Six University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee faculty members have been awarded USF Nexus Initiative (UNI) grants totaling $39,100. 

Recipients of the grants were informed last week. They are the followingL 

• Thomas Becker, Ph.D., and Jean Kabongo, Ph.D.: $11,600 to support their collaborative research project, “The Resilience of Entrepreneurs in Developing Economies: Implications for Organizational and Regional Effectiveness.” Becker and Kabongo, both of USFSM’s College of Business, are collaborating with James Abugre Baba of the University of Ghana, Janatti Kyogabiirwe Bagorogoza of Makerere University in Uganda, and Shepherd Dhliwayo of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.
• Jody McBrien, Ph.D., of the School of Education, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences: $7,800 to support a collaborative research project with Fred Bemak, Ph.D., of George Mason University, titled, “Interventions for Successful Refugee Integration: Welcoming America in New Zealand (Welcoming Communities).”
• Fawn Ngo, Ph.D., of the College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences: $6,900 for her collaboration with Jose Agustina, of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Their project is entitled, “A Cross-National Comparative Study on the Effectiveness of Formal and Informal Responses to the Crime of Stalking.”
• Giti Javidi, Ph.D., and Ehsan Sheybani, Ph.D., both of the College of Business: $12,800 to support their collaborative project, “Modeling of Blockchain, Internet of Things, and the Fifth-Generation (5G) Wireless Technologies for Smart Cities Development.” Sheybani and Javidi are partnering with Stavros Kotsopoulos of the University of Patras and Dmitrios D. Vergados of the University of Piraeus, both in Greece.

The UNI grant program was created in 2018 to enable tenured and tenure-track, full-time research faculty the opportunity to collaborate globally and nationally on scholarly and innovative projects.