Author Archives: Kara Clissold

When you ask Simone about her eight years at UNC—six of which have been with NC TraCS—she describes a path that wasn’t exactly linear. With a background in anthropology and biology, she spent her early career in infectious disease research at Mass General, where she first fell in love with...

The exceptional quality of nominations for the Spring 2026 cycle of the Core Staff Recognition Awards made this one of the most competitive periods in the program’s history. While nomination itself is a significant honor, the award review committee was tasked with the difficult challenge of weighing a record number...

This spring, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded UNC-Chapel Hill two prestigious S10 Shared Instrumentation Grants (SIG), bringing state-of-the-art technology to campus that will accelerate discoveries in neuroscience, cancer biology, pathology, and other fields of research. These highly competitive grants recognize the university’s collaborative research environment and provide upgraded...

The Office of Research Technologies is excited to announce the Core Facility Staff Recognition Program is open for nominations. These awards recognize the value and importance of the staff in our biomedical research core facilities.  This program will offer up to three awards acknowledging the efforts and contributions of SHRA and...

We are excited to announce the launch of Carolina Microscopy ! This single core unifies the four departmental microscopy cores — the Biology Microscopy Core (College of Arts & Sciences), the Hooker Imaging Core (Cell Biology & Physiology), Microscopy Services Laboratory Core (Pathology and Laboratory Medicine), and Neuroscience Microscopy Core (Neuroscience Center) —  under the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR). This change...

DaVetta Pulley, a Research Support Technician in the National Gnotobiotic Rodent Resource Center, has been named the recipient of the Fall/Winter 2025 Core Staff Recognition Award in the Technical Achievement category. Over eight years in the Division of Comparative Medicine, she’s become a technical expert whose work has directly enabled...

Elevating Research Excellence: Nivedita Pareek Honored with UNC Core Staff Recognition Award Nivedita (Nivi) Pareek, the Microbiome Core Manager at the UNC School of Medicine, has been awarded the Performance Excellence award as part of the UNC Research Core Facilities Staff Recognition Program. Since joining the Microbiome Core in 2022...

Dr. Venkata Chirasani, Director of the R.L. Juliano Structural Bioinformatics Core, was recently highlighted in the Fall 2025 Volume 21 Issue 1 edition of Carolina Scientific. Founded in Spring 2008, Carolina Scientific serves to educate undergraduates by focusing on the exciting innovations in science and current research that are taking...

Celebrating Excellence: Fall/Winter Core Staff Recognition Awards  The School of Medicine (SOM) Office of Research Technologies is proud to announce the recipients of the Fall/Winter Core Staff Recognition Awards. These awards celebrate the outstanding staff within our UNC-Chapel Hill core facilities who exemplify the highest standards of Customer Service, Performance Excellence,...

Dr. Chris Gregory (Professor, Department of Genetics and Director, Office of Research Technologies) and Kara Clissold (Associate Director, Office of Research Technologies) published a paper titled “Incentivizing collaboration with core facilities: Developing an impactful core facility voucher program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine” (JBT 36(4):15-24,...