Nine Cornell faculty members have been awarded Affinito-Stewart research grants for the 2018-19 academic year.

The program, administered by the President’s Council of Cornell Women (PCCW), was established in 1990 to help the university increase the number of women in tenured faculty positions. It provides grants up to $10,000 for nontenured Cornell female faculty members to complete research already underway or in initiating new research projects that will provide the evidence of scholarship necessary for successful tenure submission. To date, more than $1.3 million has been awarded to more than 250 female researchers at Cornell.

In 2018, the council awarded a total of $87,504 in project funding to the recipients. The proposals were reviewed and rated by Cornell faculty members from across the university and by the PCCW Grants Committee. Criteria for the review process were scholarly merit, research design, feasibility and likely relevance to promotion to tenure.

The 2018 recipients and their research projects are:

• Rachel Aleks, assistant professor of labor relations, law and history, “Stronger Together? Gender Spillover Effects in Unions”;
• Fatma Baytar, assistant professor of fiber science and apparel design, “3D Virtual Garments: Exploring an Online Mass-Customization Framework”;
• Julieta Caunedo, assistant professor of economics, “When Trringo Comes to Town: An Empirical Analysis of Equipment Rental Services”;
• Brooke Erin Duffy, assistant professor of communication, “Invisible Labor in the Social Media Economy: Gender and Social Inequalities in an Emergent Workforce”;
• Amy Krosch, assistant professor of psychology, “The Changing Face of Whiteness: How Do Demographic Shifts Alter Strategic Race Perception and Affect Discrimination?”;
• Tashara Leak, assistant professor of nutritional sciences, “Facilitators and Barriers to Participating in After School Activities: Perspectives of Low-Income Urban Youth”;
• Sabine Mann, assistant professor in population medicine and diagnostic sciences, “Heat-treatment of Bovine Colostrum and Associated Changes in the Proteome of the Newborn Calf”;
• Jooyoung Shin, assistant professor of fiber science and apparel design, “Mistaken Identity: Cross-cultural Appropriation in Contemporary Fashion”; and
• Jeongmin Song, assistant professor in microbiology and immunology, “Binding Affinities of Neutralizing Antibodies to Typhoid Toxin.”

For more information on the PCCW grants program, including a video by alumna and PCCW member Deborah Hoard highlighting the research and broad scope of accomplishments of the 2017 Affinito-Stewart grant recipients, visit the PCCW grant website or e-mail pccw@cornell.edu.