PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) today awarded $1.5 million in Research Alliance grants to nine collaborative projects that bring together scientists from industry, academia and the public sector.
The Research Alliance program, now in its second funding cycle, is designed to break down institutional barriers to collaborative research across Rhode Island. The goal is to bring additional federal and corporate research investment into the state, stimulating new projects and opportunities for job growth, said Saul Kaplan, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation.
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“Investment in collaborative research takes advantage of Rhode Island’s unique strength – its size.” Kaplan said in announcing the grant award winners at the STAC meeting this morning. “It makes it possible for us to create strong connections across research institutions, research labs and research projects to bring more federal dollars into the state. This is an important competitive advantage for us here in Rhode Island.”
The program’s success was made evident in August, Kaplan said, when a Rhode Island College and Brown University collaboration investigating new treatments for testicular cancer – one of the eight research projects the Research Alliance funded last year (READ MORE.) – received a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
This year, STAC received 49 grant applications, from which it ultimately selected selecting nine projects that represent 24 scientists from 14 research organizations across the state, pursuing research in medicine, police forensics, engineering, chemistry, biology, oceanography and environmental science.
The grant winners are:
• A team from Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and ProThera Biologics, investigating new treatments for dangerous pregnancy complications such as premature birth and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), a condition where a developing fetus is unable to achieve normal growth. These complications have been on the rise despite better clinical care and understanding.
• A team from Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital exploring new, non-invasive techniques for rapidly diagnosing anemia in at-risk communities.
• A team from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island that will use the grant money to acquire an isothermal titration calorimeter – a critical piece of equipment for scientists studying proteins and their link to disease.
• A team from NABSys Inc. and Salve Regina University working an aspect of technology that would map genomes much faster and cheaper, making it possible for doctors to widely use gene sequencing in a new era of personalized medicine.
• A team from Brown University and the R.I. State Police that is seeking to develop a new technology to improve the clarity of fuzzy video sequences documenting criminal activity.
• A team from Roger Williams University and URI that is studying the “green tide” seaweed in Narragansett Bay, with the aim of developing new, marine-based drugs to fight a deadly and increasingly common hospital staph infection.
• A team from Brown University and Bionica, a Providence-based startup developing a new generation of hearing-assistance devices, for on a collaboration aimed at making Rhode Island a research-and-development nexus for that industry.
• A team from Rhode Island College, URI and Organomed Corp. working to develop new drugs to treat breast cancer.
• A team from URI, Salve Regina University and Celgen LLC developing new drugs to treat congestive heart failure and asthma.
The R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council, or STAC, was created in 2005 to help turn Rhode Island into a regional hub for the life sciences, information technology and other research-based industries. For more information, visit www.stac.ri.gov or www.riedc.com.
