The Vice President for Research is pleased to announce the 2018 recipients of the
Research Initiative for Summer Engagement, or RISE program grant awards. This year,
24 faculty researchers from USC’s system campuses will receive RISE funding to support
their summer research projects. We are very happy to congratulate this group of outstanding
USC faculty members working at four-year and Palmetto College campuses around the
state. We would also like to thank the chancellors at four-year campuses USC Aiken,
USC Beaufort and USC Upstate for their collaboration in funding the 2018 RISE awards
for their faculty.
The RISE—Research Initiative for Summer Engagement—program provides financial support
to pay for summer salary, research supplies, travel related to research and undergraduate
student support. Read more about the RISE competitive research grant program.
Four-Year Campuses
2018 USC Aiken RISE Recipients
| Recipient Name |
Project Title |
| Andrew Dyer |
Ecological Invasion: The Role of Indirect Effects in an Annual Grassland |
| Kelly Ann Gibson |
Tropical Pacific Nutrient Dynamics Across the Mid Pleistocene Transition |
| Todd Hagstette |
James Henry Hammond and William Gilmore Simms: The Worst of Friends |
| Richard Maltz |
Compose a Ballet |
| Nicholas Marshall |
Preparation of alternating conjugated polymer brushes via surface-initiated Kumada
catalyst-transfer polymerization (SI-KCTP) |
| Kristina Ramstad |
Assessing genetic connectivity and divergence among wood storks of Brazil, Cuba and
the United States |
| Jessica Sullivan |
RISE: Production and Comparison of GPS and LiDAR Salt Marsh Circulation Models |
| Laura Swain |
Examination of the Positivity Effect and Socio-emotional Cognitive Functioning in
Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis |
2018 USC Beaufort RISE Recipients
| Recipient Name |
Project Title |
| Timothy James |
Reforming Military Justice: The Fuero Militar from Independence to the Three Years
War |
| Summer Roberts |
Subjective Assessments of Successful Aging |
2018 USC Upstate RISE Recipients
| Recipient Name |
Project Title |
| Andrew Beer |
Effects of Escalated Exposure to Information on Accuracy of Personality Judgment |
| Ona Egbue |
Dynamic Modelling and Control of Electric Vehicle Integration into the Smart Grid |
| Toshua Kennedy |
Lessons Learned from BEE Healthy: An Intervention Study Applying Peer Support among
Students, Parents, and Teachers |
| Thomas McConnell |
Historical Fiction as a Distant Mirror: A Southern Novella to Illuminate the Present |
| Allison Pingley |
Life in Transition: Examining the Impact of Communism in Hungary |
| Matthew Placek |
RISE - Social Media and Regime Support in Russia: Does National Origin of Website
Used Matter? |
| Shannon Polchow |
Dyslexia and World Languages: Navigating College Requirements in South Carolina |
| Monica Shehi |
Investigating the Emergence of the Discipline of Composition in the Albanian Higher
Education System Under the Influence of the American Model |
| Nolan Stolz |
Presentation at the Third International Conference of the Progect Network for the
Study of Progressive Rock (Lund, Sweden) |
| Carolyn Webber |
Working in the Margin: Domestic and International Minority Women in Higher Education |
| Wei Zhong |
Applying Big Data based Multi-level Deep Learning Frameworks to the Development of
Malware Detection Systems |
Palmetto College Campuses
2018 USC Lancaster RISE Recipients
| Recipient Name |
Project Title |
| Li Cai |
Targeting Tumor Cells by Natural Anti-Carbohydrate Antibodies Using Rhamnose-Functionalized
Virus Particles |
| Christopher Judge |
Determining the Validity of a Model Developed to Document the Decrease in the Basal
Width of Triangular Shaped Stone Arrowheads through Time: 3,000 to 300 Years Ago |
2018 USC Salkehatchie RISE Recipients
| Recipient Name |
Project Title |
| Melissa Rack |
The Slender Muse: Neoteric Poetics in Spenser’s Late Pastorals “Theory: Alexandrian
Echoes”; “Theory: New Songs”; and “Style: Things and Thingliness” |
15 February 2018