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.

“Think, Collaborate & Do” 2026

Thursday, August 13th, 2026

8:00 a.m.-12:50 p.m.

McKimmon Conference & Training Center

This year’s event will again 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 below for single-PI labs, graduate students and postdocs (Associate Members), as well as a group of faculty. Digital poster uploads are due by Monday, August 3rd. Please bring your hard-copy posters with you to the event.

We are also seeking Associate Member volunteers to help run the event. To find out more or to sign up, use the “Volunteer” button below, or contact Valerie Baker Vella at valerie.baker@ncsu.edu.

Please Note: The McKimmon Center has ample free, dedicated parking.

Keynote Speaker

Dr. James “Jimi” Cook

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Florida State University and competing for 5 years as a professional waterskier, Dr. James (Jimi) Cook completed his DVM in 1994 and PhD in 1998. In 1999, he founded the Comparative Orthopaedic Laboratory at the University of Missouri, a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, veterinarians, engineers, and basic scientists dedicated to translational orthopaedic research, which has now been endowed and moved into its own 12,000 sq ft facility as the Thompson Laboratory for Regenerative Orthopaedics. He has over 450 peer-reviewed publications, over $50 million in research funding, OTC and OTSC certifications to provide care for human patients, received numerous awards including America’s Best Veterinarian, The Marshall Urist Award from the Orthopaedic Research Society, and was a member of the inaugural CoMO 100 class recognizing those who shaped the city of Columbia, Missouri. He holds 42 patents including the MOPS^® technology. He is currently Professor and the William and Kathryn Allen Distinguished Chair in Orthopaedic Surgery, Vice Chair of Orthopaedic Research, and Director of the Mizzou Joint & Limb Preservation Center at the University Hospital’s Missouri Orthopaedic Institute. He is also co-founder of Be The Change Volunteers a NGO dedicated to building schools in remote villages in the developing world whose teams have built 90 educational facilities in 17 countries, providing educational opportunities to more than 10,000 students.

“Think, Collaborate & Do” Agenda

• 8:00-8:30 Coffee, Sign-in & poster setup
• 8:30-9:00 Welcome & Intro
• 9:00-10:50 Learn & Mingle
• 10:50-11:20 Ideate, Consolidate & Finalize
• 11:20-11:30 Q&A, Closing Comments
• 11:30-12:50 Lunch, Guest Speaker Keynote Address

Ideation Posters

A research summary poster is required to effectively participate in this event. 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 links below. 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).

Free poster printing offered to the first 15-20 graduate students and postdocs who sign up and upload their posters via the above registration form by Monday, August 3rd, if they do not have access to poster printing by any other means.

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 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

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

“Think, Collaborate & Do” Seed Funding Proposals

The 2026 call for project proposals will be released after the August 13th event, at which time the due date will be announced.

• Faculty Format Think, Collaborate & Do Proposal Format
• Associate Member Think, Collaborate & Do Proposal Format

2025-2026 Faculty Awards:

• Developing an agentic AI framework for single-molecule super-resolution imaging analytics
• Construction of Probiotic Lactobacillus-based vaccines for poultry using a stable recombinant-gene expression system via chromosomal integration
  • PIs: Ravi Kulkarni (CVM), Rodolphe Barrangou (CALS), Sarah O’Flaherty (CVM)
• Hijacking the Round Window Membrane to Get Large Therapeutics into the Inner Ear
  • PIs: Alon Greenbaum (COE), Amit Sharma (CVM)
• Visible Light Photon Upconversion-based Initiators Toward Deep Vat 3D Printing of Support-Free Soft Materials
  • PIs: Yang Zhang (WCOT), Henry Ware (COS)
• Mechanics-informed machine learning to elucidate the interaction of mechanical loading parameters and cartilage tissue properties during repetitive cyclic loading
  • PIs: Brian Diekman (COS), Mansoor Haider (COS)
• Non-Invasive, Real-Time Metabolic Profiling of Cancer Cells with Hyperpolarized NMR
  • PIs: Thomas Theis (COS), Melanie Simpson (CALS)
• Quantitative Pull-Force Assessment as a Functional Comparative Measure of  Strength and Health in Aging Companion Dogs
  • PIs: Alper Bozkurt (COE), Margaret Gruen (CVM), Natasha Olby (CVM), David Roberts (COE)
• Development of computational models for the analysis of shunt repair in dogs with portal vein shunts
  • PIs: Mette Olufsen (COS), Nathan Nelson (CVM)
• Identifying epigenomic mechanisms underlying persistent mast cell hyperactivity following developmental flame retardant exposure
  • PIs: David Aylor (COS), Michele Battle (CVM)
• Engineering a Novel, Real-time Optical Assay to Evaluate Equine Intestinal Ischemia
  • PIs: Caroline McKinney-Aguirre (CVM), Abraham Vazquez-Guardado (COE), Liara Gonzalez (CVM), Carla Lopez Cruz, Afra Anzumli
• Elucidating the role of peribronchial LGR5+ fibroblasts in orchestrating prostaglandin–neutrophil crosstalk in airway fibrosis
  • PIs: Jorge Piedrahita (CVM), Rosemary Bayless (CVM)

2025-2026 Student Awards:

• Genomics Guided Pipeline for the Invention of Antimicrobial Biomaterials
  • PIs: Luke Tucker (COE), Daniel Merselis (COS)
• Neutrophil-Targeted Microgel Immunotherapy Platform for Ex Vivo Equine Sepsis
  • PIs: Ethan Pozy (COE), Megan Palmisano (CVM)
• From Molecular Affinity to Cancer Signaling: Decoding How Mutations Affects Cell–Cell Communication
  • PIs: Yafan Zhang (COS), Zhuyang Lin (COS)

A big thank you to all who made these 2025-2026 awards possible, including CMI’s CATALYZE program, the Genetics & Genomics Academy (GGA), & ASSIST.

Questions?

Contact Valerie Baker Vella (compmedinst@ncsu.edu) with event questions.

Contact Dr. Ashley Brown (aecarso2@ncsu.edu) with proposal or award questions.

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.