2018 EID Seed Grant Awards

January 10, the Comparative Medicine Institute’s Emerging and Infectious Disease Program held it a seed grant competition specifically for the Associate Members.  This important community-building event was hosted at the College of Veterinary Medicine Research Building.  Three grants for a total of $5000 each were handed out.  For one of the proposals, EID partnered with the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine (TriCEM) to fund an interdisciplinary proposal between a Duke University Principal Investigator and an EID NCSU Associate Member, which centered on a topic related to evolutionary medicine.

Important major aspects of the submitted proposals were that the Associate Member had to form a collaboration between two existing CMI Full Member labs and it must be interdisciplinary.  New collaborations were preferred but established partnerships were accepted.

There were 10 presentations which were 3-5 minutes in length.  The results were based on the combination of votes from members present at the event and evaluation by the EID steering committee.

Winning proposals were:

“Alkylamides to treat postherpetic neuralgia” by Stephanie Johnstone.

“Exploration of the neutrophilic immunomodulatory properties of platelet-rich plasma lysate against bacterial aggregates in synovial fluid” by Jessica Gilbertie.

“Evolutionary medicine framework for evaluating methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus at the human-animal interface” by Christine Wang (EID/TriCEM award).