Skip to main content

Jeffrey Houpt Innovator Award in Environmental Health Research

By Ilona Jaspers

Dr. Houpt’s research and clinical interest was to further the understanding of how human behavior and underlying psychiatric disorders converge at the level of expression of medical disorders. As such, he was dedicated to integrating the knowledge of two seemingly different fields: behavior and clinical medicine. Later in his career he aimed to merge knowledge from business leadership models into his training and coaching of rising leaders in academic medicine/biomedical research at UNC (I was the recipient of this leadership course), which was also the focus of his book “Learning to Lead in the Academic Medical Center”. Hence, it is fitting that the Jeffrey Houpt Innovator Award will be used to augment the biomedical graduate training at UNC with knowledge, skills, and teachings from other disciplines, thus aiming to surpass interdisciplinary and multi- disciplinary research approaches. Biomedical research and training are increasingly specialized and often siloed, lacking the ability to obtain novel insights and perspectives from different disciplines.

Figure 1: To develop a more broadly trained and well- adapted next generation of scientists, training needs to be facilitated across different disciplines.

 

As illustrated in Figure 1, the Jeffrey Houpt Innovator Award will seek applications from biomedical graduate students who are interested in collaborating with groups from seemingly distinct disciplines, such as humanities, social sciences, or technology/engineering, thus addressing a environmental health research question from multidisciplinary viewpoints. Collaborations should focus on research questions related to advancing environmental health research, both locally and/or globally. “Outcomes” of these collaborations are not necessarily peer-reviewed manuscripts, but can include educational materials, new devices, or mainstream media products (e.g. Newspaper op-ed, TikTok, Podcast, etc.).

Award Description:

       $5000 Merit Award

Application Requirements:

  1. Applicant needs to be a PhD Candidate within one of the BBSP PhD granting programs
  2. Statement (1-page) describing 1) the Houpt Innovator project and how this would enrich their dissertation project and/or training; 2) short description of the project plan and timeline; and 3) what potential outcomes are anticipated
  3. Current CV of the applicant
  4. Letter from the current dissertation advisor, indicating support for the project and potential time commitment
  5. Letter from the Houpt Innovator Project collaborator, indicating support for advising on the project

Requirements of Houpt Innovator Collaborators:

  1. Must be outside of BBSP/SOM
  2. Should be from a field that is outside the current scope of the applicant’s research
  3. Can be from non-UNC institutions (RTI, NC State University, NC A&T, NCCU, etc.)

Application Deadline and Review:

  1. The next deadline for applications will be Summer 2025.
  2. Announcement of Awards will be Fall 2025.