Research teams receive 2010 seed grant awards
Grants encourage cooperation, collaboration among the sciences
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Research teams selected for the 2010 Seed Grant Award include a collaboration led by (L-R) Jay Goldstein, Craig Beam and William Beck. Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin |
01/18/06
Sam Hostettler
Five teams of UIC researchers have been selected to receive the first UIC 2010 Interdisciplinary Seed Grants.
The grants – totaling $600,000 – are part of UIC’s 2010 Strategic Thinking Plan and will be used to promote new knowledge and collaboration among different university departments.
UIC faculty often rely on expertise from other colleges to study topics with strong interconnections.
Researchers were encouraged to work together to develop a grant that would not only be beneficial to their departments but to the university as a whole.
The grants, provided by the Office of the Provost, are intended to lead to the establishment of up to three new centers or initiatives in strong areas of current scholarship. Once the initial campus funding is exhausted, additional grants from outside sources will be sought.
“We received 38 proposals, which were all very good, but the winners are the best of the best,” said Russell Betts, vice provost for planning and programs.
The five winning teams and their proposed research are:
• “Strategic Translational Research (STAR) Intercollege Program at UIC” – Craig Beam, epidemiology and biostatistics, Jay Goldstein, medicine, and William Beck, biopharmaceutical sciences.
The initiative will create a registry of databases throughout UIC that can be used in translational clinical research, where groundbreaking discoveries in the laboratory will lead to improved treatment options for patients.
The goal, Beam said, is for individual patient data to be tracked from basic scientific studies through clinical trials and finally to outcome.
• “UIC Interdisciplinary Violence Prevention Research Center: Changing Systems to Prevent Violence in Chicago and Beyond” – Sarah Ullman, criminal justice, Larry Bennett, social work, and Christine Helfrich, occupational therapy.
The new center will work to improve police and criminal justice responses to violence; the treatment of victims of violent crime; community responses to violence; the practices of social service agencies working to rehabilitate offenders and the victims of violence; and the practices of agencies working to prevent violence.
• “Center for Supply Chain Management and Logistics” – Anthony Pagano, management, Abolfazl Mohammadian, civil and materials engineering, Kazuya Kawamura, Urban Transportation Center, and Houshang Darabi, mechanical and industrial engineering.
The project will develop an interdisciplinary center for the study of supply chain management and logistics. Supply chain management combines the processes — transportation, information technology, marketing, industrial engineering, economics and other disciplines — in moving and storing goods, from raw materials to a finished product and finally into the hands of consumers.
• “The UIC 2010 Blueprint for Dental Tissue Regeneration” – Thomas Diekwisch, oral biology, Brodie Laboratory, and orthodontics, Richard Gemeinhart, biopharmaceutical sciences and Anne George, oral biology.
The initiative will develop and implement approaches to regenerate teeth.
• “Center for Biocultures” – Lennard Davis, English, medical education and disability studies, Toby Tate, College of Applied Health Sciences, and Walter Benn Michaels, English.
The grant will be used to obtain further funding to establish a Biocultures Center, which will merge the fields of the humanities, medicine, biotechnology and science.
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