superplume,
building African partnerships, and enhancing the diversity in the
geosciences

**NSF DIR/DIV:** GEO/EAR

**Countries Involved:** South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda

**Budget:** \$2,440,000

**Summary Statement:** This project will support activities that are
part of a much broader, long-term initiative know as AfricaArray that
seeks to couple training and research programs in geophysics for
building and maintaining a scientific workforce for Africa's natural
resource sector. The science of the proposal centers on recording
seismic date at broadband sites on he western side of the East Africa
Plateau in order to study the origin and structure of the African
Superplume, a large enigmatic feature of the Earth's mantle.

**PI:** David N. Spergel

**Institution:** Princeton University

**Proposal Number:** 0530095

**Proposal Title:** Southern Optical Astronomical Survey

**NSF DIR/DIV:** MPS/AST

**Countries Involved:** South Africa, Chile

**Budget:** \$2,350,000

**Summary Statement:** This multi-institution, multi-national scientific
program will address many of the deepest and most pressing questions in
cosmology: What is the

dark energy? Where are most of the atoms in the universe? How do
galaxies and their

environments affect each other? These questions will be addressed by the
proposed

detailed study of a 100 square-degree strip of the Southern sky,
focusing on the universe

when it was between 2 and 6 Gyr old.

.

**PI:** Thomas C. Voice

**Institution:** Michigan State University

**Proposal Number:** 0530174

**Proposal Title:** New Generation Synthetic Membranes: Nanotechnology
for Drinking Water Safety

**NSF DIR/DIV:** ENG/BES

**Countries Involved:** France, Russia, Ukraine

**Budget:** \$2,306,116

**Summary Statement:** This Partnership will provide engineers and
scientists with an international perspective on issues related to public
water-supply and treatment. The Partnership will bring together
complementary fields of expertise and facilities as well as varying
geographical and cultural perspectives. Research will be organized under
two principal themes: 1) development of nanomaterial-enabled membranes
and 2) control of

membrane fouling, and will address fundamental nanomaterials chemistry
and materials science as applied to water quality technologies.

.

**PI:** Alec M. Wodtke

**Institution:** University of California at Santa Barbara

**Proposal Number:** 0530268

**Proposal Title:** Electron Chemistry and Catalysis at Interfaces

**NSF DIR/DIV:** MPS/CHE

**Countries Involved:** China

**Budget:** \$2,499,257

**Summary Statement:** The focus area for research is modern
heterogeneous catalysis and our approach to the study of this field is a
multidisciplinary one which seeks to increase contacts between the
fields of surface science and catalysis to strive for first principles
understanding of technologically important catalytic systems. Members of
the multidisciplinary team represent diverse scientific viewpoints, from
surface chemical dynamics, to theoretical simulations of surface
chemistry to engineering applications of catalysis.