As recipients of 2013 Pilot Funding for New Research (Pfund) awards, professors are granted the opportunity to pursue extensive research projects.
The Board of Regents Office of Sponsored Programs annually awards both tenured and tenure-track faculty up to $10,000 to use toward research focus after reviewing submitted project proposals. Both Dr. Kyle Piller, associate professor of biological sciences, and Dr. John Burris, assistant professor of computer science and industrial technology, received Pfund awards. Piller seeks to generate extensive DNA sequencing in fish, while Burris’s proposal aims to improve the maneuverability and performance of the modern aircraft.
“The thing I want to highlight is that students are able to be involved in our research projects. Having students get involved in working with us and getting experience is a very rewarding and beneficial aspect of the research that we’re able to do here,” said Piller. “Having the money to do so is also very important to involve the students.”
The goal of Piller’s proposal is to further knowledge of genetic variation in fish, which may help to prevent extinction among various species. Piller expressed the necessity of the awarded funds in obtaining next generation sequence data.
“This proposal is giving me a little money to gather some data to take my research to the next level, where people at bigger research-focused universities have been doing it for a year or two now,” said Piller. “The more data I have, a larger survey of the organism’s genetic makeup, gives me a more accurate assessment of genetic variation.”
Piller’s genetic research of splitfins, a group of freshwater fish in Mexico, serves as his inspiration for the project.  
“If there’s low genetic variation in the population, that’s not a good thing from a biological perspective. The goal is to learn a lot about genetic variations and how a lot of these species are related to each other before they basically go extinct,” said Piller. “Most of the splitfin fish are imperiled or jeopardized because of the poor environmental quality in Mexico. Maybe there is a way we can learn enough about them to find out what and where the problems are.”
Burris collaborated with Dr. Lisa Kuhn, visiting assistant professor in mathematics, in proposing biologically inspired air vehicles with aero elastic wings. Burris focuses on the computer used in the project through creation of a supercomputer which will serve to model flexible aerial wings.
“This award is uniquely collaborative in that it’s two projects,” said Burris. “I’m building a small supercomputer on which Dr. Kuhn is doing math. The supercomputer increases the ability to model and simulate real world problems.”
Using biology as her inspiration, Kuhn plans to develop a realistic model to accurately represent a flexible wing micro aerial vehicle.
“We seek to exploit the flexibility of the wings for control design purposes and gain insight into optimal morphing trajectories,” said Kuhn. “Work that has been done thus far on the model indicates that even at the one-dimensional level, simulations are too computationally expensive to be handled on a single node. By using the cluster Dr. Burris is creating, we will be able to further develop the model.”
Burris highlighted the significance and necessity of partnering the two departments.
“I’m reaching across to the brilliant minds of the math department and combing the research efforts of computer science and math,” said Burris. “By collaborating across departments, I hope our combined efforts can lead to some fresh and exciting innovations.”
For more information on external project funding contact the Office of Sponsored Research and Programs by phone at 985-549-5312 or by email at [email protected].