From previous Berkman award recipients:

From Alessandro Acquisti, Assistant Professor, Heinz School, Information Technology and Public Policy, 2003 - 2004 awardee for "Understanding the Dichotomy: An Experimental Approach to Privacy Attitudes and Behavior"
The Berkman funding helped me start a novel program of empirical (economic-oriented but behaviorally-informed) research on privacy decision making and privacy behavior. This research has focused on issues such as the adoption (or lack thereof) of privacy technologies, the dichotomy between privacy attitudes and privacy behavior, as well as information revelation and privacy issues on the Facebook.com.

From Stephanie Batiste, Assistant Professor, H&SS, Literary & Cultural Studies, 2004 - 2005 awardee for "Dunham, Anthropology, and Dances of the Diaspora"

The Berkman grant provided the opportunity for me to visit collections in Washington D.C. that contain unique images and resources pivotal to analysis in my book, Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in African American Performance Culture during the Depression Era. The book examines 1930s Black stage and screen productions for their express and underlying imperial representations and ideologies, that is, images and structures of thought that have produced and sustained notions of national power in the West. At the heart of this study is the contradiction between blackness as a racial and symbolic identity of marginality and disempowerment and imperialism as a position of power that is racially coded as white in Western thought and culture. By using screen and stage performances as spaces where people act out assumptions of and desires for power, I question hierarchical notions of identity, the conditions of protest, and the relationship between "mainstream" and "minority" status in culture. These rare and understudied photographs and documents demonstrate the unexpected and sometimes bizarre juxtaposition of images in plays and films by black artists in the 1930s, a moment of political and cultural instability and possibility in the United States.

From James Duesing, Associate Professor, CFA, Art, and Jessica Hodgins, Professor, SCS, Robotics institute, 2003 - 2004 awardees for "End of Code"
The Berkman grant allowed us to develop all the pre-production materials for a project titled "End of Code." This project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between a team of artists and computer scientists. A number of the technical elements along with a working methodology had not been established, so we developed a prototype project to understand the type of work flow and challenges we will face in full production. The prototype, titled "Oral Fixations," is a darkly humorous look at a habit of endless consumption and the resulting accumulation of waste. The prototype is being used to support proposals for external funding for the "End of Code" project. Additionally "Oral Fixations" premiered this summer at the entrance to the to the SIGGRAPH Art Show during SIGGRAPH 2005 in Los Angeles. It was included in the Animal Nature Show at the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery on the Carnegie Mellon campus in the Fall of 2005 and will be on view at the Beecher Center for Art and Technology at The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown Ohio through spring 2006.

From David Rakison, Associate Professor, H&SS, Psychology, 2002 - 2003 awardee for "Shake, Rattle, and Roll: How Infants and Toddlers Learn about the Function of Objects and their Features"
The Berkman grant helped us integrate different methods of cell measurement into our laboratory procedures. As engineers we were very familiar with dry weight and optical density measurements and less familiar with plate counts and direct counts that are used widely by microbiologists. Using funding from the Berkman Faculty Development Fund, we acquired equipment necessary to complete multiple measurement techniques and compare them with each other to assess the use of surrogates (like dry weight and optical density) for reporting bacterial population. Further, we incorporated these different measurement techniques and their associated uncertainties into our development of models for prediction of bacterial yield. The equipment supported the work of an undergraduate researcher, Dacia Young, and allowed us to train two middle school teachers who spent the summer in our laboratory.

From Jeanne Vanbriesen, Associate Professor, CIT, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Department of Biomedical Engineering, 2002 - 2003 awardee for "Measuring Bacterial Biomass for Evaluation of Yield"
The Berkman grant helped us integrate different methods of cell measurement into our laboratory procedures. As engineers we were very familiar with dry weight and optical density measurements and less familiar with plate counts and direct counts that are used widely by microbiologists. Using funding from the Berkman Faculty Development Fund, we acquired equipment necessary to complete multiple measurement techniques and compare them with each other to assess the use of surrogates (like dry weight and optical density) for reporting bacterial population. Further, we incorporated these different measurement techniques and their associated uncertainties into our development of models for prediction of bacterial yield. The equipment supported the work of an undergraduate researcher, Dacia Young, and allowed us to train two middle school teachers who spent the summer in our laboratory.