The Champlin Foundations awards $600K to URI

FIVE GRANTS totaling $602,580 have been awarded to the University of Rhode Island by The Champlin Foundations in support of technology and equipment acquisition in the communications, engineering, pharmacy and health sciences departments.
FIVE GRANTS totaling $602,580 have been awarded to the University of Rhode Island by The Champlin Foundations in support of technology and equipment acquisition in the communications, engineering, pharmacy and health sciences departments.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Five grants totaling $602,580 were awarded to the University of Rhode Island by The Champlin Foundations in support of technology and equipment acquisition in the communications, engineering, pharmacy and health sciences departments, according to a statement by the school on Monday.

Katharine H. Flynn, executive director of the URI Foundation Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations, thanked The Champlin Foundations for its continued support.

“This commitment to URI illustrates the significance of private support in fulfilling our educational mission. We are truly grateful for this partnership,” she said.

The five URI projects to benefit from the most recent Champlin Foundations grants made to the university are:

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  • Cell Culture Technology: Shared Teaching, Research, and Outreach Equipment in STEM ($154,000):This grant will provide undergraduate students with hands-on experience in both the practical and theoretical aspects of growing, imaging and analyzing cells. Cell culture, or the growth of cells from an animal or plant in an artificial environment (laboratory), is integral to many industries, including engineering, biology, pharmacy and medicine, with applications in the evaluation of new drugs and therapeutics, development of biofuels, toxicology, tissue engineering and vaccine development and production. The equipment will be used in collaboration across three colleges at URI, the engineering, pharmacy/academic health collaborative and arts and sciences.
  • Cutting-Edge Visual Equipment and Technology ($132,693): This grant will provide the Harrington School of Communication and Media with state-of-the-art, digital video and virtual reality equipment, including professional video cameras, 360-degree GoPro cameras and virtual reality headsets and monitors. This new technology will enhance resources that students now use and will make available cutting-edge digital equipment to students across the university to create, display, analyze and experiment with digital video, audio and imagery. In addition, community members and schoolchildren will have the opportunity to be exposed to the equipment during URI-supported programs, such as the Rhode Island International Film Festival Kids’ Eye Camp.
  • LENA Language Analysis Lab Proposal ($108,000): This grant will fund the purchase of 80 LENA digital language-sampling processors and 10 analysis software licenses to establish a LENA Language Analysis Lab at URI. College of health sciences and academic health collaborative students will use the LENA to record and analyze language production of children served by the URI Speech and Hearing Clinic as well as the language of children from birth through elementary school. LENA uses the technology found in hearing aids to allow users to digitally record up to 16 hours of audio and perform sophisticated analyses of each child’s language, distinguishing among adult and child speakers, turns in conversation and other elements. Currently, students must record, hand transcribe and analyze language data, throughout the semester to evaluate one recording. The URI Department of Communicative Disorders is the first in the nation to provide a program-wide initiative to train students to use this technology.
  • Enhancing Health Education ($106,000); This grant will purchase non-invasive portable equipment that students in the college of health sciences will use to measure body composition, bone density and metabolic markers. The Inbody 770 measures lean body mass and fat using bioelectrical impedance technology, which uses the relationship between electricity and water to estimate fat and lean mass of each body segment. The GE Achilles Quantitative Ultrasound assesses bone health and fracture risk by analyzing heel characteristics and the Quintron Breath Gas Analyzer measures metabolic markers in exhaled air. The equipment can be used in community health screenings and its technology offers new ways to measure body composition and health and communicate findings to patients.
  • Interfacial Tensiometer and a Drop Shape Analyzer for the Undergraduate Laboratories ($101,085): This grant will purchase two state-of-the-art instruments to measure and analyze the surface or interfacial tension of liquids, surface energy of solids and the wettability of liquids on solid surfaces. These instruments will provide hands-on opportunities for students in the departments of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering, as well as the college of pharmacy and academic health collaborative, where no such opportunity currently exists. This equipment will give students experience needed to prepare for careers in food science, biopharmaceutical, materials and chemical industries.

Over the past 45 years, The Champlin Foundations has supported URI and since 1986 has awarded the university more than $13 million in grants.

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