SEPTEMBER 2026 AWARDS AND PROPOSALS

Congratulations! The following UTC Faculty and Staff have attracted $8,191,932 in external grant and contract awards:

• Sybil Baker (English) received $2,155 from ArtsBuild for the project entitled, “Paired Community Writing Workshops-Underground and Academic Writers (pilot).”
• Julia Bursch (UTC Research Institute) and a multi-disciplinary team including Dr. Jejal Reddy Bathi (Civil and Chemical Engineering), Terry Ellis (Nursing), Dr. David Giles (Biology, Geology, and Environmental Science), Dr. Eric Hungenberg (Health and Human Performance), and Dr. Thomas Lyons (Marketing and Entrepreneurship) have received $3,000,000 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the project entitled, “UTC Innovation Commercialization Center for Translational Research and Market Acceleration.”
• Dr. Mengjun Xie (National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense) has received $89,075 from the US Department of Defense for the project entitled, “2026 DOW CSA – Returning Scholar.”
• Karen Vann, Floyd Mathis, KariAnn Evans, and Dr. Tara Mathis (Center for Community Career Education), have received $300,000 from the US Department of Labor for the project entitled, “UTC Talent Search.”
• Dr. Keith Bridges (Center for Community Career Education) has received $336,000 from the US Department of Labor for the project entitled, “2026 Southern Appalachian Educational Opportunity Center (SAEOC).”
• Dr. Keith Bridges (Center for Community Career Education) has received $241,332 from the US Department of Education for the project entitled, “Northwest Georgia Educational Opportunity Center NWGEOC.”
• Dr. Lauren Ingraham (Academic Services), Dr. Andrew McCarthy (English), Dr. Kristin Pope (Career Connections), Dr. Allen Pratt (School of Education), and Dr. Jessica Taylor (Applied Leadership and Learning) have received $535,922 from the US Department of Labor for the project entitled, “Reduced Credit Degrees: Transforming College Curriculum to Prepare Graduates for the Next Age of American Prosperity.”
• Dr. Hannah Barger, April Anderson, Dr. Kristen Singletary, Dr. Jenny Holcombe (Nursing), and Kenneth Scannapiego (Financial Aid) have received $649,999 from the Health Resources and Services Administration for the project entitled, “CARE Nursing Scholars: Cultivating Access and Readiness through Education.”
• Dr. Brooke Epperson, Tessa Mullinax-Baker, Dr. Rosebelle Peters, Dr. Latisha Toney, Dr. Jenny Holcombe, and Maggie Duckworth (Nursing) have received $753,134 from the Health Resources and Services Administration for the project entitled, “BRIDGE-RN – Bridging Rural workforce gaps through Immersive, Deliberate, Guided Entry into practice.”
• Dominique Tran (Center for Global Education) has received $10,000 from the Institute of International Education for the project entitled, “STEM Global Career Pathways: Helping UTC STEM Students Turn Study Abroad into Career Success.”
• Dr. Louis (Dutch) Fayard (Accounting) requested and received $1,700 from the Institute of Management Accountants for the project entitled, “2026 IMA MEF Grant.”
• Austin Harris and Dr. Mina Sartipi (CUIP), in collaboration with the Nashville Department of Transportation, received $250,000 from the US Department of Transportation for the project entitled, “Leveraging Advanced Data to Deliver Multimodal Safety.”
• Dr. Azad Hossain (Biology, Geology, and Environmental Science) has received $299,740 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the project entitled, “Remote Sensing of Water Quality in the Tennessee River.”
• Charlie Mix, Nyssa Hunt, and Laura Lee (CAGDS) have received $40,549 from Skytec, LLC for the project entitled, “Riparian Buffer Assessment and Prioritization Model”
• Charlie Mix and Nyssa Hunt (CAGDS) have received $19,823 from the US Department of Agriculture for the project entitled, “2026 Cherokee National Forest Road Digitization Project – Phase 3.”
• Dr. Jason Miller (Psychology) has requested and received $2,000 from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for the project entitled, “Shift of Power and Religious Demographics: How the Increase of Non-Christian Political Power in the U.S. Leads to Christian Nationalist Beliefs and Support for Anti-Democratic Policies.”
• Dr. Deborah McAllister, Dr. Jason Gordon, Dr. Jennifer Lynberg (School of Education) and Dr. Aniekan Ebiefung (Mathematics) have received $1,307,984 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “Track 2: Graduate Yearlong Experience And Residency for Acquiring STEM Teaching Competencies (GradYEAR).”
• Dr. Cheri Green, Maurice Green, and Michael Lewis (Student Support Services) have received $352,519 from the US Department of Education for the project entitled, “UTC Student Support Services Program 2025-2030.”

Good Luck! The following UTC faculty and staff members submitted proposals for the potential to generate over $5,737,983 in external funding, if awarded:

• Austin Harris, Dr. Gazi Akgun, Dr. Mohamed Fadul, and Yasir Hassan (CUIP), in collaboration with ADASTEC Corp, requested $1,262,207 from the US Department of Transportation for the project entitled, “CO-DRIVE – Cooperative Driving Research, Integration, Verification, and Evaluation.”
• Austin Harris, Dr. Gazi Akgun, Dr. Huu Hoang Nguyen, Dr. Mina Sartipi, and Yasir Hassan (CUIP), in collaboration with ONEBUS INC, requested $412,281 from the US Department of Transportation for the project entitled, “American Innovation: Inherent Safety and Accessibility Advancements Through New Bus Architecture.”
• Dr. Gokhan Erdemir and Dr. Serkan Varol (Engineering Management and Technology) have requested $65,487 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the project entitled, “The Robotics Scientist Pipeline: A Community College-to-University-to-Graduate School Roadmap.”
• Dr. Gokhan Erdemir (Engineering Management and Technology) has requested $558,964 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “CPS-FR: Blockchain-Supported Trust and Data Integrity in Multi-Agent Cyber-Physical Systems.”
• Dr. Rahul Jayan (Mechanical Engineering) has requested $125,000 from the American Chemical Society for the project entitled, “Interfacial charge-coverage coupling in the electrochemical reduction of nitrate to ammonia.”
• Dr. Natalie Owsley, Meagan Oslund (Nursing), and Dr. Hemangi Mavadiya (Health and Human Performance) have requested $194,172 from the American Heart Association for the project entitled, “Nourishing Future Nurses: Advancing Plant-Forward Nutrition Education for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention.”
• Dr. Joey Shaw (Biology, Geology, and Environmental Science) has requested $4,967 from the National Park Service for the project entitled, “Digitizing the Mammoth Cave National Park Herbarium Collection: A Proposal to the Cumberland Piedmont Network.”
• Dr. Christina Policastro (Criminal Justice) has requested $38,440 from the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence for the project entitled, “2027 Senator Tommy Burks Victim Assistance Academy.”
• Dr. Yu Liang (Computer Science and Engineering), in collaboration with the University of North Georgia, requested $123,632 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “CPS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Real-time Subsurface Sensing with Cognitive Networked Robotic System.”
• Andrew Van Slyke (Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography) has requested $139,860 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project entitled, “Trading America: Nelson, Collingwood, and Shipwrecks of the Jamaica Station (1778-1782).”
• Dr. Khalid Tantawi (Engineering Management and Technology) has requested $230,000 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “Collaborative Research: From Illinois to Tennessee Advancing Workforce Readiness in Energy Storage and Power Integration Systems.”
• Dr. Imran Hossen (Computer Science and Engineering) has requested $395,024 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “Collaborative Research: Trustworthy Retrieval-Augmented Generation: Diagnosing and Correcting Credibility Circularity across Source Selection and Verification.”
• Dr. Imran Hossen and Dr. Shahnewaz Karim Sakib (Computer Science and Engineering) have requested $499,950 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “The Defensive Cost of Thinking Like an Attacker: Blind Spots from Offensive Experience and AI-Assisted Practice in Cybersecurity Learners.”
• Dr. Serkan Varol and Dr. Gokhan Erdemir (Engineering Management and Technology) have requested $395,227 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “ECR: Core: How the Timing and Form of Generative AI Assistance Shape Productive Struggle and Learning in Undergraduate Engineering.”
• Dr. Shahnewaz Karim Sakib (Computer Science and Engineering), in collaboration with the University of Akron, has requested $271,265 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “Collaborative Research: SaTC 2.0: RES: Lifecycle-Aware Security for Stateful and Multi-Agent AI Systems.”
• Dr. Shahnewaz Karim Sakib and Dr. Mengjun Xie (Computer Science and Engineering) have requested $349,315 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “III: Measurable and Deployable Privacy Guarantees for Black-Box, Tool-Augmented AI Assistants under Imperfect Adversary Knowledge.”
• Dr. Shaogang Ren and Dr. Yu Liang (Computer Science and Engineering) have requested $282,076 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “RI: Trustworthy Forecasting for Natural-Disaster Resilience via Dynamic Mechanism Memory and Uncertainty Quantification.”
• Dr. Zihao Wang and Dr. Yu Liang (Computer Science and Engineering) have requested $348,356 from the National Science Foundation for the project entitled, “NSF Collaborative Research: Continuous Time Model Foundation for Next-Generation Point-of-Care Biomedical Systems.”
• Dr. Bradley Harris, Christopher Frishcosy, and Dr. Mbakisya Onyango (Civil and Chemical Engineering) have requested $41,760 from the Tennessee Valley Authority for the project entitled, “Process determination of coal ash based synthetic aggregate production for hot mix asphalt (HMA) applications.”