News

2024 Innovation Pilot Award Projects Announced

The UNC Center for Health Innovation is pleased to announce the awardees of the 12th  Annual Innovation Pilot Awards. Proposals were sought from across UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine faculty and employees for innovations across a spectrum of areas including care delivery, workforce development, new technology, advanced analytics, and more. Five projects were selected … Read more

Wireless Drug Patch Shows Promise as Chronic Disease Treatment Delivery System

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists created a new drug delivery system, called the Spatiotemporal On-Demand Patch (SOP), which can receive commands wirelessly from a smartphone or computer to schedule and trigger the release of drugs from individual microneedles.

Innovation Pilot Award Recipient, Andrew Abumoussa, MD, MSc, Awarded Funding to Continue Work.

Andrew Abumoussa, MD, MSc, a PGY6 neurosurgery resident, was awarded the KLS Martin Innovations Challenge Award for his work on utilizing consumer grade iOS devices to provide stereotactic neuronavigation for flexible endoscopy.  Earlier funding for his work was provided by UNC Center for Health Innovation’s Pilot Awards in 2022. For his research year, Dr. Abumoussa built an … Read more

Scientists Successfully Maneuver Robot Through Living Lung Tissue

Ron Alterovitz, PhD, in the UNC Computer Science Department, and Jason Akulian, MD MPH, in the UNC School of Medicine, have shown that their steerable lung robot can autonomously maneuver the intricacies of the lung, while avoiding important lung structures.

UNC Health Works with Epic on Integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

UNC Health will participate as early adopters of Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools through a program with Epic. It will be one of the initial few healthcare systems nationwide to do so.

2023 Innovation Pilot Award Winners

The UNC Center for Health Innovation is pleased to announce the winners of the eleventh annual Innovation Pilot Awards. Proposals were sought from across UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine faculty and employees for innovations across a spectrum of areas including care delivery, new technology, advanced analytics, and more.

UNC Health Recognized as one of “America’s Most Innovative Companies 2023”

FORTUNE has named UNC Health one of “America’s Most Innovative Companies” in its inaugural release of its Most Innovative list shining a spotlight on the top companies in the U.S. that have made the biggest impact in innovation.

Scientists Make Stunning Discovery, Find New Protein Activity in Telomeres

UNC School of Medicine researchers Jack Griffith, PhD, and Taghreed Al-Turki, PhD, found that telomeres at the tips of chromosomes contain sufficient genetic information to produce two small proteins with potentially potent biological properties.

How a New Blood-Vessel-on-a-Chip Can Help Researchers Further Understand Vascular Malformations

A research team led by William Polacheck, PhD, at the UNC School of Medicine, has engineered a microfluidic model that mimics a rare genetic disorder affecting the structure of veins, arteries, capillaries, and lymphatic vessels.

UNC Researchers Study Using AI in MRI Artefact Removal

The UNC Radiology Image Analysis Group, led by Dr. Pew-Thian Yap, has successfully found that deep learning can be used to identify poor-quality images in milliseconds. Their study hopes to increase timely decision-making with MRI re-scans.

UNC Researcher is Awarded Sleep Innovation Research Grant

Dr. Nicole Short, assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, was awarded the Sleep Innovation Research Grant by the Departments of Allied Health Sciences Office of Research and Scholarship and Neurology. Dr. Short will investigate the intersection of poor sleep and exposure to trauma among women. Her study may support future sleep interventions in order … Read more

UNC Research Awarded Emerging Investigator Award and $6.5M in funding from NIH

Dr. Li Qian has received the Emerging Investigator Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the NIH. The award includes $6.5M in funding over 7 years to support the Qian Lab, which is focused on developing and refining reprogramming approaches to repair injured hearts.

“Food is Medicine” Research Team Receives Second NIH Grant

The “Food is Medicine” research partnership led by Dr. Seth Berkowitz is awarded a $3.25M grant by the National Institutes of Health. This second grant will support further research of medically tailored meal programs and investigate how addressing food insecurity impacts diabetes management for people with HIV.

Scherrer Lab Granted $300K McKnight Award

Dr. Greg Scherrer, associate professor in the UNC Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, was selected for the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. The Scherrer lab will generate a brain-wide map of pain emotional circuits in addition to separating out activated brain cells and sequencing their genetic code, with the goal of finding better ways … Read more

UNC Lineberger Researchers Awarded $750K Health Equity Innovations Fund grant

Dr. Jennifer Elston Lafata was awarded $750K by Genentech to study how virtual care programs in cancer are considering equity and disparity issues. The goal of this research is to consider how virtual cancer care can improve quality and patient outcomes while reducing current health disparities. This research will be completed in partnership with the … Read more

UNC Researcher Awarded Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Grant

Dr. Katarzyna Kedziora, postdoctoral researcher in the UNC SOM Department of Genetics, was awarded a $740K Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Grant. Dr.Kedziora’s work will provide the imaging community with better access to improve data and metadata handling, the sharing of imaging datasets, and data quality control and reproducibility through machine and deep learning approaches.

UNC Researchers Partner with NASA to HELP Explain Health Problems Occurrence During Space Travel

Dr. Jonathan Schisler, assistant professor of pharmacology and pathology & laboratory medicine at the UNC School of Medicine is a co-senior author of this study focused on determining the driver of cellular damage during space travel. Mitochondria defects are found to explain a series of health issues observed in astronauts who spent extended time in … Read more

UNC Health and the US Army Partner to Provide Trauma Training

Providers at UNC Medical Center and the UNC SOM will train the U.S. Army’s Forward Resuscitation Surgical Teams and other medical personnel from Fort Bragg, NC. Military personnel will have the opportunity to gain real-world experience in UNC Medical Center’s emergency department, ICU and operating rooms.

Two UNC Neurologists are Awarded the UNC Broyhill Research Award in Child Neurology

Drs. Senyene Hunter and Diana Dejas are this year’s recipients of the UNC Broyhill Research Award in Child Neurology. Dr. Hunter was awarded $25,000 to study novel genetic defects in participants with infantile spasms, and Dr. Cejas was awarded $12,500 to improve the transition of patients with neurodevelopment spasms from child-centered to adult-oriented care.

UNC Researchers Developed New Tool to Enhance Value of Lab Mice in Biomedical Research

Researchers from UNC’s Departments of Genetics and Computer Science led the international consortium to develop the Mini Mouse Universal Genotyping Array (MiniMUGA). This tool intends to improve researchers’ understanding of the genetics of mouse models. The team included 69 researchers spanning UNC, in addition to partners from six other institutions.

Zhang Lab Researchers Discover Mechanism to Regulate Essential Cancer MicroRNA

UNC School of Medicine lab of Dr. Qi Zhang utilized MRI technology to discover a mechanism to regulate microRNA. MicroRNA are essential to gene regulation, and abnormal microRNA can be linked to cancer and other diseases. Understanding the role of microRNA is important to developing better RNA-targeted therapeutics.

UNC Trial Shows Promise for Treating Eosinophilic Gastritis and Duodenitis

Dr. Evan S. Dellon, winner of a 2018 Innovation Pilot Award from the Center for Health Innovation, is the co-leader of the Anti-Siglec-8 Antibody Trial. This phase-2 trial is the first randomized trial for eosinophilic gastritis and duodenitis, and shows promise for treating these underdiagnosed diseases.

UNC Researchers Lead Groundbreaking Eating Disorder Genetics Study

The Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative will further explore the linkage between genetics and eating disorders. This study is led by Dr. Cynthia Bulik with the aim of identifying additional genes that increase a person’s risk of developing eating disorders and other commonly co-occuring mental health conditions. Over 6,000 participants will be recruited for this study.

UNC Participates in Collaborative NIH Effort to Study Rare Forms of Diabetes

UNC is partnering with 19 other research institutions to identify the cause of rare forms of diabetes. This study is led by Dr. John Buse and is funded by the National Institute of Health.

McElligott Lab Studies Neural Circuitry of Alcohol Consumption

Dr. Zoe McElligott is awarded $1.98M by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The McElligott lab is studying the neural circuit that promotes alcohol consumption, and hopes to find new interventions to prevent alcohol abuse.