Four McKelvey faculty win Collaboration Initiation Grants

The one-year awards promote collaborative research within the university

Channing Suhl 05.14.2025

Clockwise from top left: Bersi, Cooper, Sorrells, Kong

Four faculty in the McKelvey School of Engineering have been awarded $25,000 Collaboration Initiation Grants from the school.

The program awards one-year grants to projects that facilitate collaborative research within McKelvey Engineering departments and other university departments for junior, untenured tenure-track McKelvey faculty. The grants are a pathway for faculty to apply for larger interdisciplinary grants, to create a more synergistic project than could be achieved by one researcher in one discipline, and to demonstrate the potential to sustain the collaboration and obtain external funding. Each awardee receives $20,000 from the school and must have $5,000 in cost-sharing from their department or collaborators.

The 2025 CIG winners include:

Matthew Bersi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, is collaborating with Xiaowei Li, assistant professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, on a project investigating the biological determinants of uterine rupture risk after cesarean section. The presence of cesarean section scarring elevates the risk of catastrophic delivery events, such as uterine rupture, which is thought to be a result of compromised uterine strength at the scar location. Investigating the key biological determinants of uterine scar integrity would help determine risk of uterine rupture, however, to date no such studies exist. The goal of this proposal is to use a preclinical model of uterine scar formation to study the impact of biological perturbations, surgical alterations and therapeutic interventions on uterine scar composition and strength, as measured by biomechanical testing and histological analysis.

Fanwei Kong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, is collaborating with Jie Zheng, professor of radiology at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at WashU Medicine, on a project that will examine the use of machine learning for high-resolution cardiac flow imaging. The project, which is co-funded by the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS), aims to overcome the limitations of current 4D flow MRI by developing a deep learning framework that transforms noisy, low-resolution data into highly detailed, time-continuous cardiac flow fields. This method aims to capture the complex cardiac flow features arising from fluid-structure interactions including heart valves, cardiac contraction and patient-specific anatomical variations. The framework will improve the reliability of 4D flow MRI in quantifying dynamic flow metrics and resolving regions near walls and valves — unlocking new flow-based biomarkers for diagnosis and treatment planning for cardiovascular disease.

Chris Cooper, assistant professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering and of mechanical engineering & materials science, is collaborating with Xianglin Li, associate professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, on a project that will develop a new strategy to enhance the performance of Nafion proton exchange membranes (PEMs), which are critical for fuel cells and lithium-air batteries, by infiltrating them with dynamic poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) polymers. These dynamic PEG polymers show self-healing properties through reversible bonds such as hydrogen bonds, metal-ligand coordination or dynamic covalent bonds. By infiltrating them into the Nafion microstructure, these self-healing polymers can allow healing of microcracks that occur during cycling to improve durability while also ensuring that proton transport channels remain open at high temperatures.

Janet Sorrells, assistant professor of electrical & systems engineering, is collaborating with Hong Hu, assistant professor of electrical & systems engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of statistics and data science in Arts & Sciences, and Yao Chen, assistant professor of neuroscience at WashU Medicine, on a project designed to optimize fluorescence lifetime analysis in biological systems. Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), which offers advantages over traditional fluorescence microscopy, faces significant data analysis and interpretation challenges in complicated biological systems. This proposal will address these challenges to make FLIM a more accurate and accessible technique and unlock a variety of new capabilities to study biological and biomedical questions. By developing new methods for efficient and accurate analysis of complicated fluorescence lifetime data in biological samples, this project has potential to have a large impact by enabling faster and more accurate monitoring of biological systems.