For more than 20 years, Nebraska EPSCoR's FIRST Award program has helped the state's early-career faculty establish independent research programs and compete more successfully for NSF CAREER Awards.
This year, several CAREER Award aspirants submitted pre-proposals in response to the FIRST Awards Request For Proposals; a subset of these applicants merited FIRST Award "Finalist" status. In spring 2026, 12 Finalists advanced; 11 of those prepared full proposals patterned after the NSF CAREER Award format.
From the Finalists group, FIRST Award Recipients are chosen to receive $40,000 for their further national award submission efforts (an amount which must be matched by each Recipient's department), in addition to the valuable reviews by national-level scientists outside Nebraska, engaged by Nebraska EPSCoR. The Nebraska EPSCoR State Committee selects FIRST Award Recipients.
At the State Committee's November 2026 meeting, these FIRST Award Recipients were chosen:
- Jessica Deitzer (University of Nebraska Omaha, Criminology and Criminal Justice) — “Steering Clear: The Role of Situation Selection in Preventing Juvenile Delinquency and Young Adult Offending” — $40,000
- Dongwoo Hahn (University of Nebraska Omaha, School of Health and Kinesiology) — “Integrated skeletal muscle responses to ischemia-reperfusion injury and Nrf2 modulation” — $40,000
- Karen Kim Guisbert (University of Nebraska Omaha, Biology) — “Response and Recovery of C. elegans Fecundity to Chronic Stress Exposure” — $40,000
- Haiwei Lu (University of Nebraska at Kearney, Biology) — “Genome Mining and Functional Editing of Specialized Metabolism in Populus: Discovery and Engineering of Salicinoid Biosynthesis” — $40,000
- Qi Wei (University of Nebraska Omaha, Special Education and Communication Disorders) — “Promoting Executive Function Through STEM and Movement Activities in Inclusive Head Start Toddler Classrooms” — $31,298
FIRST Award Recipients are required to submit a CAREER Award proposal to NSF within the next award period. See Nebraska EPSCoR’s Apply for Funding page for FIRST Award submission details. ###