Think, Collaborate & Do

Interdisciplinary Research Funding

CMI Ideation Event

Each year, the CMI holds the “Think, Collaborate & Do” Ideation event. This event invites faculty, graduate students and postdocs from all departments and colleges who have an interest in human and animal health to display a research summary poster that will allow them to make connections with potential collaborators they wouldn’t otherwise have met. They then form groups to come up with big, bold, new ideas in areas of focus to the CMI that become research proposals for the Ideation Awards. Below are examples of previous awards and instructions for this year’s event.

2024-2025 Faculty Awards:

Enhancing Development of New Therapeutic Candidates for Neutrophilic Asthma through Experimental and Mathematical Modeling Approaches. PIs: Sarah Shelton (COE), Rosemary Bayless (CVM), Sharon Lubkin (COS). Funded by CMI, COE, & KIETS.
Machine Learning to the Rescue: Data-Driven Prediction of Radiotherapy-Induced Normal Tissue Injury in Canine Cancer Treatment. PIs: S. Mohammad Hosseinian (COE), Michael Nolan (CVM). Funded by CMI, COE, & KIETS.
Integrating Sequence, Structure, and Dynamics to Predict and Design Nucleic Acids. PIs: Xingcheng Lin (COS), Keith Weninger (COS), Yi Xiao (COS). Funded by CMI, GGA, & KIETS.
Modeling cellular response to fibrous biomaterial properties for skin tissue engineering. PIs: Jessica Gluck (WCOT), Nathaniel Josephs (COS), Orlando Arguello-Miranda (CALS). Funded by CMI, WCOT, & KIETS.
Development of DRIFT Therapy to Boost Pulmonary Drug Delivery. PIs: Jian Zhang (CVM), Zixuan Cang (COS). Funded by CMI, with an entrepreneurial supplement.
A Field-Deployable CRISPR Diagnostic Platform for Early Canine Cancer Detection. PIs: Qingshan Wei (COE), Matthew Breen (CVM). Funded by GGA & private donations.
Defining and Targeting Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts in the Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Tumor Microenvironment. PIs: Sarah Shelton (COE), Shawn Gomez (COE/UNC). Funded by CMI & KIETS.
Cell Biology and Topology Meet to Inform Models of Cell Migration Fluidization. PIs: Jason Haugh (COE), Kevin Flores (COS). Funded by CMI & KIETS.
Accelerating the Discovery of Functional lncRNAs with Large Language Models. PIs: Xinxia Peng (CVM), Xiaorui Liu (COE). Funded by CMI.
Data-driven causal discovery of cell-cell communication impacts from transcriptomic data: recovering signaling mechanisms of lung development. PIs: Zixuan Cang (COS), Shu Yang (COS), Jorge Piedrahita (CVM). Funded by CMI & GGA.
Innovative computational methods to decipher cell cycle dynamics from single cell transcriptomes of easily cultured, yet complex eukaryotes. PIs: Nicholas Buchler (CVM), Zixuan Cang (COS). Funded by CMI & GGA.
High-Throughput Engineering of Activatable Human Kinases. PIs: Albert Keung (COE), Klaus Hahn (UNC), Balaji Rao (COE). Funded by CMI.
Transcatheter injectable biomaterial for next generation tumor embolization.PIs: Jingjie Hu (COE), Jessica Gluck (WCOT), Ashley Brown (COE). Funded by CMI & COE.
Investigation of Ultrasound Medullary Rim Signs as an Early Imaging Biomarker for CKD in Cats. PIs: Kennita Johnson (COE), Shelly Vaden (CVM), Autumn Harris (CVM), Gabi Seiler (CVM). Funded by CVM.

2024-2025 Student Awards:

Tracking DNA-Targeting Chemotherapeutics in Cancer Cells Using Single-Molecule Imaging. PIs: Md Abul Shahid (WCOT), Ummay Mowshome Jahan (WCOT), Md Arifuzzaman (COS). Funded by CMI.
Leveraging bioinformatics to explore the gut-lung axis in foals with neonatal sepsis. PIs: Megan Palmisano (CVM), Taylor Gin (CVM). Funded by CMI.

“Think, Collaborate & Do” 2024

Thursday, August 15th

8:00 a.m.-12:40 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 Research & Education Summit, with “Think, Collaborate & Do” in the morning and the Summit in the afternoon.

To participate in the morning event you must register and have a research summary poster to attend. Please look carefully at the sample posters. These are not traditional posters but specifically designed for this event. Examples are provided for single labs as well a group of faculty.

This year we have partnered with the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science (KIETS), the College of Engineering, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Data Science (DSA), Genetics and Genomics (GGA) and Global One Health (GOHA) Academies, and the Center for Human Health and the Environment (CHHE) to allow us to provide additional funding.

Free poster printing offered to the first 20 graduate students and postdocs to sign up via the above registration form by Friday, August 9th.

Posters should be 24×36″ with a portrait orientation. Please also include a photo of yourself (if a group, the photo of the person to talk to during the event) so that others can recognize you at the event. Templates available at the link above. Please note that these templates are only examples. Use whichever template fits your research best, and feel free to modify as appropriate as long as the meet the overall content format (simple and general).

Proposal Details:

Proposals are due September 15th, submitted via the form linked below. Proposal formats are also available below. If you have any additional questions, contact Valerie Baker at compmedinst@ncsu.edu.

Proposal Formats

Proposal Submission Form

A big thank you to all who make these awards possible, including CMI’s CATALYZE program, Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science (KIETS), the Genetics & Genomics Academy (GGA), the College of Engineering, & Wilson College of Textiles.

“Think, Collaborate & Do” Agenda

8:00-8:30 Coffee, Sign-in & poster setup
8:30-8:50 Welcome & Intro. Outcomes summary strategic planning
8:50-9:20 Introduction to Data Enabled Modeling
9:20-10:50 Learn & Mingle
10:50-11:00 Coffee Break & Transitional Comments
11:00-11:30 Ideate, Consolidate & Finalize
11:30-11:40 Q&A, Closing Comments
11:40-12:40 Lunch, Guest Speaker Keynote Address

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.

Not sure what an Ideation event is? Here’s how it works (Additional information in video link below):

Register to attend:	Submit your research summary poster Preview others’ posters electronically.
Learn & Mingle:	Posters will be displayed unattended in two shifts to allow browsing Leave your contact info for those you’d like to meet.
Ideate & Consolidate:	Join groups and exchange ideas.
Finalize your ideas:	Plan follow-up meetings & write your proposal

Questions?

Still have questions about “Think, Collaborate & Do?” View the info session recording below (ncsu.edu email required).

Info Session Recording

Other Funding Opportunities Outside of this Event:

Research Focus Area-specific opportunities: These seed grants vary year-to-year and are at the discretion of each area’s Associate Directors. Join the CMI & your preferred focus area to be notified when these awards are announced.
Young Scholar Program (YSP) / Summer Interdisciplinary Research Initiative (SIRI) awards: Annually each fall semester. Graduate students & postdocs create interdisciplinary projects and select undergraduate students as lab assistants mentees. Details here & here.
CATALYZE Entrepreneurship & Commercialization opportunities: Visit the Entrepreneurship page to learn more about the CATALYZE startup pitch contest, the Business and Medicine (BaM) program, and more.