Four university researchers just received a nice financial boost from the University City Science Center.
The researchers will receive a share of the $600,000 award to develop technologies that could lead to new gene and cell therapies, as well as help nurses and physical therapists do their jobs more effectively. Half of the $600,000 will come from the Science Center, while the researchers' universities will contribute the other half.
The Science Center's funds derive from its QED Proof-of-Concept Program, which started in 2009, and the recipients were selected from 62 applicants.
The awardees were:
- Amy Cowperthwait (University of Delaware), a registered nurse developing a new tool for teaching healthcare workers techniques for airway management in emergency situations;
- Judith Deutsch (Rutgers University), a professor of rehabilitation and movement science who's creating a customized low-cost rehabilitation technology that selectively tracks movement and heart rate;
- Melik Demirel (Penn State University) is using proteins to coat the surfaces of biomedical swabs;
- KiBum Lee (Rutgers University), who's developing a platform for programming human patient-derived stem cells for use in stem-cell therapies in people with incurable and debilitating diseases and disorders.
This is the Science Center's eighth round of funding through the QED Proof-of-Concept program.
“The QED program excels at finding innovative, commercially relevant solutions for pressing problems in healthcare and life sciences,” said Stephen S. Tang, the Science Center's president and CEO. “Our latest round looked for innovative approaches to collaboration as it emphasized partnerships between two groups that don’t typically work together: medical professionals and engineers."
The Science Center has had a busy February, as it recently finalized a deal to host only the third Microsoft Innovation Center in the U.S., and selected six local startups to be members of its digital health accelerator.
