NC State’s Comparative Medicine Institute (CMI) was recently awarded two NIH T32 Training grant awards to support interdisciplinary team science training of graduate students. One of these, on the topic of comparative molecular medicine, is a significant collaboration with numerous Biomedical Engineering faculty.
This T32 is titled “Training Grant in Comparative Molecular Medicine” and is co-led by BME faculty Ke Cheng and Matt Fisher as well as April Kedrowicz and Jorge Piedrahita. This Training grant is a collaboration between the Comparative Biomedical Sciences, the Biomedical Engineering and the Cellular & Biomolecular Engineering graduate programs. In addition, it has faculty mentors from both UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Schools. BME’s other mentors include: Ashley Brown, Jacque Cole, Michael Daniele, Danny Freytes, Alon Greenbaum, and David Zaharoff.
The second T32 award is led by Dr. Joshua Pierce and Dr. Gavin Williams, and is based in the Chemistry of Life Program. This award will focus on the interface of chemistry and the life sciences, and bridges molecular focused researchers from across NC State. This program is the result of a multi-year collaboration between CMI and the Department of Chemistry, now expanding to include five graduate programs from four colleges.
Combined, both grants involve over 60 faculty mentors distributed across multiple NC State Colleges. They will directly impact 9-10 new Ph.D. students per year as well as a much greater number indirectly through the creation of new courses and related minors (to be announced soon). More information about the CMI training programs can be found here.