Tune in to Focus Carolina during morning, noon and evening drive times and on the weekends to hear stories from faculty members at UNC and find out what ignites their passion for their work. Focus Carolina is an exclusive program on 97.9 The Hill WCHL, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Terry Magnuson, vice chancellor for research at UNC, leads efforts from scientists in a wide range of disciplines in Carolina’s $1.1 billion research enterprise to solve pressing questions and problems that affect everyone.
“We tackle tough challenges and we do so with multidisciplinary teams of top researchers and trainees that have diverse perspectives, which delivers creative solutions,” said Magnuson said. “UNC is one of America’s top research universities, so we tackle problems in brain and neuroscience, cancer, data science, environment, opportunity and wealth in culture, health and society, infectious diseases — and that’s just to name a few of them. Our goal is to find cures and treatments for diseases and develop new technologies and new industries for North Carolina. It is special and unusual.”
According to Magnuson, virtually every discipline at UNC is participating in some form of research related to vaccines or treatment for COVID-19. Last March, Carolina developed more than 300 grant proposals for COVID-19 research totaling $164 million. Today, $69 million has been awarded to the University and many proposals are still under review.
“The goal here is that it provides innovation framework based on bringing disciplines together for problem solving, developing new technologies and de-risking them to ensure the fastest, most successful path to commercialization,” said Magnuson.
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As vice chancellor, Magnuson prioritizes collaboration, calling it “the key to success.” Creativity Hubs, an initiative to incentivize multi-disciplinary projects, has been a recent development in that ongoing collaboration.
The pilot funding program provides a significant amount of dollars to bring researchers together to tackle new problems. Faculty focus on a creative solution and submit proposals, with some receiving funding.
According to Magnuson, more than 60 percent of undergraduates conduct research in campus laboratories, and STEM students often stay in the Triangle area professionally once their education is completed.
“We have almost 11,000 graduate professional students on campus, and many of those when they graduate — a lot of them stay in the Triangle area and work in the companies here,” said Magnuson. “And we also have over a thousand postdoctoral training on campus … That is something very special to me. Chapel Hill people do not want to leave here. It’s hard to get people to go somewhere else.”
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