Falk College Office of Research Development

The Falk College Office of Research Development helps foster a vibrant research community within the College and facilitates collaborative scholarly research inclusive of undergraduate and graduate students.

Falk College faculty members engage in a wide variety of research activities that improve the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and the community, locally, nationally, and globally. Their fields of expertise include exercise science, food studies, human development and family science, marriage and family therapy, nutrition, public health, social work, sport analytics and sport management.

Funds from federal and state grants/contracts, foundations, the University, and Falk College support faculty research projects. Faculty members collaborate across all schools and colleges and contribute to research institutes, centers and working groups. While the College is diverse in its disciplinary fields and areas of research interest among its faculty, all are committed to studying change and potential for change across a broad array of human needs, aspirations, and institutions; that is, to the study of human dynamics in its widest sense.

The Falk College Office of Research Development assists in:

  • identifying funding sponsors and collaborators
  • internal and external proposal development (including strategy, narrative review, and budgeting) and post award support
  • navigating the University sponsored-project system

In collaboration with academic departments and centers or institutes, we sponsor activities including seminars and colloquia highlighting innovative faculty research. Annually, Falk College awards small seed grants for tenure-track assistant professors to support the development of junior faculty’s research programs.

Falk faculty are encouraged to access the Falk College Office of Research Development Faculty manual via SU Answers.

Recent Faculty Funded Research

Conducting A Racial Equity Impact Assessment and Developing a Community Advisory Board to Inform the Future of the New York State Wastewater Surveillance Network

This study examines the distribution of racial/ethnic equity, social vulnerabilities, and environmental justice throughout the New York State wastewater surveillance network (the network)…

Enriching Relational Environments as a Critical Pathway for Healing from Trauma: Helping Adults Use Purposeful Interactions and Build Developmental Relationships with Children in Out of Home Care

Deborah Sellers (Cornell University) PI and Yvonne Smith (SWK) co-I, Enriching Relational Environments as a Critical Pathway for Healing from Trauma: Helping Adults Use Purposeful Interactions and Build Developmental Relationships with Children in Out of Home Care NICHD Award #:…

Food Farmacy Lessons Learned

Kay Stearns Bruening (NFS-NSD) PI, and Xiafei Wang (SWK) co-I, Food Farmacy Lessons Learned, St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center / Mother Cabrini Foundation. 1/1/23-12/31/23 The Falk College nutrition programs will provide support to the St. Joseph’s Hospital Food Farmacy program….

Examining Neighborhood Profiles Defined by Place-based Community Features and their Relationships with Firearm Violence Disparities

Bryce Hruska (PHP) co-I, Examining Neighborhood Profiles Defined by Place-based Community Features and their Relationships with Firearm Violence Disparities, NIH. 9/25/23-5/31/24 Black Americans are over six times more likely to experience an assault-related firearm injury compared to White Americans. The…

The Impact of Longitudinal Patterns of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Adolescent Reproductive Health: Examining Factors that Promote Resilience

Sara Vasilenko (HDFS) PI, Xiafei Wang (SWK) MPI, and Rachel Razza (HDFS) co-I, The Impact of Longitudinal Patterns of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Adolescent Reproductive Health: Examining Factors that Promote Resilience, NIH. 9/19/23-8/31/25 This project applies Longitudinal Latent Class Analysis…

High-altitude Environments and Spleen Function in Humans

Sherpa highland natives in Nepal are known worldwide for their extraordinary physical abilities at high altitude. They are derived from Tibetan populations that may have experienced natural selection over thousands of years in response to hypobaric hypoxia (i.e., low oxygen…

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