To foster joint research among its 10 campuses, the University of California established the Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (UC MRPI). The program awards competitive grants to multicampus projects that seek to develop tangible solutions to problems facing our state and world.

Each winning initiative is a partnership of at least three UC campuses.

The UC Office of the President (UCOP) has announced 16 UC MRPI recipients for 2019 — initiatives spanning topics in the sciences, social sciences and humanities that, altogether, will receive just over $9 million in grant funds.

Six of those projects, which were selected from among 179 applications, involve researchers and scholars at UCSB, including two led by Santa Barbara faculty.

Place-based arts

Kim Yasuda, an artist and professor of public practice in the Department of Art, will lead a team studying place-making artistic projects and scholarship. Place-making is an approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces that promotes a sense of community.

It’s a multifaceted phenomenon that brings together arts and cultural development with fields such as civic and environmental design. This strategy can take many forms, including public artwork, farmers’ markets, park design and more. A key part of the concept is its community input and ongoing nature.

Yasuda will work with artists and scholars from across five UC campuses for the planning initiative “Art + CA: UC Place-based Arts + Design,” which aims to identify and amplify place-based research across the UC system over the course of a two-year pilot phase.

“One of our primary goals is to develop a more publicly-accessible and distributive-research platform,” said Yasuda. “One that not only profiles the distinctive arts practices on each campus, but also frames our 10-campus arts network as a world class, publicly engaged system that directly impacts the communities in our state.”

This will enable UC artists to engage with each other, as well as a broader set of partners and community stakeholders, she said.

In the first year of the two-year plan, Yasuda will work with faculty colleagues and students to create an inventory of research practises, programs, and centers that exist across the UC system.

In the second year, they plan to pilot a series of arts initiatives and infrastructures that could be scaled systemwide — Yasuda’s ultimate goal.

“As we have learned, we need to find ways to make these organizing efforts both visible and sustainable,” said Yasuda.

What’s more, she said she hopes the planning initiative will enable the campuses to work more effectively together through collaboration, allowing artists and scholars to take advantage of increased communication, aligned goals and economy of scale.

According to the UCOP, the system currently has 650 full faculty; a greater number of adjunct faculty; and some 1,500 graduate students in the fields of arts, design and media. This represents more than 20 percent of the UC research enterprise, Yasuda said.

“This initiative will be the only arts research among UC-sponsored projects within our systemwide portfolio,” she said. “And we intend to maximize our presence.

“By developing ‘connective tissue’ between our campuses and their public research practices and making these visible and relevant, we amplify the critical place of arts research,” Yasuda said. “We also amplify the value of our arts and artists as well as our UC campuses.”

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Across campus from Yasuda, physics professor Mark Sherwin will lead a cohort enhancing the sensitivity of magnetic resonance spectroscopy, in what has been coined The California Magnetic Resonance eXploration Initiative. The project promises to revolutionize scientist’s ability to examine the structure and composition of a diverse array of materials.

Most people are familiar with MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, a technique that has found many applications in medicine. The technologies make use of a property of particles called spin. Combined with a particle’s electric charge, their spin generates a tiny magnetic field.

Scientists can make the particles wobble, or precess, like a spinning top by introducing a strong, external magnetic field. In this way, they can learn about a material’s structure, because each particle precesses at a specific frequency for a given magnetic field strength.

Currently, most of these techniques focus on atomic nuclei, because they oscillate more slowly than electrons, at a rate more amenable to the instruments.

Although nuclear magnetic resonance is tremendously useful, it has certain drawbacks. At low frequencies it’s harder to distinguish between different signals, and the signals are relatively faint.

Higher frequencies would offer scientists more precision, sharper data and stronger signals. What’s more, many atoms respond weakly to nuclear magnetic resonance.

For instance, the only variety, or isotope, of oxygen that responds to this technique accounts for just 0.04 percent of natural oxygen.

Because every particle has a fixed ratio between its precession frequency and the magnetic field, increasing the magnetic field will drive up the particle’s resonant frequency and, along with it, the technique’s precision.

Fortunately, Sherwin and his colleagues have developed a technique for measuring and manipulating particles at higher frequencies, which will enable them to investigate a broader range of materials with unparalleled precision using, for the first time, both electrons and nuclei at high magnetic fields.

“Using electron magnetic resonance together with nuclear magnetic resonance we could see the oxygens, and we could see lots of other species of nuclei, like sulfur and calcium,” Sherwin said. “There are all kinds of very important nuclei that are just not accessible right now.”

With their UC MRPI grant, Sherwin and his colleagues will fund roughly six student-submitted projects, inviting these student researchers at other UC campuses to take advantage of the UCSB’s facilities attuned to high frequency spectroscopy.

“We’ve been building equipment for a long time and we want to start generating the research community that will heavily use this facility,” Sherwin said.

Sherwin sees these projects as the first step in a plan to revolutionize the discipline of magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Last year, his colleagues at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory made a breakthrough in superconducting magnetic technology.

The new magnets have blasted through the highest field previously reachable. Ultimately, Sherwin plans to unite this powerful technology with his group’s progress in manipulating terahertz frequency pulses, creating the premier high-field magnetic resonance lab at UCSB.

The collaborations and projects generated by the UC MRPI grant are a critical part of an effort led by Sherwin and long-time collaborator Songi Han, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

Together they’ve worked with Brad Chmelka, a professor of chemical engineering; Raphaële Clément, an assistant professor of materials; and other researchers in magnetic resonance at UCSB and elsewhere to convince the National Science Foundation that this enterprise is worth the funding it will need to bring it to the next level.

— Harrison Tasoff for UCSB.