Washington University in St. Louis has awarded the latest round of Transcend Initiative grants, which provide support to interdisciplinary, collaborative efforts across WashU schools with potential for great impact.
The Provost’s Office and the Research Development Office (RDO) award the annual grants, which provide $450,000 over three years, helping teams to expand and sustain their research to establish WashU as a leader in their area. They are one of many ways that WashU invests in its faculty researchers, giving them the tools to help solve the planet’s biggest challenges.
This year’s cohort includes the following initiatives, each of which involves faculty from multiple schools including Arts & Sciences, the Brown School, the McKelvey School of Engineering, WashU Medicine and the School of Public Health:
AI Assistant for Biomedical Research
Using cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) tech, team researchers hope to accelerate data interpretation and experimental design, drastically reducing the time required to research medical breakthroughs. The team will start its work focused on Alzheimer’s disease and aims to create a scalable AI platform that learns from expert-level data, integrates cross-discipline findings and enhances researcher collaboration.
Robustness for Autonomy in Human-Systems Engagement (RAISE)
AI can do a lot of things well, but one thing it hasn’t mastered is complex human interaction or behaviors. The RAISE team will bring together experts in cognitive science, engineering, philosophy, neuroscience and AI to develop AI technology capable of reasoning about human behavior to ensure safe, robust and ethical human-AI interaction.
Children and Youth Collaborative Network (CYCN)
The health and well-being of children is essential for sustainable societies and strong, interconnected communities. However, developmental stages from pregnancy through adolescence can be vulnerable to interconnected risks including child maltreatment, cancer disparities, global nutrition and disease, youth mental health disparities and violence. The CYCN bridges these gaps through fostering collaboration and promoting a holistic approach to create a better future for children locally, nationally and globally.
Digital Organoid Initiative
Traditional drug development relies on animal testing, which often fails to predict how treatments will work in humans. The WashU Digital Organoid Initiative (DOI) aims to create a novel alternative by combining laboratory-grown human tissue models called “organoids” with digital technologies. This groundbreaking approach would allow researchers to test thousands of potential treatments simultaneously on human-like tissue samples, dramatically accelerating the discovery of new medicines while reducing dependence on animal testing. This project aims to establish WashU as a global leader in the field, attract major federal funding and form partnerships with industry stakeholders to bring life-saving treatments to patients more quickly and safely.
“These initiatives demonstrate the promise of WashU collaboration,” said Mary McKay, executive vice provost. “The Transcend program is a prime example of the university’s commitment to our research and our community. This funding and the support RDO provides can help turn big ideas into big solutions, and we look forward to what our teams will develop during the next several years.”
“The Transcend Initiative program is an important tool to spur research growth at WashU in our institution’s key areas of strength,” said Mark Lowe, vice chancellor for research. “The awarded initiatives bring together experts from across WashU to address issues of critical importance for St. Louis, the region, the nation and the globe at a level which is not currently possible in a quickly changing and dynamic world.”
The Transcend Initiative is far from the only resource offered by WashU’s Research Development Office, part of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, which guides the university’s entire research enterprise. RDO provides strategic research support for faculty from all schools and campuses in the pursuit of external funding by developing cross-school teams, providing strategic support for complex center-level proposals, and offering scientific editing services to proposals of any size or complexity. In addition to these offerings, RDO coordinates WashU’s internal selections process and the university’s cross-school, interdisciplinary seed grants program.
To learn about the support available, visit the Research Development Office website.
