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Funded Projects

Diversifying Biorepositories to Promote Clinical and Translational Research

Awarded in 2025
Strategic Research
Updated Oct 13, 2025

At a Glance

The goal of this project is to promote clinical and translational research to improve health in Wisconsin by expanding biomedical research. This project will expand infrastructure to engage a broad range of communities and populations in biospecimen research by combining community partnerships with expertise in community outreach, engagement, biospecimen science, biomarker development and bioinformatics.

Project Goals

This initiative aims to expand research participation and ensure that precision medicine advances benefit all communities. There are many intersecting health risk factors that are elevated in different patient populations, so this project hopes to engage participants in biospecimen donation and research by:

  1. Expanding existing community outreach programs and health events
  2. Performing patient-centric consenting, biospecimen collection and sample processing
  3. Performing molecular testing on collected samples for specific disease conditions in at-risk patients

More Funded Projects

research icon: microscope and stethoscope
Strategic Research

Data Science to Promote Precision Medicine

Awarded in 2025
The Data Science to Promote Precision Medicine project will build a strong institutional data science core, with a focus on biomedical big data. This initiative will catalyze data-driven precision medicine research and translation to care at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH), to improve the health and well-being of Wisconsin residents, while strengthening the university’s role as a leader in precision medicine.
research icon: microscope and stethoscope
Collaborative Health Sciences Program

Understanding and Modulating Host Defense Against Vascular Catheter Infections

Awarded in 2025
Central venous catheters deliver life-saving treatments but can lead to serious bloodstream infections, including those caused by Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungal pathogen. This project will study how the stiffness of catheter surfaces impacts the body’s immune response and how well neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, and the body’s first responders for fighting infections, can detect and eliminate pathogens like C. auris. This innovative collaboration between experts in infectious disease and engineering experts could lead to the development of medical devices that better support the body’s natural defenses and reduce health care burdens in Wisconsin and beyond.