TXST graduate student wins NSF funding for doctoral research into blast event trauma

The National Science Foundation’s Biological Anthropology Program has awarded Texas State doctoral student Petra Banks a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG). It’s the first time a TXST student has won a highly competitive DDRIG in 18 years and the first such grant received by the Department of Anthropology since the creation of its Ph.D. program in applied anthropology in 2018.

The $31,000 grant will support Banks’ dissertation research under the direction of Dr. Nicholas Herrmann, principal investigator for the project. Banks is investigating skeletal trauma through experimental blast research on pig and human cadavers. She’s comparing her findings with trauma data about blast victims from the federal Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and medical examiner’s/coroner’s offices.

“The goal of my research is to broaden our understanding of skeletal trauma in general and blast trauma in particular through experimental research and the comparison of skeletal blast trauma distribution with other forms of trauma,” Banks said. “This grant will help fund a data collection trip to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, experimental research equipment, and an undergraduate research assistant.”

 

Banks’ reviewers praised her project’s potential “to improve the methodologies for understanding the impact that trauma has on bone,” in particular “how both extrinsic and intrinsic factors impact changes by using both animal proxies and postmortem human subjects in the experimental design.”

In addition, one reviewer wrote, “This project has wide-ranging impacts for both academic training of graduates and undergraduates in anthropological research and the collaboration between academic institutions, first responders, and industry partners.”

“Petra is one of our most highly awarded graduate students,” said Dr. Andrea Golato, dean of The Graduate College at TXST. “She has received several external awards during her doctoral program at Texas State: NIJ Graduate Research Fellowship, Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Research Grant, and Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship.”