Research in Brief

Research in Brief, 1

An illustrated overview of recent research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Research • in brief

THIRD EDITION


Contact Research at Carolina

To contact any of the following research support offices or centers and institutes report-ing to the Office of the Vice Chancellor, please visit http://research.unc.edu/services/offices.php for up-to-date contact information.

Division of Lab Animal Medicine•Office of Animal Care & Use•Office of Clinical Trials•Office of Economic & Business Development•Office of Federal Affairs•Office of Human Research Ethics•Office of Information & Communications•

Office of Postdoctoral Affairs•Office of Research Development•Office of Research Information Systems•Office of Sponsored Research•Office of Technology Development•Research Compliance Program•UNC Roadmap•Carolina Population Center•Sheps for Health Services Research•Center for Galapagos Studies•Center for Health Promotion & Disease •PreventionCenter for the Study of Natural Hazards & •

DisastersData Intensive Cyber Environments•Frank Porter Graham Child Development •InstituteHighway Safety Research Center•Injury Prevention Research Center•Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanosci-•ence, & TechnologyInstitute of Marine Sciences•Renaissance Computing Institute•Institute on Aging•Nutrition Research Institute•Odum Institute for Research in Social Science•

On the cover: The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at Carolina supports the use of visualization technology and advanced computational methods. RENCI created this visualization to show search engine indexing hits and connections between sites hosted by internet repsitory ibiblio. On this page: RENCI’s visualization of 58,000 proteins in the human genome allows UNC pathologist William Kaufmann to examine them based on their similarity and function. RENCI’s Dell cluster computer, Topsail, is the 25th most powerful unclassified system in the world.


The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development supports the university’s research mission and lead the university’s efforts in economic development. Toward that end, we assist individual faculty members in their research endeavors, encourage interdisciplinary activities across campus, and foster programs that promote economic progress. We also play an important role in the university’s rela-tionships with foundations, federal agencies, corpora-tions, and the state and federal government.

For information on services provided by the Office of the Vice Chancellor, please visit Resaerch@Carolina online at http://research.unc.edu/services.

For information about research resources on cam-pus, visit UNC Core Research Facilities online at http://research.unc.edu/services/facilities.html.

Many of the examples and illustrations included in these pages originally appeared in Endeavors, Carolina’s magazine of research and creative activity. Endeav-ors engages its readers in the intellectual life of the university by conveying the excitement of creativity, discovery, and the rigors and risks of the quest for new knowledge. For more information, please visit Endeavors online at http://research.unc.edu/endeavors or contact Neil Caudle, editor, CB 4106, UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel hill, NC 27599-4106.

©2009 by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Use of trade names implies no endorsement by UNC-Chapel Hill.

A Letter from the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic DevelopmentLetter from Tony, maybe.

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Tony WaldropVice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development


Tarheels Taking the Lead

In physicist Richard Superfine’s lab, physics major Lauren Hartle (left) used electrospinning to create a flexible polymer surface where lung cells could grow. UNC’s Office for Undergraduate Research encourages faculty to incorporate research into undergraduate classes, and offers 60 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURFs) for undergrads who want to conduct research over the summer. In 2008-2009, UNC undergrads attended 180 profession-al conferences and co-authored 258 scholarly papers.

UNC’s Burch Fellowships send Carolina students to research proj-ects of their own design all over the world. In 2009, students set off to study the history of the Irish rebel ballad, the role of women in South African news media, and several other topics.Carolina ranks 4th among large universities in Peace Corps vol-unteers. Over 1,000 alumni have joined since its inception in 1961, which makes UNC the 25th-lead-ing producer of Peace Corps vol-unteers.Carolina for Kibera, established by undergrad Rye Barcott in 2001, fights poverty and helps prevent violence in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. CFK is now based in the Center for Global Initiatives at Carolina.DAN SEARS

Through the once-a-week Student Health Action Coalition (SHAC) clinic, Carolina undergraduates and graduate students from the schools of medicine, nurs-ing, pharmacy, public health, and social work offer free medical services to families, migrant workers, and college students. Through SHAC’s Beyond Clinic Walls, students go off-campus to serve community members who have limited access to clinics and local services. At 40 years old, the clinic is the oldest such operation in the United States.

PHOTO CREDIT


Using X-ray crystallography, chemist Matthew Redinbo and his colleagues created the first map of the exact structure of an ancient protein. Evolution-ary forces are intimately tied to cancer, other diseases, and antibiotic resistance, so speed-ing up protein evolution in a lab could help scientists better understand these problems.

In 2009, scientists at Carolina became the first to decode the structure of an entire HIV genome. The results will help scientists understand the strategies that viruses, like the one that causes AIDS, use to infect humans, and could ac-celerate the development of antiviral drugs.

Kevin Weeks, who led the study, says that prior to this new work researchers had modeled only small regions of the HIV ribonucleic acid (RNA) genome. The HIV RNA genome is very large, composed of two strands of nearly 10,000 nucleotides each.

Scientists have had a hard time interpreting this structured jumble of genetic code, mostly because the chemical processes they used to map what individual nucleotides were doing didn’t give consistent results. But Weeks’s lab developed a new method for measuring nucleotide flexibility: how likely nucleotides are to form single-stranded loops and curves, or, if they’re less flexible, rigid helices and base pairs.

The technique is based on a simple idea, Weeks says. “It’s in the chemistry we teach our second-year undergraduates.” Each nucleotide of a piece of RNA is treated with an organic compound. If the nucleotide contains chemical bonds that hold it in a rigid formation, it doesn’t react much to the compound. These are the nucleotides that are more likely to pair up with each other. If there are fewer of those bonds, the nucleotide reacts more strongly, showing that it’s free to form a looping structure.

“If you know enough about what parts of an RNA are flexible, you can use that information to make hypotheses about how it looks,” Weeks says. To help do this, they run a computer program that translates the reactivity data into com-plete pictures. Weeks and Joe Watts, a postdoc in the lab, did this with RNA from HIV-1 particles grown specially for them at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland. They saw a genome that was full of loops and double helixes that no one had ever identified before.

“I was shocked that we found so much structure,” Watts says. “I thought we’d see a few islands of structure in a mostly unstructured genome.”

So what do these never-before-seen structures actually do? Researchers will spend years answering that question, Weeks says. But he thinks it’s a fair bet that the virus needs many of the structures to survive, because they show up in every version of the fast-mutating HIV genome. Some of these parts of the genome could be targets for new HIV therapies, although that’s a long way off: scientists have only started to tests drugs that target RNA genomes in the past few years.

Geneticist Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena compared the DNA strains of lab mice and wild mice, and found that the most common types of lab mice studied today represent only a fraction mouse genetic diversity. He and geneticist David Thread-gill are creating a new, more genetically diverse population of lab mice.

Cynthia Bulik became the coun-try’s first endowed professor of eating disorders in 2003 at UNC. Her work with the Norwegian In-stitute of Public Health led to their discovery that liability for develop-ing anorexia nervosa is about 56 genetic. Bulik is director of UNC’s Eating Disorders Program, which treats patients with anorexia, buli-mia, and binge eating disorder.

Decoding the HIV Genome


Humanities and Social Sciences

The UNC University Libraries are consistently ranked among the top 20 North American university libraries by the Association of Research Libraries. Carolina’s collec-tions include 6 million print volumes, 800 online research databases, 103,000 serials, 500 original artists’ books, 24 million unique manuscripts and documents, and nearly 250,000 rare books. The university’s special collections include huge vellum-bound tomes, tiny Civil War Diaries, an uncorrected proof copy of The Bell Jar, and hundreds of fifteenth-century incunabula.

Mayron Tsong (left), Steinway Art-ist and assistant professor of piano in UNC’s Department of Music, re-leased her first solo album and played at Carnegie Hall in 2008. She’s now teaching, working on her next album, which will include the works of com-poser Joseph Haydn, and researching the history of the Haydn pieces.

UNC philosopher Joshua Knobe is one of the godfathers of experi-mental philosophy, a new move-ment that uses interviews and sci-entific field experiments to answer philosophical questions.The New York Times calls UNC his-torian Christopher Browning the “master of Holocaust scholar-ship.” Browning’s most recent work includes a study of the experiences and survival strategies of Jewish prisoners in the Nazi slave-labor camps of Starachowice, Poland.UNC’s Creative Writing Pro-gram offers undergrads the chance to study fiction, poetry, and nonfic-tion craft under such faculty mem-bers as Randall Kenan, author of A Visitation of Spirits.UNC anthropologist Norris Brock Johnson’s study of Japanese gar-dens has led to greater understand-ing of the nation’s history, including that of the lowly kawaramono sensui, who built many of Japan’s most beautiful gardens and landscapes.

COKE WHITWORTH

MARGARITE NATHE


Since 1998, archaeologist Brian Billman has had an agreement with the people of Ciudad de Dios, a small village in northern Peru: the villagers help protect his research sites from looters, and his team contributes toward amenities for the community. In 2008, Bill-man led UNC students in installing a pipeline that now brings water to 300 villagers.

UNC linguist David Mora-Marin’s study of the oldest known piece of writ-ing in the Western Hemisphere has taken scholars one step closer to under-standing the script of Mesoamerica’s first civilization: the ancient Olmecs.

In 1999 road builders unearthed a tablet as they were digging fill from an ancient mound in Cascajal, Mexico. But several years went by before archae-ologists realized what it was: the only existing sample of the mysterious script of the Olmec people. “They were the Greeks of the Mesoamerican world,” Mora-Marin says.

Olmec civilization was thriving in 900 BC, around the time the tablet was carved. For decades, archaeologists suspected the Olmecs had a writing sys-tem and that they had, in fact, invented writing in Mesoamerica. But until the block was discovered, archaeologists had no solid proof.

Mora-Marin had spent over a decade studying texts, epigraphy, and pieces of ancient Mesoamerican jade before becoming a specialist in the field of an-cient Mayan languages from around 400 BC to 200 AD. Scientists have long thought that ancient Mayan languages may have significant similarities to Mixe-Zoquean, the Olmec language. So Mora-Marin got to work.

Ancient Mayan writing is generally constructed in columns, he says, and sometimes uses a complicated zigzag reading pattern. Was Mixe-Zoquean meant to be read from top to bottom or bottom to top? Left to right or right to left? Was it in rows or columns?“Basically, the way you know how people write is by looking at the margins,” he says.

But reading a stone tablet isn’t easy. The glyphs were scratched out in slop-ing, wandering lines, which made it difficult to make sense of the margins. Seemingly random gaps separate some of the symbols, probably where the carver had to work around weak or crumbly spots in the stone.

It took some long hours and close scrutiny, but Mora-Marin finally made sense of the gaps in the Olmec tablet and found the margins. It took several more sleep-deprived days for him to figure out that the Olmec glyphs are actually meant to lie on their sides. Once he’d discovered this, he was able to determine the order in which the glyphs should be read, the first step in de-coding any script. Right now there is no way to translate the symbols on the tablet, Mora-Marin says. Linguists will need more glyphs to begin piecing together grammatical structures and, eventually, to make a translation.

“At least now it is possible to imagine that one day we’ll know what the an-cient Olmecs had to say about themselves,” Mora-Marin says.

Reading an Ancient Language

Achievement gap problems for boys of color begin in early child-hood, says Oscar Barbarin, the L.Richardson and Emily Preyer Bicentennial Distinguished Profes-sor for Strengthening Families in UNC’s School of Social Work. He’s looking for ways to help families and schools combat academic underachievement problems for minority boys in the U.S.

Terry Sullivan, UNC political sci-entist, is executive director of the White House Transition Project. He and his team have interviewed nearly every major political player since the Nixon administration to find out what outgoing presiden-cies have learned. They then use that information to help ease the transition for the incoming admin-istration.


Science and Medicine

In Cerro Pachon, Chile, UNC’s SOAR telescope (left) produces the best-quality images of any observa-tory of its class. UNC astronomers used SOAR to discover light from a massive star that exploded 12.8 billion years ago on the edge of the visible universe, the oldest and most distant astronomical explosion to date.

UNC chemist Valerie Ashby dis-covers, designs, and synthesizes new bioelastomers. Her research group collaborates with DuPont, 3M, and Chevron Phillips, and has discovered several soft, biodegrad-able, malleable elastomers that can mimic human tissue. Computer scientists Ming Lin and Dinesh Manocha create algo-rithms for simulation technology, the software behind virtual reality. Their simulations are used in mod-eling sports arenas, aircraft design, homeland security methods, and military and medical training.Blue green algae, or cyanobacte-ria, threaten marine habitats and make drinking water toxic. UNC marine biologist Hans Paerl is working with Chinese scientists to control huge algae blooms in Lake Taihu, China’s third largest lake. Lake Taihu’s algae is the same ge-nus as that threatening some wa-ters in North Carolina, as well as Lake Erie, Lake Victoria, and the Baltic Sea.

UNC chemist Joseph DeSimone has a long list of innova-tions, from a polymer-based stent to a better way to make Teflon. One of his newest inventions, PRINT (Particle Rep-lication in Non-wetting Templates), can create nanopar-ticles that carry medicine to specific parts of the body—for example, to a tumor to attack cancer cells without harm-ing healthy cells. PRINT may also lead to better treatments for cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and muscular sclerosis. Right: Hanjun Zhang, a researcher in DeSimone’s group, used PRINT to prepare these biphasic micron-sized particles.

JASON SMITH

PHOTO CREDIT


DAN SEARS

In 1936, when Oliver Smithies was eleven years old, his uncle lent him a telescope with a broken lens. Oliver wanted to fix it. He went to the local library and read stacks of Scientific American magazines.

“I remember getting quite a long way with making an eight-inch lens,” Smithies says. “But at one stage I had to heat it up and unfortunately I didn’t understand something properly and it cracked.”

But Smithies shook it off and tried to make a smaller lens with the remnants of the first. He sprinkled grinding powder on a thick slab of mirrored glass and used a metal soup can attached to a drill press to cut the glass down to size. For hours, Smithies listened to the piercing screech of metal boring into glass, turning that drill handle and watching the soup can rotate slowly until it finally cut through.

Smithies realized then that, more than anything, he loved to make things. And although his first attempts failed, he did eventually make a telescope, along with a bunch of other cool stuff.

Decades later, it’s largely thanks to Smith-ies that we have such scientific cornerstones as gene targeting and gel electrophoresis. He was also one of the first scientists to physically separate a gene from the rest of the human ge-nome, a process known as isolating a gene. He and Carolina geneticist Beverly Koller created the first mouse models of both Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome and of cystic fibrosis.

So few were surprised when Smithies was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007. He’s the first full-time UNC faculty member to win a Nobel Prize.

“I hope that this isn’t the end of my time here,” says Smithies, 82. “I hope to enjoy this a while yet. But if I die somewhere—which I’m sure will happen—it might as well be at the bench, because that’s where I’m happiest.”

Smithies is Excellence professor of pathology and laboratory medicine in UNC’s School of Medicine.

Through UNC’s Schizophrenia Research Center and Outreach and Support Intervention Services, re-searchers work to improve diagno-sis, treatment, and medication for people with schizophrenia. Psycholo-gist David Penn and his team use TV to help patients with schizophrenia develop social skills, identify other people’s emotions, and read social cues.

Researchers translate scientific dis-coveries into potential human thera-peutics at the School of Pharmacy’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery. The school also houses the Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery, the Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy, and the NIMH Psycho-active Drug Screening Program.

Carolina’s first Nobel Prize Winner

At study sites ranging from the Arctic fjords of Svalbard to coastal North Carolina, marine scientist Carol Arnosti and her team study the rela-tionship between the chemical struc-ture of marine organic matter and the rates and means by which bacteria degrade it in seawater and sediments. They also examine enzymes produced by marine microbes, and create new ways to measure enzyme activities.


Carolina North is a research and mixed-use academic campus planned for 250 acres two miles north of Carolina’s main campus. It will be a world-class magnet to attract the best and brightest, and will create tremen-dous economic benefit for the state. The campus will promote a synergy among research, business, science, law and technology that will in turn produce new ideas, products, and jobs. This research-based entrepre-neurship will take place in a highly green environment, one that will be specifically designed to be a model of sustainability and to take advantage of the latest technological develop-ments.

At the same time, the promise that draws people to Carolina North means that UNC can fulfill the desire of more students than ever who are looking for the chance to be on the main Chapel Hill campus.

As a public research university help-ing to transform the state’s economy, Carolina must compete with national peers for the talent and resources that drive innovation. Today, that competition demands a new kind of setting—one that enables public-pri-vate partnerships, public engagement and flexible new spaces for research and education. Carolina North’s first building, the Innovation Center, will be a business accelerator designed to house start-up companies with direct ties to Carolina research.

Carolina North at UNC

Carolina North’s first building, the Carolina Innovation Center, will provide an environment where innovation-based companies affiliated with the university will accelerate their research and development from laboratory concept to vi-able business. The center will be funded, built, and operated by Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., in partnership with UNC. The Innovation Center will be a best-in-class model of the new breed of technology-based business accelerator facilities, offering space, management, and seed capital to emerging high-growth technology companies. A few of the many scientists and entrepreneurs who could use the Innovation Center and its services are listed on the bottom of the facing page.


New licensesAlgynomics nonexclusively licensed access to a battery of clinical samples from the lab of Joanne Jordan to further develop their pain diagnostic program.Bayer HealthCare licensed a mutant form of Factor IX (which helps in clotting) developed by the lab of biologist Darrel Stafford. Berufsgenossenschaft fur Gesundheits-dienst und Wohlfahrtspflege licensed a dustiness tester developed by environ-mental scientists David Leith and Mary-anne Boundy. The tester measures the relative dustiness of dry powder materials in the pharmaceutical labs.BiologicalE exclusively optioned a heparin manufacturing technology from the phar-macy lab of Jian Liu.Ercole expanded its existing relationship with Carolina through a second exclusive license agreement for a pair of therapeutic oligonucleotides from the lab of Ryszard Kole.Kitware licensed Vtree3D, a novel tech-nique for generating representations of tubular objects in 3-D medical data. The patented software imaging technique was created by Elizabeth Bullitt and former professor Stephen Aylward.Prentke Romich Company licensed materi-als for education, support, and training in the Unity® language system developed by Karen Erickson and other Carolina researchers.Rapisure has exclusively licensed a mono-clonal antibody developed by Janne Can-non that recognizes an outer membrane

The Office of Technology Development (OTD) at Carolina licenses discoveries developed by faculty, stu-dents and staff. OTD also assists faculty in obtaining research support from corporate sponsors.

Technology Transfer, 2008-2009

antigen common to pathogenic Neisseria species.UCB entered into a sponsored research and exclusive license agreement with Carolina covering existing compounds as well as a new project in pharmacist Harold Kohn’s lab that will focus on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of novel com-pounds to treat neuropathic pain.

New products:AlphaBandage™ reduces blood loss better than gauze by improving rates of clot formation proximate to contact. It also maintains clot retention subsequent to removal resulting in a stabilized wound area. AlphaBandage is based on UNC IP licensed to Entegrion.AMP21 Soil Amendment to Extend Wood Life (AMP21) is a natural carbon source encased in a time-release delivery system that extends the lifetime of wooden structures such as utility poles. AMP21is an environmentally friendly product of Applied Micro Products.MegaWatt Solar is a Carolina start-up cofounded by Russell Taylor, Christopher Clemens, and Charles Evans, has contract-ed with Piedmont Electric to install a 50 kW solar power plant in Caswell County, North Carolina.MxStruct™ is the first product from Mor-phormics, which develops medical imag-ing software products based on technolo-gies developed by Ed Chaney and Steve Pizer. MxStruct automatically segments anatomical structures. PogoHealth launched the Nutrition in

Medicine® series, comprehensive guide to nutrition for medical students and health-care professionals.

New start-up companies:EpiZyme is an oncology drug discovery company that will leverage target biology work from biologist Yi Zhang’s lab to dis-cover compounds modulating key epige-netic enzymes. EpiZyme was successfully capitalized by MPM Capital and Kleiner Perkins with an initial financing invest-ment of $14 million—the largest Series A for any Carolina start-up to date.Chemist Matthew Redinbo founded Exigent Pharmaceuticals to design and develop drugs to treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.NextRay technololgy encompasses diffrac-tion-enhanced imaging pioneered by Etta Pisano and her colleagues. NextRay could dramatically improve X-ray technology to provide soft tissue differentiation.Chemist Mark Schoenfisch and former graduate student Nathan Stasko cofound-ed NOVAN to develop nanoparticle tech-nology to release nitric oxide, which is vital to immune-system response, wound healing, and blood-pressure regulation.Neurologist Frank Longo founded PharmatrophiX to develop proprietary small molecules treating the progression of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s. RealTromins is developing a new, ad-vanced critical-care monitoring technolo-gy to guide the care of critically ill children based on the work of Keith Kocis’s lab.

NextRay, a company founded by radiologist Etta Pisano, uses technology that she and her colleagues developed called Dif-fraction Enhanced Imaging. This uses X-ray photons through diffraction, instead of absorp-tion, to create images. The technology uses fewer X-rays and exposes patients to much lower doses of radiation.

In 2001, pharmacy professors Dhiren Thakker, Kim Brouwer, and Gary Pollack founded the company Qualyst to develop technology to identify the chemical compounds most like-ly to succeed as drugs. Qualyst now manufactures a patented kit for predicting how potential drugs would be cleared from the human liver.

Biochemist Matthew Redinbo founded Exigent Pharmaceu-ticals Inc. in 2007. He studies bacteria that have become resis-tant to antibiotics and, through his company, hopes to discover how to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria in patients and stop the spread of E. coli, staph infec-tions, and hospital-acquired pneumonia.


Research awards by funding source, FY 2008

Federal ($500,581,212)Other nonprofit ($73,583,786)Foundations ($50,911,993)State of North Carolina ($35,896,028)Industry ($35,784,037)Other government ($19,517,058)

Federal funding69.89%

Research Facts and Figures

External grants and contracts, FY 2007

National Endowment for the Arts National Endowment for the Humanities

Department of Transportation NASA

Department of Agriculture Department of Energy

Department of Defense Environmental Protection Agency

Federal Other Department of Education

National Science Foundation Agency for International Development

Department of Health and Human Services

5 15 2510 20 3530

MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

During FY 2008, centers and institutes under the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development (OVCRED) attracted more than $123 million in external funding. When combined with the $60 million in fund-ing brought in by UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, research centers and institutes account for more than a quarter of UNC-Chapel Hill’s external funding, which totalled $678 million in FY 2008. External grants and contracts accounted for more than 86 percent of the total budget of all OVCRED centers and institutes combined. During the 2008 fiscal year, OVCRED centers and institutes generated $6.57 in external funds for every $1 invested by the state.

Grants & Contracts

86%

The National Institutes of

Health accounted for 73%

($366,949,329) of UNC’s total federal awards

in FY 2008.


Growth of research funding for spon-

sored programs

College of Arts & Sciences ($68,632,148)School of Dentistry ($10,824,524)School of Education ($3,739,146)School of Medicine ($356,794,003)School of Nursing ($8,591,167)School of Pharmacy ($16,570,070)School of Public Health ($63,241,652)School of Social Work ($12,048,468)Other Schools ($8,738,826)Unaffiliated ($ 9,277,926)Vice Chancellor for Research & Economic Development ($123,509,270)

$800,000,000

$700,000,000

$600,000,000

$500,000,000

$400,000,000

$300,000,000

$200,000,000

$100,000,000

$0

1995

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

2005

2004

2003

2002

2009

2008

2007

2006

Research awards by academic unit, FY 2008

More than half of Carolina’s research funding comes from the National Institutes of Health. Carolina is 1st among public universities in the South in funding from the National Institutes of Health, and 16th overall.

Carolina is 17th nationally in federal support for science and engineering and 17th in research and development. The university’s $678 million in research funding yields 25,000 jobs, more than $1 billion in economic activity.

Full-time faculty members at Carolina average more than $211,000 in outside funding per year to aid in their research. Their research has resulted in 326 patents and license agree-ments since 1995; since 2000, 36 new companies have been based on UNC inventions.


School of Information & Library Science 1

School of Medicine: Primary care 2

School of Medicine: Research 20

School of Medicine: Physical therapy 11

School of Medicine: AIDS 9

School of Medicine: Family medicine 2

School of Medicine: Rural medicine 6

Healthcare management 3

Clinical psychology 6

Environmental policy & management 8

City management & urban policy 5

School of Social Work 8

School of Nursing 5

Pediatric Nursing• 8

School of Pharmacy 2

School of Public Health 2

Kenan Flagler Business School 20

Chemistry 16

Analytical Chemistry• 1

Inorganic Chemistry• 10

Computer Science 20

English 16

Sociology 5

History 12

Political Science 13

Psychology 13

Total R&D Expenditures

Carolina ranks 10th nationally and top in the South for federally financed re-search and development (R&D) expenditures at public universities and colleges. Below: R&D expenditures at public universities and colleges, ranked by federally financed expenditures. (Source: The National Science Foundation/Division of Science Resources Statistics, Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges, FY 2007.)

Rankings and R&D

Photo by Holden Thorp

National Standings, 2009

The top 20 rankings listed here include all U.S. universities, public and private. (Source: U.S. News & World Report, 2009.)

Rank Institution Federal government

All R&D

1 University of Washington $620,375 $756,787

2 University of Michigan, all campuses $577,201 $808,731

3 University of California, Los Angeles $488,846 $823,083

4 University of California, San Diego $475,708 $798,896

5 University of Wisconsin, Madison $469,076 $840,672

6 University of California, San Francisco $467,402 $842,840

7 University of Colorado, all campuses $442,303 $527,587

8 University of Pittsburgh, all campuses $441,357 $558,566

9 Pennsylvania State University, all campuses $370,789 $652,144

10 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

$346,672 $477,231

11 University of Minnesota, all campuses $337,966 $624,149

12 Ohio State University, all campuses $313,242 $720,206

13 University of Texas, Austin $289,331 $446,765

14 University of Arizona $269,941 $531,753

15 University of Alabama, Birmingham $269,006 $351,457

16 Georgia Institute of Technology, all campuses

$260,230 $472,591

17 University of California, Davis $256,994 $600,508

18 University of Cincinnati, all campuses $253,833 $375,852

19 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign $253,612 $473,890

20 University of California, Berkeley $251,043 $552,365

The research centers and institutes at Carolina bring together the right mix of expertise to answer today’s big questions in science and society. Centers and institutes create jobs and help communities, both locally and globally.Now Carolina is partnering with the Universidad San Francisco de Quito to create the UNC Center for Galapagos Studies on Isla Isabella. This new research center will use geospatial technologies to address the challenges facing the Galapagos Islands today, including population growth, resource conflict, and economic development.

Over 72% of Carolina’s research and development expenditures stem from federal funding.


Awards and Accolades, 2007-2009

(Source: The Center for Measuring University Performance: The Top American Research Universities Annual Report 2008.)

Carolina surpassed Harvard in 2009 to become #1 for producing Luce Scholars. The Luce Scholars program provides stipends, lan-guage training, and individualized professional placement in Asia for 15-18 young Americans each year. Tarheels Nicholas Anderson, Rachel Harper, and Jennifer Cimaglia were among 18 Luce Scholarship recipi-ents in 2009.

Forbes.com and the Princeton Review named Carolina “America’s Most Entrepreneurial Campus.” According to Entrepreneur Maga-zine, Carolina ranks 3rd in the South and 15th overall among university graduate entrepreneur-ship programs. Programs are open to any UNC student, faculty, or staff member who wants to turn an idea into a successful business.

Among the nation’s public research institutions, Carolina ranks 13th for prestigious awards earned by fac-ulty members in the arts, humanities, science, and health, and ranks 16th for faculty members inducted into the National Academies.

Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest college honorary society, inducted 146 Carolina students as new members in 2009. UNC’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha of North Carolina, was founded in 1904 and is the oldest in the state. Members from across the country have in-cluded 17 American presidents and numerous artistic, intellectual, and political leaders.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineOliver Smithies, Excellence Professor •of pathology and laboratory medicine (2007)

Lemelson-MIT PrizeJoseph DeSimone, William R. Kenan, •Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering (2008)

NIH Director’s Pioneer AwardJoseph DeSimone, chemistry (2009)•Gary Pielak, chemistry (2007) •

American Chemical Society Award in Analytical Chemistry

Robert Mark Wightman, chemistry •(2008)James Jorgenson, chemistry (2007)•

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Sawyer Seminars

Banu Gökariksel, geography (2008)•Sarah Shields, history (2008) •

Beckman Young Investigators AwardZefang Wang, pharmacology (2008) •Steve Rogers, biology (2008)•Garegin Papoian, chemistry (2007)•

Burroughs-Wellcome Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research

Norman E. Sharpless, medicine and •genetics (2007)

Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award

Miriam Braunstein, microbiology and •immunology (2008)

Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship AwardSvetlana Lazebnik, computer science •(2009)

National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award

Garegin Papoian, chemistry (2009)•Muhammad Yousaf, chemistry (2009)•

Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal from the Genetics Society of America

Oliver Smithies, pathology and labora-•tory medicine (2007)

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research FellowsDmytro Arinkin, mathematics (2008)•Zefang Wang, molecular biology (2008)•

American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows

Carl William Ernst, William R. Kenan Jr. •Professor of Religious Studies (2009)Louis Pérez Jr., history (2008) •Carlton Cuyler Hunt, physiology (2007)•James W. Jorgenson, William R. Kenan Jr. •Professor of Chemistry (2007)Terry Magnuson, Sarah Graham Profes-•sor and Chair of Genetics (2007)James C. Moeser, Chancellor (2007)•Michael E. Taylor, William R. Kenan Jr. •Professor of Mathematics (2007)

Camille Dreyfus Teacher ScholarGaregin Papoian, chemistry (2008)•

Franklin FellowsJeffrey Frelinger, Kenan Distinguished •Professor of microbiology and immunol-ogy (2009)

Guggenheim Fellowships, 2009Thomas Campanella, city and regional •planning Martin Doyle, geology •Carl Ernst, religious studies•Evelyne Huber, political science •John Stephens, political science and •sociology

National Academy of Sciences, ElectionsJeffery Dangl, John N. Couch Professor •of biology (2007)

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships

Nadia Yaqub, Asian studies (2009)•James B. Rives, Kenan Eminent Professor •of Classics (2009)Crystal Feimster, history (2009)•John F. Kasson, history (2009)•Thomas J. Campanella, city and regional •planning (2009)M. Evan Bonds, music (2008)•Lorraine V. Aragon, anthropology (2008)•Annegret Fauser, music (2008)•Robert C. Allen, history (2008)•Eric Karchmer, anthropology (2007)•

Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences

John F. Rawls, cell and molecular physi-•ology (2008)Karen L. Mohlke, genetics (2007)•

Searle ScholarMark Zylka, cell and molecular physiol-•ogy (2007)


Office of Information and CommunicationsResearch & Economic DevelopmentCB 4106, 307 Bynum HallChapel Hill, NC 27599-4106

A 130-foot water-filled channel in Chapman Hall’s lab helps researchers simulate all kinds of ocean movements. Marine scien-tist Alberto Scotti uses it to simulate internal waves.

Geologists Drew Coleman and Allen Glazner study plutons, the city-sized blobs of granite beneath volca-noes. Their work in Yosem-ite National Park is helping rewrite the textbooks.

Researchers in Carolina’s American Indian Center are piecing together a new pic-ture of American Indians. Above: Director Clara Sue Kidwell at age two with her grandmother.

Research in Brief

Documents

Transcript of Research in Brief