Dear Friends & Colleagues,

There are so many good things happening within CMCI! I want to bring your attention to an action item and share a few recent accomplishments.

ACTION ITEM: REPORTING

It’s reporting season! Please respond to Michele’s request for information in a timely manner. We have just a few weeks to get everything put together. Regardless of whether or not you submitted a project proposal through CMCI, we want to know about it. All of what anyone affiliated with CMCI does counts towards effort for reporting purposes. We are missing MANY Working Group Reports.

COBRE RENEWAL

As most of you know, we submitted our 510-page COBRE Renewal proposal in late September. We outlined the following new research projects:

  • Christopher Remien, Population dynamic models of microbial interactions
  • Min Xian, Deep learning for breast ultrasound tumor detection
  • Audrey Fu, Machine learning for identifying causal networks in disease
  • Kyle Harrington, Artificial intelligence for accelerating wound healing
  • Bryn Martin, Computational modeling of cerebrospinal fluid drug delivery

I feel like we submitted a strong proposal. We will have a better idea of the likelihood of renewal after the special study section meets something this spring.

RESEARCH & NEW PROJECTS

Research Project

Modeling Access Grants

Pilot GrantsMatthew Bernards, Determining the Role of Albumin Conformation in Enhanced Bone Repair and Regeneration

Audrey Fu, A Causal Network Approach to Understanding Transcription and Methylation in Breast Cancer

Alan Kolok, Mountain West mine tailings, watersheds and adverse human health outcomes

Externally Awarded Projects

  • Christopher Marx has been awarded a U.S. Department of Energy grant, Using gene editing and an accumulated bioproduct as a reporter for genotypic to phenotypic heterogeneity in growth-vs-production for Methylobacterium extorquens conversion of lignin-derived aromatics to butanol
  • Scott Nuismer will be the University of Idaho PI on a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency cooperative agreement, Prediction of Spillover Potential and Interventional En Masse Animal Vaccination to Prevent Emerging Pathogen Threats in Current and Future Zones of US Military Operation

THANK YOU for all your contributions, hard work and integrity. We are a great team!

Sincerely,
Holly Wichman
CMCI Director