Grants from external agencies are a significant source of funding for research and creative activities at Pomona College, with faculty members and staff bringing several million dollars to campus yearly by winning competitive awards for sponsored projects in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, and mathematics.
Many of these awards come from programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF), with others from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), other public agencies, and private philanthropic foundations.
All external grants “recognize and encourage the vitality and cutting-edge quality of academic research at Pomona,” says Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research. “They also reflect our faculty members’ dedication to bringing the excitement of discovery and invention to their students in the classroom, the laboratory, the studio, and in direct engagement with creative scholars at the local, national, and global level.”
Below are the most recent sponsored research awards to Pomona faculty members, all developed collaboratively, and all received from federal agencies in summer 2025:
Accessing Carbon-based S(VI) compounds via Sulfur-Fluorine (SuFEx) Exchange Reactions
Awarding Institution: National Institute of General Medical Sciences (at NIH)
Principal Investigator: Associate Professor of Chemistry Nicholas Ball
Amount: $428,024
Synopsis: The proposed research involves the development of new methods to introduce key structural motifs into bioactive molecules relevant to public health. Ball is leading research collaborators Maduka Ogba at Harvey Mudd College and Christopher am Ende at Pfizer Inc. and Connecticut College. The new grant extends for three years a productive line of research supported by an earlier NIH grant to Ball and colleagues, so far resulting in six publications.
Many Pomona and Harvey Mudd students will conduct experiments, coauthor publications, and travel to scientific conferences to present research funded by the latest NIH grant.
“The discovery of new and better drugs that can treat diseases is incredibly important,” Ball says. “Our contribution is to find more efficient ways to build molecules that could have the potential to heal through synthetic chemistry. Developing new fast, and reliable ways to make thousands of compounds enables the discovery of new drugs, helping to lower their costs.”
Molecular platforms for studies of parity non-conservation and novel bonding mechanisms
Awarding Institution: National Science Foundation (Division of Chemistry)
Principal Investigator: Professor of Physics Richard Mawhorter
Amount: $150,978
Synopsis: This project employs experimental approaches to move beyond the standard model of physics through the precision measurement of molecules cooled to ultracold temperatures.
Mawhorter has taught at Pomona for 36 years, and this is his second NSF grant. He will conduct the project in conjunction with Emory University Professor Michael Heaven, who is receiving $497,664 from NSF for the collaborative work with his group there.
“This NSF funding over the next three years will amplify work carried out over the last 16-plus years with over 20 Pomona students at molecular spectroscopy labs in Germany and Spain with Pomona Sontag and Hirsch Fellowship support,” Mawhorter says. “In addition to work on campus and in more local laboratories at JPL and Caltech, we are looking forward to working side-by-side with Emory graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to study the hyperfine energy level structure and bonding patterns of simple molecules containing the rare earth element ytterbium (Yb).”
Depth-dependent decarbonation in a continental arc, Sierra Nevada, California
Awarding Institution: National Science Foundation (Division of Earth Sciences)
Principal Investigator: Professor of Geology Jade Star Lackey
Amount: $86,902
Synopsis: This work focuses on high-pressure and high-temperature decarbonation of marble and calc-silicate rocks that have been exposed by erosion into the deep lower crust of the Sierra Nevada mountains, California.
This is Lackey’s third NSF grant in four years. He will collaborate on the new project with Emily Stewart at Florida State University. His collaborator on one of the earlier grants is at Caltech; his teammates on the other project are at USC and the University of Texas at Austin.
“The work for the new grant is getting at the core question of how much carbon dioxide is naturally driven from Earth's crust when Earth's magmatic activity flares up,” Lackey says. “In the Cretaceous, a massive outburst of magmatic activity built the Sierra Nevada and the various igneous provinces in California south to Baja. Picture all the rocks that were sculpted to give us Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and even the salt-and-pepper looking rocks that form the cobbles that are fashioned into walls around the campus.”
“That was just what was made in California; other similar igneous provinces were built around the Pacific Rim in South America, Canada, Japan, Korea. Many of these magmas encountered carbonate rocks, like limestone that were laid down in oceans during previous periods when carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were quite elevated. The Cretaceous magmas ‘baked’ that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere and caused natural global warming.”
“We're studying what that ‘baking’ process looked like in the deepest levels of the Sierra Nevada.”
West Coast Operator Algebras Symposium 2025
Awarding Institution: National Science Foundation (Division of Mathematical Sciences)
Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Konrad Aguilar
Amount: $16,000
Synopsis: This award supports the 2025 edition of the West Coast Operator Algebras Symposium (WCOAS), scheduled for December 6-7 at Pomona College. This year’s conference will showcase current trends in operator algebra theory and applications to other fields, including ergodic theory, number theory, representation theory, and mathematical physics.
Numerous students at Pomona and the other Claremont Colleges will be able to participate in the symposium, including ones who have worked closely with Aguilar to conduct mathematical research on quantum metrics with the support of his 2023 NSF research grant.
The WCOAS and other conferences like it “are meant to present the state-of-the-art of Operator Algebras and bring in researchers from many career levels to foster collaboration and new connections with other fields,” Aguilar says. “Unfortunately, WCOAS has been on a hiatus since 2019, but we are very excited to be able to bring this conference back and for Pomona College to host its return.
“This return would not be possible without my co-organizers Rolando de Santiago at CSU Long Beach, Priyanga Ganesan at UC San Diego, and Therese Landry at UC Santa Barbara.”
