A Discovery Partners Institute team led by scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago has been awarded a grant to develop a method for detecting Covid-19 outbreaks and trends from Chicago’s wastewater.
The Walder Foundation, a Skokie-based organization that supports science innovation and environmental sustainability, granted the team $1.25 million, the organizations announced Tuesday.
The team is one of eight projects in the Chicago Coronavirus Assessment Network that received a grant from Walder. In total, Walder has given $7.4 million in grants. Other grant recipients include researchers at the University of Chicago, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Rush University Medical Center.
Besides UIC researchers, the DPI team includes scientists from the Chicago Department of Public Health, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago.
With the funding, the team is going to develop a prototype for a cost-effective device to examine community spread of Covid-19 in Chicago's wastewater. The researchers say monitoring the city’s sewage systems could warn the Chicago Department of Health of emerging viral hotspots up to a week earlier compared to testing individuals. Covid is detectable in human waste several days prior to individuals experiencing symptoms, the researchers said.
“DPI Science Teams are meant to tap into the deep research expertise in the University of Illinois System and DPI's partners towards addressing broader challenges for the city and state,” said DPI’s Interim Director of Research Venkat Venkatakrishnan in a statement.
The Discovery Partners Institute, founded in 2017, is a network of research and innovation hubs at The 78 real estate project in the South Loop. The initiative has been active and growing this year since receiving $500 million in state funding.
The Walder Foundation was co-founded by Elizabeth and Joseph Walder, who was previously a University of Iowa biochemistry professor before founding Integrated DNA Technologies, a biotech company that produces synthetic DNA and RNA for life science research that was sold in 2018.
“Our support of Chicago CAN brings together Chicago’s powerful scientific research community with public health officials and community leaders,” said Elizabeth Walder in a statement. “We’re trying to encourage collaboration in addressing the need for better data, more testing in underserved communities, as well as longer-term insights about how to prepare and respond to pandemics.”
