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The Translational Team Science Awards (TTSA) program is aimed at capitalizing on UNC’s culture of collaboration and fostering interdisciplinary teams of basic science and clinical investigators.


The TTSA program provides funds to new teams of both basic scientists and clinicians working to initiate innovative translational pilot projects aimed at building the infrastructure for future grant funding. The award consists of two phases. Phase 1 teams are awarded $50,000 over a 12-month period to begin to fully engage team members in the development of a competitive continuation proposal for TTSA Phase 2 ($75,000/1 year). The Office of Research (OoR) and TraCS administer the program and are pleased to announce the most recent awards to the following teams.We are very excited to announce this year’s Phase 1 Recipients!

2019 Phase 1 TTSA Recipients

Antonio Amelio, PhD (Oral and Craniofacial Health Sciences), Trevor Hackman, MD, FACS (Otolaryngology), Joel Parker, PhD (Genetics), Siddharth Sheth, MD (Medicine), Renee Betancourt, MD (Pathology and Laboratory Medicine), Wendell Yarbrough, MD, MMHC, FACS (Otolaryngology): Molecular Subtyping of Salivary Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma (MEC) for Risk Stratification and Guiding Therapeutic Decisions

Paul Armistead, MD, PhD (Medicine), Nilu Goonetilleke, PhD (Microbiology and Immunology): Targeting HLA-E Restricted Epitopes for Immunotherapy Against Cancer

Yevgeny Brudno, PhD (Biomedical Engineering), Gianpietro Dotti, MD (Microbiology and Immunology), Natalie Grover, MD (Medicine): In Situ Recruitment, Reprogramming and Release of CAR-T Cells

David Lalush, PhD (Biomedical Engineering), Tracy Rose, MD, MPH (Medicine), William Kim, MD (Medicine), Naim Rashid, PhD (Biostatistics), Amir Khandani, MD (Radiology), Matthew Milowsky, MD (Medicine), Hung-Jui Tan, MD (Urology) Sara Wobker, MD, MPH (Pathology and Laboratory Medicine): Quantitative PET-MRI Imaging Correlated with Transcriptome Analysis for Noninvasive Characterization of Renal Cell Carcinomas

Congratulations to all of the awardees! More information about the TTSA program and previous recipients can be found on the OoR website linked here.