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Comparative Medicine Institute

Research, Education & Innovation Summit

Celebrating CMI Members’ 2024 Accomplishments

Please join us to celebrate our members’ accomplishments and to learn about exciting new opportunities for the CMI.

Thursday, August 15, 2024

11:40 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

McKimmon Conference & Training Center

Due to the strategic planning outcomes of the CMI, this year’s event will be a combined event with the with “Think, Collaborate & Do” Ideation Event in the morning and the Summit in the afternoon. To participate in the Ideation Event, you must register separately here.

Summit Registration

Summit Agenda

  • 11:40-12:40 Lunch, Guest Speaker Keynote Address
  • 12:40-12:55 Intro to Afternoon Session
  • 12:55-1:25 Division Focus–Chemistry of Life
  • 1:25-1:55 Division Focus–Translational Pharmacology & Physiology
  • 1:55-2:15  Entrepreneurship
  • 2:15-3:00 Poster Session Group 1
  • 3:00-3:30  Division Focus–Emerging & Infectious Diseases
  • 3:30-4:00  Division Focus– Functional Tissue Engineering
  • 4:00-4:30 Poster Session Group 2
  • 4:30-4:50 Education: YSP & SIRI Student Highlights
  • 4:50-5:00 Award Presentation
  • 5:00-5:15 Poster Breakdown
  • 5:30-6:30 Social Hour (Off Campus)

Please note: McKimmon Center has ample free parking for event attendees. However, area traffic may be a bit heavier than normal due to student move-in. More details here.

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Greg Forest

Greg Forest is the Grant Dahlstrom Distinguished University Professor in Mathematics with joint appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Physical Sciences at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He earned a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Arizona, then spent 17 years in Mathematics at Ohio State University before moving to UNC Chapel Hill in 1996 to build an applied mathematics program. His research interests over this time began in nonlinear waves and integrable systems, then migrated at Ohio State to materials science (industrial fiber spinning and liquid crystals). Once moving to UNC, he was drawn into the biological and medical sciences and became immersed in collaborations with clinicians and experimentalists that required learning how to analyze and learn from data. 

Lecture Title: Illustrations of data-driven mechanistic modeling and collaborations in medicine and biology

For over 2 decades my group has worked with multiple colleagues in the Marsico Lung Institute to understand respiratory mucus – in health and in disease progression. With experimental collaborators, we have recently understood key aspects of mucus pathology during progression of cystic fibrosis.  As the COVID-19 pandemic hit home in early 2020, with experts in medicine and virology we used knowledge of mucus physiology to model how viruses traffic in airways, how infected cells replicate viral copies, and infection spreads. I will discuss some insights gained. For just over a decade, my group has worked with the Bloom lab at UNC to model the yeast genome and compare our predictions with microscopy data to learn how gene communities organize spatially and temporally by the action of small-molecule proteins that transiently crosslink genes on chromosomal DNA.  

Poster Session

All CMI Members & Associate Members are invited to present a poster. Sign up by Friday, August 9th if you would like to present your work using the link below.

SIRI, U-TEAM, AHA & Beckman Undergraduates are required to participate in the poster competition. Other undergraduate and graduate trainees are strongly encouraged to participate as well, but are not required.

Present a Poster

Questions? Email Valerie Baker (compmedinst@ncsu.edu)