UNC-Chapel Hill is making significant investments in five research projects as the university ramps up efforts to commercialize innovation.
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) said five winning translational research projects have been selected through the university's Creativity Hub program to receive up to $500,000 over two years as part of UNC’s seed-funding competition.
Translational research is research with high commercialization potential.
The winners of this year’s Creativity Hub funding are:
- The Human MHC Project — Revolutionizing Cancer Therapy by Total Sequencing of the MHC Peptidome
- Precision-Guided Closed Loop Adaptive Ultrasound Neuromodulation
- ALTER – Autonomous Living Therapies for Extended Results
- Advanced Medical Screening in Underserved Populations Using a Transportable Nanotube-Enabled Imaging System
- Advancing Solid Electrolytes for Next-Generation Lithium Batteries
The projects were selected from approximately 30 proposals. In total, the university is awarding more than $1.3 million to these innovation-forward projects.
Vice Chancellor for Research Penny Gordon-Larsen said that OVCR has also completed its Strategic Research Roadmap. This plan focuses on three key themes: accelerating, innovating and transforming the research ecosystem at UNC.
This involves more investments in research with commercial potential.
“My focus really is on thinking about how we do that innovation step and how we prime our research so that we can make tangible impacts on the world, but really, especially on our state,” Gordon-Larsen said.
This is the largest investment that OCVR has ever awarded in a single round, as well as the first year the program has partnered with the North Carolina Collaboratory, which was established by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2016 to utilize and disseminate research across the UNC system.
According to Gordon-Larsen, UNC is also close to breaking ground on a building dedicated to translational research, which will be located near UNC Hospitals.
