University of North Carolina at Wilmington wins EPA grant

The University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW) was one of six universities to receive grants totalling nearly $4 million under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program this week.

The STAR grants are made available through the agency’s Chemical Safety for Sustainability (CSS) research program. They are for research aimed at chemical risk assessment and environmental protection.

Other grant winners include the University of California, Santa Barbara; Harvard University; Texas Tech University; Oregon State University; and Michigan State University. 

The UNCW team, which includes Susanne Brander, Richard Connon, Alvine Mehinto and Will White as principal investigators, will use its nearly $400,000 grant to develop a method for measuring the ecological impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals using a estuarine and marine model.

“This innovative research will provide new approaches to evaluate how chemicals influence the health of ecological systems," EPA Office of Research and Development Deputy Assistant Administrator Thomas A. Burke, who is also the agency’s science adviser, said. "These approaches can help predict and, more importantly, prevent chemical impacts. This knowledge will help us more effectively protect the environment from adverse impacts of chemicals over time.”