Two University of Illinois Cancer Center members were named winners of the UIC Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) Cycle 1 Seed Funding Program.
Eighty eight proposals were submitted for consideration. The applications were reviewed by at least three UIC faculty, with proposals scoring in the top 30 percent advancing to a second round of review conducted by the Office of Technology Management to assess intellectual property and commercialization potential. A final review committee selected the awardees based on the combination of exceptional intellectual merit and research excellence, as well as potential for commercial impact. The 10 selections include 20 faculty from five colleges; four of them are collaborations between colleges.
Barbara DiEugenio, PhD, professor of computer science, is collaborating with four additional researchers on a project entitled “A contextualized dialogue agent to address health disparities among urban African Americans and Latinos with heart failure.”
Debra Tonetti, PhD, professor of pharmacology and interim head of the department of biopharmaceutical sciences, is working with a colleague on the project “A novel biomarker for TTC352 cancer therapy development.”