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Three NC State Veterinary Medicine Faculty Members Awarded NIH Training Grants

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NC State College of Veterinary Medicine faculty members Jorge Piedrahita, Ke Cheng and April Kedrowicz are among the leaders of projects at the NC State Comparative Medicine Institute receiving prestigious training grants from the National Institutes of Health. 

Piedrahita, the Randall B. Terry, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Translational Medicine, is the institute’s director. Cheng is a professor of regenerative medicine at the CVM and a professor in the UNC-Chapel Hill/NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. Kedrowicz is an associate professor of communication at the CVM. 

The NIH grants will support interdisciplinary team science training of graduate students. 

The award involving the CVM faculty members is for comparative molecular medicine, for a collaborative project between the comparative biomedical sciences, biomedical engineering, and cellular and biomolecular engineering graduate programs. Matt Fisher, an associate professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, is also a co-leader of the team. 

The second award goes to the Chemistry of Life program, focusing on the interface of chemistry and the life sciences, and involves molecular focused researchers from across NC State. That project is led by Joshua Pierce, associate professor of chemistry, and Gavin Williams, associate director of the Chemistry of Life program. 

The combined grants will directly impact up to 10 new Ph.D. students a year, as well as making new courses and minors available to a much greater number of students.

The CMI is made up of interdisciplinary teams of more than 190 faculty from 27 departments representing six colleges and five universities. Its mission is to develop and support interdisciplinary teams that translate basic research and scientific discovery into applications that improve animal and human health. 

~Steve Volstad/NC State Veterinary Medicine