Nebraska Innovation Campus Inspires Growth
Nebraska Innovation Campus has become a destination for innovation. Just two years after its grand opening, the public-private research campus is nearing capacity, and expansion is underway to draw entrepreneurs and startups to its world-class facilities.
By fall 2017, Innovation Campus’ current facilities were fully leased, including space in the new Biotech Connector. With companies five years old or less driving a significant portion of U.S. job growth, expansion will enable Innovation Campus to attract entrepreneurs who want to work closely with university faculty and students, said executive director Dan Duncan.
Construction began in July on an 80,000-square-foot multi-tenant building to be completed in 2018. Plans include a business incubator that could house National Science Foundation I-CORPS teams, student startups and community startups. The idea is to create a one-stop shop for resources to support entrepreneurs’ success, including office space and access to mentoring and development programs, Duncan said. NIC is seeking potential partners and funders for this project.
Driving the state’s economic growth is a key goal of Innovation Campus. A recent Bureau of Business Research report showed that the annual economic impact from NIC business development and operations was $139.9 million in fiscal year 2016.
New partners in 2017 are expanding that economic growth. In July, Bolero Information Systems LLC became the first university staff spinoff company to join NIC. Bolero is a web application development and design company specializing in research administration and business process automation.
Adjuvance Technologies Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, announced plans in March to become the first tenant in the Biotech Connector, a research space that offers wet laboratory space for small- and medium-sized companies. Adjuvance holds a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health and will continue development of vaccine adjuvant products at NIC.
Enhancing the campus’ social and cultural vibe is The Mill Coffee & Bistro, a local favorite that opened its third location in June at NIC.
“We are moving forward rapidly. Nothing out here is stagnant.”
Several NIC partners plan to expand in the coming year. Access to faculty expertise, student talent, and equipment and facilities has driven their rapid growth, Duncan said.
“We are moving forward rapidly. Nothing out here is stagnant,” Duncan said. “Even internationally, there is great interest in coming to Nebraska because of Innovation Campus.”
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University staff spinoff is latest Nebraska Innovation Campus partner
Nebraska Among Best in Tech Transfer
A universitywide commitment to providing a pipeline from the lab to the marketplace is paying off for the University of Nebraska system, named a leading U.S. institution for technology transfer.
A 2017 report from the Milken Institute, an independent economic think tank, ranked the system’s combined technology transfer efforts 35th among 225 institutions. NUtech Ventures and UNeMed are the technology transfer and commercialization affiliates for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Medical Center, respectively.
The institute’s top picks actively promote technology transfer and lead efforts to move innovative technologies into the marketplace to enhance economic growth. Rankings are based on data from the Association of University Technology Managers and reflect successes in patents issued, licenses issued, licensing income and startup formation.
“Nebraska innovation is changing lives.”
“We’ve made it a priority across all our campuses to create a culture of innovation where bold and entrepreneurial thinking are encouraged,” said University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds.
One example is Virtual Incision Corp., a spinoff of research by Nebraska engineer Shane Farritor and UNMC surgeon Dmitry Oleynikov. Headquartered at Nebraska Innovation Campus, the growing company is developing a miniature robot for general abdominal surgery.
NUtech Ventures works closely with NIC and Industry Relations to commercialize faculty research, support faculty and staff startups, and advance partnerships between the university and industry.
“Nebraska innovation is changing lives,” Chancellor Ronnie Green said. “We are leaders in invention and enterprise, driven by the high-quality, relevant research from our faculty.”
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Strengthening Child Welfare Workforce
Tending to the nation’s vulnerable children and families takes a toll. Staff turnover at child welfare agencies stands out at six times the national average across all jobs. Ultimately, it’s kids and families who suffer.
Nebraska’s Center on Children, Families and the Law is leading a long-term multidisciplinary project to strengthen the nation’s child welfare agency workforce and improve children’s lives.
To study and test promising strategies for recruiting and retaining child welfare workers, the center is receiving $15 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families-Children’s Bureau.
“The ultimate goal is to improve child and family outcomes, but the way to get there is to improve the workforce,” said project director Michelle Graef, a research associate professor at the center. “Nationally, for many years, it’s been an urgent issue.”
Public child welfare agencies are tasked with protecting children from neglect and abuse and with strengthening families who need assistance. The job can be emotionally taxing and complex. Difficult conditions and low pay lead to burnout.
“The ultimate goal is to improve child and family outcomes, but the way to get there is to improve the workforce.”
The national turnover rate for child welfare jobs averages 20 percent but approaches 50 percent at some agencies, Graef said. In addition to high turnover, other workforce issues include insufficient supervision and difficulties in attracting and hiring good staff.
The center has selected a small group of state, county and tribal child welfare agencies in urban and rural areas around the nation that are dealing with a range of workforce issues.
Consulting teams visit sites to assess each agency’s issues. Teams work with staff to develop and implement solutions, then test the strategies for effectiveness. The center will share results nationally.
The center, which specializes in research on workforce issues related to child welfare, is collaborating with three national child welfare consultants and researchers at the University of Colorado, Denver; the University of Louisville; and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The project draws on a range of expertise, from social work and human resources management to psychology and the law.
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$15 million project aims to improve child welfare workforce nationally
Educators Lead Way on Early Childhood Workforce Commission
Some of Nebraska’s children, especially those at risk, lack adequate care from qualified adults.
To help expand and strengthen the state’s early childhood workforce, the universitywide Buffett Early Childhood Institute tapped three campus experts to participate in a new, comprehensive statewide commission. Marjorie Kostelnik, a renowned education researcher and senior associate to University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds, co-chairs the Nebraska Early Childhood Workforce Commission. Beth Doll, interim dean of the College of Education and Human Sciences and professor of educational psychology, and Linda Boeckner, program leader with Nebraska Extension and professor of nutrition and health sciences, also participate.
About 40 commission members represent government, higher education, public schools, child care, philanthropy, health care and business.
The group is developing a statewide plan to address three urgent issues: caregiver and teacher shortages, training and education for early childhood professionals, and reducing workforce instability through better compensation.
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Huskers bring expertise to early childhood workforce commission
Ensuring Quality Child Care for Military Families
Child care is a worry for military families amid frequent moves and deployments, especially if they live off installation.
Nebraska Extension leads a nationwide program to improve access to quality child care for military families living off base. To date, over 60,000 child care providers have participated, benefiting more than half a million children.
The Child Care and Youth Training and Technical Assistance Project delivers professional training to child care providers and distributes information about starting a child care business. Launched in 2010, it operates in 20 states with high numbers of off-base military families.
Tapping the nation’s extensive land-grant university extension network, the project employs a train-the-trainer model, providing extension staff with the skills to conduct workshops for child care providers who work in centers and in-home settings.
“Extension is uniquely positioned to do this work because we’re in every county in the country.”
Extension staff also can use their knowledge to support providers in non-military settings that have limited child care options, such as rural communities. “Extension is uniquely positioned to do this work because we’re in every county in the country,” said project leader Kathleen Lodl, associate dean of Nebraska Extension.
In collaboration with Penn State Extension, certification-approved professional development curricula also are available online. Workshops and online content are free in targeted areas and publicly available elsewhere, improving child care nationally.
The U.S. Department of Defense Office of Family Readiness Policy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture fund this project.
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Child Care and Youth Training and Technical Assistance Project website
Foiling Rice-Spoiling Fungus
Rice blast spoils between 10 and 30 percent of annual rice yields worldwide — enough to feed as many as 60 million people. Recent outbreaks of the disease, which also strikes wheat and grass crops, have ranged from Brazil to Bangladesh.
Plant pathologists at Nebraska have revealed how the fungus behind blast disease can evade rice’s first immune response and silence the molecular sirens that mobilize reinforcements. The team’s identification of a key fungal gene and associated protein could inform genetic modification efforts to combat the disease.
When a rice plant detects signs of fungal intrusion, it responds by unleashing a burst of reactive oxygen species – molecules that become toxic in large doses, alerting the rest of the plant to the threat and cueing secondary defenses.
The Nebraska team found that a protein called NMO2 helps the fungus feed on nitrogen-based molecules and suppress the damage from reactive oxygen species. In doing so, the fungus avoids detection long enough to build up its forces in living rice cells before spreading to and destroying others.
Plant pathologist Richard Wilson, recent doctoral graduate Margarita Marroquín-Guzman and colleagues concluded that the NMO2 gene also helps deploy so-called effector proteins that intercept the distress calls sent out by plant cells.
Rice has evolved genes to recognize effector-related damage and coordinate a counterattack. The team discovered that if the initial burst of reactive oxygen species is not suppressed, it can disrupt the accumulation of effectors and stymie the infection even without support from the plant’s backup defenses. The finding could redirect existing efforts or stimulate new approaches to fighting blast disease in rice and other crops.
“That’s a novel observation because it moves the point at which you can prevent the infection higher up the chain, to the surface,” Wilson said. “That would conceivably enable you to develop more general approaches to breeding.”
The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture fund this research.
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Improving Road and Railway Safety
Freight trains and trucks crisscrossing the Plains are a familiar sight. Less visible is what’s inside — some of that freight is hazardous. With shipping expected to increase nearly 50 percent by 2040, improving rail and truck transportation safety is critical.
Hazardous material transportation is just one focus of a five-year, multiinstitutional program Nebraska is leading to improve transportation safety regionally and nationally.
The Mid-America Transportation Center, a consortium of academic institutions in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas, received $13 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop tools and methods addressing a wide range of safety priorities, particularly in rural and underserved areas.
“The center isn’t just about conducting cutting-edge safety research, it’s also about implementing it,” said center director Laurence Rilett, Keith W. Klaasmeyer Chair in Engineering. “Our goal is to have a suite of products that promote safety and lead to measurable safety improvements.”
The program focuses on both preventing accidents and mitigating problems after accidents or natural disasters. For example, researchers are developing methods to monitor railroad and truck operators’ health and attentiveness in real time. They’re also developing crash barriers able to withstand freight trucks and prevent the turnovers that release material.
“The center isn’t just about conducting cutting-edge safety research, it’s also about implementing it.”
Flooding, another major regional issue, can scour out bridge foundations, causing collapses. Researchers are creating tools to identify and monitor vulnerable bridges and also to provide real-time diagnostics of a bridge’s condition following a flood.
Rural and tribal communities with limited resources are at particular risk from human-caused and natural disasters. The center is collaborating with these communities to develop disaster relief protocols and other strategies to improve their emergency response.
Other projects include communication tools to alert authorities when accidents occur, devices that monitor and relay workers’ hazardous material exposure to local medical facilities, and better bridge design guidelines.
These complex projects require multidisciplinary approaches. Over 40 researchers from five colleges are partnering with consortium colleagues. Partnerships also encompass numerous private- and public-sector entities, including the Nebraska Department of Transportation.
MATC, which serves as the Region 7 University Transportation Center, is one of 32 university transportation centers funded through the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act.
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Cyber Barriers Keep Vehicles on Course
The day when cars routinely warn each other of impending crashes is near. Yet half of all traffic deaths involve a lone vehicle running off the road.
To help reduce single-vehicle crashes, Nebraska computer engineer Mehmet Can Vuran and his team, experts in barrier design, vehicular networking and vehicle automation, are developing cyber barriers that can talk to cars.
“Existing vehicle-to-vehicle technology cannot solve all run-off-road problems. We hope cyber barriers will bridge that gap,” said Vuran, Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering.
Cyber barriers – both physical and virtual – will alert vehicles when they’re heading off course by sending speed, angle and road condition information to the car’s onboard computer. As vehicle technology advances, cars will one day use the information to take over vehicle control and avoid or mitigate accidents.
“Existing vehicle-to-vehicle technology cannot solve all run-off-road problems. We hope cyber barriers will bridge that gap.”
Rapid changes in speed and angles during a vehicle’s impending crash into a barrier make the work more challenging than communicating between vehicles, Vuran said. Quick decreases in communication distances affect wireless communication reliability. His team’s preliminary work has shown ways to maintain reliability under those conditions.
Avoiding an accident also depends on road and roadside conditions, such as whether they are pavement or gravel. Cyber barriers will need to store and send relevant information to vehicles so they can incorporate it in calculating the best split-second action to take.
Vuran and his team are in the early stages of finding answers to these challenges. They must ensure their solutions are compatible with existing and developing vehicle-to-vehicle technology. They are testing solutions in collaboration with the university’s Midwest Roadside Safety Facility.
As vehicle technology advances, upgrading roads and infrastructure to take advantage of new cars’ capabilities will be costly. Vuran envisions next-generation cyber barriers initially going up in crash hotspots. As barriers are built or maintained, replacing them with cyber barriers will become routine.
Food for Health Center Focuses on Gut Microbes
When you reach for that box of cereal in the morning, you’re feeding not just yourself, but the 100 trillion microbes living in your gut.
This complex gut microbiome – the collection of microorganisms residing in the digestive system – significantly influences your health, from supporting the immune system to contributing to diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and even depression.
The university launched the Nebraska Food for Health Center to help prevent diseases by developing foods with ingredients clinically proven to promote a healthy complement of bugs in your gut.
Combining Nebraska’s strengths in agriculture and medicine, this multidisciplinary center creates a complete research pipeline, from identifying molecules in plant-based foods that support the gut microbiome to translating those discoveries into palatable, healthy foods.
“Uniting agriculture and medicine lets us think differently about agriculture. This new interface … holds tremendous potential to transform how we think about preventing and treating disease,” said center director Andrew Benson, W.W. Marshall Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology.
The center is the first to integrate large-scale agricultural research with biomedical and food science research to develop food products that help prevent and treat health issues. The University of Nebraska Medical Center and the University of Nebraska Omaha are center partners.
“Nebraska is distinctive in its ability to combine expertise in agriculture, medicine and food science, enabling our leadership in this important emerging area of food for health,” Chancellor Ronnie Green said.
The research takes advantage of the tremendous natural genetic diversity of crop plants. Instead of breeding for traits that increase yields, researchers target a unique trait: grains’ ability to affect the gut microbiome. These traits are ultimately validated in animal models and human clinical studies.
The center’s work advances several accomplishments that established Nebraska’s international reputation in the emerging gut microbiome field. Benson and colleagues found, for example, that diet exerts a stronger effect on the gut microbiome than individual genetics. Therefore, diet is the best tool available for manipulating the gut microbiome and influencing health.
The Raikes Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation contributed $5 million toward the center, headquartered at the Food Innovation Center on Nebraska Innovation Campus. Over the next five years, university funds and private donations will provide about $35 million to support this initiative.
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Nebraska Food for Health Center to unite strengths in agriculture, medicine
Academic, Industry Partners Exploring Prebiotic’s Potential
The Nebraska Food for Health Center is collaborating with a pharmaceutical company to explore how manipulating microorganisms in the digestive tract could thwart metabolic-related diseases.
Nebraska microbiologist Amanda Ramer-Tait leads the center’s partnership with Ritter Pharmaceuticals. The company, which develops novel therapeutic products that modulate the human gut microbiome to treat gastrointestinal diseases, is supplying researchers with its patented prebiotic RP-G28. Beyond its known potential for combating lactose intolerance, the compound may guard against heart disease, stroke, diabetes and other health problems.
“We are grateful to Ritter Pharmaceuticals for providing RP-G28 so we can study how manipulation of the microbiome may impact metabolic syndrome,” said Ramer-Tait, Harold and Esther Edgerton Assistant Professor of Food Science and Technology. “There is great potential to take prebiotic-based gut microbiota modulators and explore how they may help human health.”
Ramer-Tait and collaborator Jens Walters, a former Nebraska researcher, have designed a new mouse model to evaluate the health benefits of RP-G28 and to study how gut bacteria respond to the prebiotic. The next step is translating the mouse study results into human feeding studies.
She received a $50,000 Young Investigator Grant for Probiotics Research award from the Global Probiotics Council to support this work.
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Reaching Across Nebraska Through Art
For artist Karen Kunc, moving to a rural acreage – with its 30-mile commute to her Lincoln studio – created an intimacy with the land and seasons that inspires her artwork.
“I love the graphic nature of our landscape here,” said Kunc, Willa Cather Professor of Art.
Internationally renowned for her abstract woodblock prints, Kunc’s art conveys pride in her Nebraska roots, but also aims to provoke.
“I love the graphic nature of our landscape here.”
“I like the idea that our earth has been shaped by nature, by time, by weather forces and by mankind,” she said. “Of course, when we get to the mankind part, then we’re talking about issues we’re all concerned about.”
Beautiful and edgy in its contrasting shapes and forms, Kunc’s work asks viewers to question how we live in the world and our role in shaping natural forces. It touches deeply personal emotions about often intense, politicized issues.
After 30 years of working with communities worldwide, Kunc now concentrates on expanding artistic appreciation and opportunities in Nebraska, particularly in printmaking.
In 2013, she opened Constellation Studios in Lincoln to attract international print artists, support local artisans and create a collaborative atmosphere important to equipment-heavy printmaking.
She also helps coordinate the university’s Art at Cedar Point Biological Station near Ogallala in western Nebraska. The interdisciplinary program blends art and science through undergraduate field art courses, artist residencies and community outreach. A two-year grant from the University of Nebraska’s Rural Futures Institute helps fund the program.
Kunc is committed to connecting her creative activities with all of Nebraska.
“I think the arts in Nebraska is an untapped resource, but it needs people to support it,” she said. “There are artists everywhere who want to work in their beautiful environment and prove that art belongs there.”
Kunc has won numerous awards for her artwork and teaching, and her art has been exhibited in more than 350 galleries and public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Showing Impact of Whiteclay Alcohol Sales
Chris Bowling recalls his first visit to Whiteclay, Nebraska.
The senior Nebraska journalism student knew the town’s dark backstory. The 12-person village, dubbed the “skid row of the Plains,” neighbors South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where rates of poverty, domestic violence, murder, suicide and birth defects are among the nation’s highest. Whiteclay’s four liquor stores sold more than 42 million cans of beer over the past decade, fueling social decay.
“I was in disbelief that so much cultural destruction came from this one little area,” he said.
For two semesters, Bowling and 10 other undergraduates immersed themselves in shining a light on Whiteclay and Pine Ridge, ultimately producing a multimedia report, “The Wounds of Whiteclay: Nebraska’s Shameful Legacy,” with guidance from Nebraska journalism faculty Joe Starita and Rebekka Herrera Schlichting.
“I was in disbelief that so much cultural destruction came from this one little area.”
The online project captures diverse snapshots of life in this remote area, including a foster mother raising nine children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in a doublewide trailer, a 22-year-old Minnesotan ministering to Whiteclay’s street people and Nebraska’s first Native American state senator campaigning for office.
Prominent media outlets – Esquire, The New York Times and The Economist – picked up the stories. The students won 14 Top 10 Hearst Journalism Awards. And the team became the first-ever college group to win the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism grand prize, edging out The New Yorker, HBO and National Geographic.
But the project’s most crucial impact is the role it played in shuttering Whiteclay’s liquor stores. The report debuted at a time of mounting public pressure to close the stores. In April, the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission refused to renew their liquor licenses. Though a district judge overturned that decision, an appeal from the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office sustained the closures. In September 2017, the Nebraska Supreme Court rejected the store owners’ appeal to reopen, all but guaranteeing permanent closure.
Starita said his team helped drive this change by exposing the insidious relationship between Whiteclay and Pine Ridge.
“The students’ greatest accomplishment is that they did something to improve lives,” Starita said. “They should be most proud of that.”
The Wounds of Whiteclay website contains the full collection of the students’ stories, photos and videos.
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Carson Center Aims to Shape Future of Media Arts
Utah has Sundance. Nevada has Burning Man. The French Riviera has Cannes. Nebraska’s Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts aims to make the state the next hot destination for media artists. The new program will welcome its first students in fall 2019.
“The challenge is to create something completely unique for the 21st century. That’s a rare opportunity so everyone’s keen to participate,” said founding director Megan Elliott, who arrived in 2017 from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.
The prospect of shaping the future of media arts is attracting the industry’s world leaders to Nebraska. Twelve experts participated in the Carson Conversations Forum in May. Speakers included Robert Tercek, author of Vaporized; Roy Taylor, corporate vice president of AMD Radeon Technologies Group; and Charles Wang, deputy director of China’s Advanced Innovation Center for Future Visual Entertainment.
Speaking to a sold-out crowd of 170 university and community members, they emphasized the importance of meeting the challenges of a society in rapid transformation. Students must learn to not only use cutting-edge storytelling technologies – such as artificial intelligence, game engine and virtual production – but also to help shape the future of storytelling.
“About 60 percent of the jobs that our graduates will be doing haven’t been invented yet,” Elliott said. “So we want to help students develop resilient and adaptive mindsets and skill sets so they can flourish in a time of constant change.”
The Carson Center interdisciplinary program will include storytelling, creative coding, virtual production and entrepreneurship. The facility will offer design labs, studios and virtual reality technologies. It is establishing strong industry collaborations to ensure graduates have the necessary skills and internship opportunities and to attract leading experts to instruct and mentor students.
The program aims to offer coursework that fosters collaboration among students from many disciplines and to become a community resource in digital communication.
The center is a $57 million university investment made possible by a $20 million gift from the Johnny Carson Foundation, named in honor of the late entertainment icon and Nebraska alumnus.
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Megan Elliott named founding director of Carson Center
Nebraska's Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts takes first steps
Unraveling Biomolecular Communication
As with any successful team effort, the human body’s cells must communicate effectively to function properly. Miscommunication within or between cells leads to complex diseases such as cancer, diabetes and chronic liver disease.
The university created the Nebraska Center for Integrated Biomolecular Communication, or NCIBC, to better understand how cells communicate and the role miscommunication plays in diseases.
The university received $11.3 million from the National Institutes of Health’s Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence program to establish the center. The COBRE program funds health-related research and fosters faculty development and research infrastructure.
The center promotes interdisciplinary research collaborations, merging new techniques with investigating disease pathways that arise from miscommunication at the molecular level.
“It’s basic research, but this is where the therapies of the future are going to come from,” said center director James Takacs, Charles J. Mach University Professor of Chemistry. “An interdisciplinary team working together will bring a unique perspective to complex diseases.”
The center fosters a systems approach, which combines research by chemists, biochemists, engineers and bioinformaticists and includes University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty.
“It’s basic research, but this is where the therapies of the future are going to come from.”
One research collaboration, for example, models communication pathways between microorganisms in the gut. Another studies the interactions involved in liver disease progression.
The center also mentors young faculty, providing funds and advice to help them establish biomedical research programs and compete for independent funding. Expediting new faculty members’ transition into independent careers increases the university’s overall research capability and competitiveness.
The center is developing core facilities to complement existing university resources. Staff work with the Holland Computing Center and Center for Biotechnology to help faculty use and store big data.
Center researchers also are developing connections with the Nebraska Food for Health Center and the Nebraska Center for the Prevention of Obesity Diseases through Dietary Molecules to share resources and strengthen collaborations.
This is the university’s fourth NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence.
“Those centers have helped build infrastructure and propelled the careers of young scientists in specific areas of biomedical research. We plan to build on those past successes,” said co-director Concetta DiRusso, George W. Holmes University Professor of Biochemistry and interim associate vice chancellor for research and creative activity.
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Soft Robot Could Improve Colonoscopies
For most people, the thought of a colonoscopy evokes dread. It’s invasive. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s pricey, costing several thousand dollars.
Nebraska researchers aim to change that. They hope that replacing the traditional colonoscope with a more patient-friendly robotic device encourages more people to have the procedure, considered the Cadillac of colorectal cancer screenings. The disease is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S.
“If colonoscopies can be made less uncomfortable, more people will accept their doctors’ recommendations to have the examination,” said Nebraska engineer Carl Nelson. “This could lead to better prevention and treatment of cancers and digestive disorders.”
Hossein Dehghani, recent doctoral graduate in engineering, led design of the robot, which uses compressed air to inflate a latex tube that elongates throughout the 5-foot-long colon. An attached camera captures images of the colon’s surface, enabling a physician to detect precancerous or cancerous polyps lining the large intestine.
The robot uses pliable latex, eliminating friction between the colon wall and the robot. This minimizes potential for a colon rupture and removes the chance of looping, the most common source of pain during a colonoscopy. The latex is disposable, cutting infection risks.
“Imagine a robot that deforms itself instead of deforming the colon,” Dehghani said. “That would decrease the pain significantly.”
The goal is a self-driving robot, enhancing precision, reducing chances of human error and cutting costs by replacing the physician with a robot that can navigate.
“If you have an autonomous robot, where the physician can press a button and the robot does everything, he or she can just focus on the video,” Dehghani said. “We’re taking a big and significant step toward autonomous colonoscopy.”
Automation paves the way for telemedicine, Nebraska engineer Benjamin Terry said. Using the robot, doctors could perform colonoscopies remotely, increasing rural patients’ access to care.
Because the system’s sterile components are disposable and inexpensive, it also would be ideal for use in developing countries, where people have limited access to lifesaving exams.
Dehghani, Nelson and Terry are teaming with University of Nebraska Medical Center surgeon Dmitry Oleynikov, University of Nebraska Omaha computer scientist Prithviraj Dasgupta and Nebraska alumni Abolfazl Pourghodrat and Charles Welch.
The team is patenting this technology through NUtech Ventures, Nebraska’s technology commercialization affiliate. The Nebraska Research Initiative supports this research.
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Targeting E.coli‘s Threat to Food Safety
The U.S. beef industry – and the public – are benefiting from a major Nebraska-led effort to improve food safety.
The multi-institutional research and outreach project, launched in 2012, is reducing the public’s risk from Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STEC, in the nation’s beef supply. The broad-ranging project has produced detection, intervention and food safety education techniques to minimize STEC contamination in the supply chain and improve food safety.
Illnesses from STEC should decline as the beef industry and public adopt these methods, said project director Rodney Moxley, Charles Bessey Professor in Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
STEC organisms are harbored by cattle and may enter beef during harvest. Other foods, such as lettuce, can become contaminated by cattle feces or undercooked beef. Most infections resolve themselves, but serious, sometimes fatal, complications can occur. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that STEC-related illnesses cost the U.S. economy about $500 million annually.
The federal government regulates seven STEC strains as adulterants in raw beef, but controlling the bacteria is challenging.
The USDA selected Nebraska to lead a $25 million Coordinated Agricultural Project to tackle the complex issue on multiple fronts. More than 50 researchers at 18 institutions have collaborated. The project is expected to be extended through 2018.
“Nebraska has the highest number of cattle on feed in the country,” Moxley said. “We have the expertise, the cattle industry and the connections to lead this project. We linked up with others, including consumer researchers, to put together a huge team.”
Researchers have developed detection methods to better identify contaminants before they lead to food recalls or illnesses. Two rapid screening techniques, both based on detecting DNA or other molecules unique to toxic strains, offer significant advances over current methods, Moxley said.
Other studies have elucidated STEC biology, baseline contamination levels and STEC proliferation. Researchers also have improved surveillance methods, developed intervention strategies for meatpacking plants and investigated food-handling practices.
The project also targeted education and outreach, helping to train a new generation of food safety researchers and specialists. It provided over 100 internships for students, including those from minority-serving institutions, and developed educational materials for K-12 students and the public, among other activities.
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Enhancing Protection for Nebraska Livestock
When farmers or ranchers discover scores of sick animals – as happened when porcine epidemic diarrhea virus decimated swine herds a few years ago – they need answers fast.
Nebraska’s Veterinary Diagnostic Center stands on the front line of disease outbreaks in the state’s animal populations, from livestock and poultry to pets and wildlife. Early diagnosis and quick action are key to protecting Nebraska’s multibillion-dollar livestock production industry.
The new state-of-the-art veterinary diagnostic facility improves the state’s ability to keep animals – and people – healthy.
Completed in 2017, the center features cutting-edge diagnostic equipment and a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory for research and scientific services for foreign animal disease emergencies. The 40,500-square-foot building is four times larger than the previous center.
“We’re often the ones to see new and emerging diseases. The new building gives us a lot more space to investigate the origin of new diseases,” said Alan Doster, center director and professor of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences. “It also allows us to expand our applied research program and investigate diseases important to the Nebraska livestock industries.”
The center, the state’s only laboratory in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Health Laboratory Network, works with producers, state and federal officials, veterinarians, producers and wildlife personnel to diagnose and investigate animal diseases, which sometimes can infect humans and cause significant illness.
The center features a cutting-edge instrument that identifies potentially deadly bacteria within minutes instead of the several days required previously. The matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight, or MALDI-TOF, mass spectrometer is one of about 30 available at veterinary diagnostic laboratories nationally. It also supports the center’s research on innovative diagnostic methods to detect virulent factors, or potential harm, associated with certain bacteria and to predict antibiotic sensitivity patterns based on specific virulent factors.
University extension staff share space in the new facility, improving communication between diagnosticians and those routinely working with producers.
The facility also benefits veterinary students, providing additional classrooms and a new necropsy viewing space where they observe animal necropsies firsthand and learn what to expect as professionals. Space is available for the university’s Professional Program in Veterinary Medicine in cooperation with Iowa State University.
Approved by Nebraska’s Legislature in 2012, the $44.7 million center on the university’s East Campus was financed by donors and state bonds to be paid over the next 10 years.
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Veterinary Diagnostic Center prepares for grand opening celebration