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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Atlanta, GA | Posted: September 1, 2011
Marketing Communications Director
Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience
404-385-7001
Summary Sentence:
Petit bioengineering and bioscience collaborative grant program
Full Summary:
The Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience awarded $100,000 to two interdisciplinary teams under a new initiative, the Petit Bioengineering and Bioscience Collaborative Grant program, which was created to support early-stage innovative biotechnology research.
Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and BioscienceThe Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience awarded $100,000 to two interdisciplinary teams under a new initiative, the Petit Bioengineering and Bioscience Collaborative Grant program, which was created to support early-stage innovative biotechnology research.
The seed grant recipients address a wide range of topics including profiling single cells to understand the heterogeneity of different cell types and new approaches to traumatic brain injury. The call for proposals was welcomed by teams of Petit Institute faculty with one faculty member from Georgia Tech’s College of Science and one from the College of Engineering.
“This new program aims to promote the collaboration of new teams of researchers and help them establish preliminary results to apply for large external grant proposals,” said Robert Guldberg, PhD, director of the Petit Institute. “This initiative is directly in-line with the Petit Institute’s mission, funding cutting-edge research at the interface of bioengineering and the biosciences.”
Melissa Kemp, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department for Biomedical Engineering and Greg Gibson, professor in the School of Biology, proposed a project which aims to develop the measurement tools for relating variability in both genomic and protein information at the single cell level. The ability to conduct this type of profiling in single cells represents a remarkable technological advance in the last two years.
“Studies of genomic data often fail to bridge the observed variation in DNA sequences to cellular function, in part due to the variation that is present by both types of measurement,” Kemp said, “with the technologies this project is developing, we will be able to compare population-averaged data to single cell measurements in order to gain new insight in relating genes to phenotype.”
Michelle
LaPlaca, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical
Engineering and Al Merrill, professor in the School of Biology, are partnering
to merge traumatic brain injury with lipid biology in the hopes of evaluating, for the
first time, plasma membrane breakdown mechanisms and lipid signaling following
traumatic brain injury.
“Traumatic brain injury remains a major clinical problem with few effective
treatments and the devastating sequelae following this type of injury leads to
chronic neural deficits,” LaPlaca stated. “We are optimistic that these funds
will propel this important research forward.”
Funding for the new seed grants comes chiefly from Petit Institute's endowment as well as contributions from the College of Science and College of Engineering. Each team will receive $50,000 a year for two years, however, the second year of funding will be contingent on submission of an external collaborative grant proposal by July 2012.
