Professor Shannon Sirk (MME) received the NIH NIBIB R21 Trailblazer Award for her ongoing work in engineering both microbes and antibodies for human therapies. This three-year, $400,000 award is designed to help engineers pursue research programs at the interface of the life sciences, engineering, and physical sciences.

The NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) awarded University of Illinois bioengineering professors Thomas Gaj (BSD) and Pablo Perez-Pinera (ACPP) a five-year, approximately $4.8 million translational research grant to develop an optimized gene therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a severely debilitating and fatal neurological disorder. 

A new research project led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign aims to develop biomaterials that are strong, malleable, and support stem cell growth to transform skull reconstruction surgeries with a $2.4 million grant over five years from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, a branch of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. 

The study of human genomics is inextricably linked to larger societal practices: how well diversity is represented in those who direct and conduct scientific research, how we balance data access with individual privacy, and the ways we group and describe both healthy and ill people. This September, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) had the privilege of collaborating with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to host a workshop examining these issues.