Convergent research — a collaborative, cross-disciplinary approach that brings teams of researchers with divergent expertise together to generate new ideas and pursue groundbreaking studies — is the way to address societal problems as they become more complex.
In 2018, the Office of the Vice Chancellor (OVCR) began harnessing the power of a convergent approach to research by establishing Creativity Hubs.
The Hubs were envisioned to be evolving research networks that concentrate talent and resources on bold new ideas for defined periods. In consultation with research deans from the UNC schools and the College, as well as pan-campus center and institute directors, the OVCR identified strategic research priorities for Creativity Hubs. These priorities reflect UNC’s strengths where the convergence of social sciences, humanistic scholarship, foundational research, health science, and the natural sciences can accelerate discoveries and solutions to emerging challenges.
Without typical departmental constraints, discoveries and ideas can more easily move into practice to keep Carolina at the forefront of creativity and innovation. To achieve the goal of convergent research, the OVCR provides $250,000 per year for two years for each Creativity Hubs winning team. Since the award program’s start in 2018, six award-winning teams have yielded impressive results and millions in extramural funding.
The inaugural winning Hubs selected in 2018 were: Heterogeneity in Obesity: Transdisciplinary Approaches for Precision Research (Obesity Hub), and Treatment and Sustainable Access to Safe Water: Graphene-Polymer Nanocomposite Membranes for Water Purification, Energy Production, and Storage (The Sustainable Access to Safe Water Hub). I am happy to share that both have made tremendous progress.
The Obesity Hub, led by Penny Gordon-Larsen, is comprised of 25 faculty members from various departments across many fields. The goal of the project is to leverage UNC’s prowess in big data management by assessing the underlying causes of obesity. By developing an automated tool to analyze and integrate large data sets, the team will provide more personalized treatments that take into account a wide range of factors — from diet, to social influences, to genetics — that contribute to weight gain and loss.
The team has found that data using weight, body composition, and other phenotypes in mouse strains revealed subtypes of mice have differential response to weight gain and resistance to weight loss. This indicates the importance of genetic background. Next, the team will analyze a genetically diverse population of mice to pinpoint the combinations of regions of DNA that control this response.
The team also has been conducting parallel studies in humans. They are using population data to develop obesity subtypes in several datasets — notably the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA), Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC), and Hispanic Community Health Survey (HCHS) — using identical phenotypic data to the mouse study.
Using this information, they have identified four obesity subclasses demonstrating the value of accounting for multiple measures of obesity duration and severity and changes in these measures over time, as opposed to simple consideration of obesity at one point in time.
Their next step was to be a three-month planned intervention study for 40 participants using their data tool. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this study has been delayed, but plans are in place to complete the pilot study by mid-December.
The Sustainable Access to Safe Water Hub, led by Theo Dingemans and five others from different departments and institutions, addresses a need that affects over 1.8 billion people worldwide. This Hub assembled a unique team of scientists and engineers comprised of polymer chemists, computational modelers, and engineers to develop affordable membrane-based water purification tools that remove a broad range of water contaminants. Building on existing graphene and graphene oxide technologies that have shown promise as water purifiers, the team has been working to develop new membranes that make water purification more energy-efficient and to lay a foundation for large-scale, affordable membrane production. During the past two years, they have developed simulation models to refine membrane design with new polymer chemistry that is commercially scalable.
The result of their work was incorporated into a project within the new $12 million NIEHS Superfund Center to advance membrane-sorbent systems for the next five years. The team seeks to create a filtration system that removes contaminants better than existing in-home water treatment systems and minimizes contaminant re-entry into the environment. The hypothesized treatment system will serve as an intervention point between drinking water contaminants and human exposure, resulting in reduced risk of adverse health outcomes from exposure to inorganic arsenic and other contaminants. The group has also expanded the scope of their work to include not only water purification but also gas, solvent, and heavy metal filtration for commercial use, which includes ongoing discussions with companies to improve high-temperature gas separation.
These Creativity Hubs have achieved their goals by bringing together interdisciplinary researchers to address approaches focused on new world problems. Additional Creativity Hubs awards have been made for 2019 and 2020, and we will report on their progress at the end of their two-year funding period.