The impact of an Egyptian musical film star on national identify and better nutritional interventions in Africa are two of the four seed grants that Cornell's Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies recently awarded from a range of proposals from five colleges.

The breadth of proposals from a broad spectrum of academic disciplines reflects the scope and quality of international engagement on the Cornell campus.

The 2008 awardees are:

• Sturt Manning, classical archaeology: "Investigating the Potential of Oman Juniper Forests for Chronology and Paleoclimatic Reconstruction, with Emphasis on the Indian Ocean Monsoon," $10,000;
• Alice Pell, Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development; Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Rebecca Stoltzfus and Suzanne Gervais, all in nutritional sciences: "Unleashing an Unrealized Potential for Improved Nutrition: Effective Integration of Agriculture and Nutrition in Interventions in Africa," $13,500;
• Deborah A. Star, Near Eastern studies: "Layla Murad -- Egyptian Musical Cinema and National Identity," $7,000; and
• Wesley Sine, Johnson School: "The Failure of Political Institutions and New Venture Survival," $12,000.

Winning proposals represent the center's initiatives on foreign policy and international development, and Cornell's Africa initiative. Selections also were based on the project's potential to advance research by junior faculty, generate additional external funding, bring long-term discernable benefits to international studies at Cornell and to conform to the highest academic standards.

Summaries of the current seed grant proposals will be available on the Einaudi Center Web site at http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/funding/seed.asp. Information about the next seed grant competition, due Aug. 15, will be available on the Web site later this spring.