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Hanna
awarded grant Tracy Hanna, an assistant professor of chemistry, will double the size of her research effort over the next five years with a $465,000 grant she received from the National Science Foundation, Hanna said. Hanna said she received a 2001 National Science Foundation CAREER Award after she submitted a proposal describing her work at TCU. The foundation annually funds the projects of new professors in their first five years of teaching, Hanna said. “It’s the sort of award that they want to give to people who care about teaching and research,” Hanna said. After being reviewed by university professors across the nation, Hanna was ranked in the top 25 percent of chemistry department applicants, said Michael Clarke, the foundation’s program director of inorganic, bioinorganic and organometallic chemistry. “She was among the lucky few whose scientific and educational areas were so meritorious that we decided we would give her money,” Clarke said. When Robert Neilson, chemistry department chairman, learned that Hanna had received the award, he said he eagerly congratulated her terrific work. “It certainly brings attention to the chemistry department at TCU because this is the type of award only given to the top young professors,” Neilson said. As well as the added attention the grant brings, it will further the research effort Hanna has been doing on catalysts for three years by enabling her to increase her staff size and buy additional equipment, Hanna said. A catalyst is a substance that makes a chemical reaction happen more quickly without being changed itself, Hanna said. Catalysts researching can be very beneficial to industrial processes by making them faster and eliminating pollution, she said. “We know what we want the catalyst to do,” Hanna said. “Using the information we have, we design what we think it should be.” Since this field of study is still small, there are not many people doing this research, she said. “That means I’m likely to make new discoveries and it’s likely to be very useful,” Hanna said. Laura
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