The 黑料网-Chapel Hill Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research announced the 2019 Creativity Hubs Awards to accelerate solutions to societal challenges. Three pharmacology faculty members,聽Lee Graves, John Sondek and Shawn Gomez, are researchers on two of the three hubs.
What if data on the devastating impacts of extreme storms and floods could inform and predict future problems for people who live along a coast? What if scientists could develop a therapy capable of suppressing a wide variety of viral infections, saving lives and billions of dollars in direct medical and economic costs? What if powerful chemical and genetic tools are combined to alter how genes are modified to treat human disease? And what if artificial intelligence could help identify the best way to harness solar fuels?
These are the questions being explored by the winning teams of this year鈥檚 Creativity Hubs awards. Managed by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) in support of Carolina鈥檚 Blueprint for Next Strategic Framework, the Creativity Hubs award program encourages and supports diverse, interdisciplinary teams that pursue answers to complex societal problems.
鈥淪o multifaceted are these challenges, that the only way to solve them is through the diverse perspectives offered by scientists from diverse fields,鈥� said Vice Chancellor for Research Terry Magnuson, PhD. 鈥淪upporting these teams through the Creativity Hubs awards yields solutions.鈥�
This year, in partnership with the 黑料网 College of Arts & Sciences鈥� Institute for Convergent Science, the 黑料网, and the Eshelman Institute for Innovation at the 黑料网 Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the OVCR awarded three teams with two years of funding worth up to $500,000.
Pharmacology faculty are researchers with two of the three hubs: The ID3@黑料网 Hub (the Infectious Disease Drug Discovery Program) and the Chemical Epigenomics Hub (Integrating Scientific Fields to Enable Grant Discoveries).
Addressing a critical unmet public health need, the ID3@黑料网 Hub brings together scientists across the fields of virology, proteomics, bioinformatics, chemical biology, and drug discovery to provide new antiviral therapeutics useful for treating multiple viral diseases. Lee Graves, PhD, and聽Shawn Gomez, EngScD, are team members with this hub.
The Chemical Epigenomics Hub combines chemical biology approaches with epigenetics to identify, develop, and apply chemical tools to better understand epigenetic processes, ultimately improving the treatment of human disease. 聽John Sondek, PhD, is a 聽team member with this hub.
Our congratulations to John, Lee and Shawn!