Applying nanotechnology to create microcatheters for medical use and developing new computational and imaging techniques to help doctors better predict the malignancy and aggressiveness of tumors. These are just two of a dozen projects promoting collaboration between faculty at Cornell's Ithaca campus and Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) in New York City selected for intercampus grants.

The projects, chosen from 38 proposals, each will receive a one-year, $50,000 seed grant this year. Designed to encourage cross-campus interactions between researchers, projects must have at least one faculty member from each campus.

"The Cornell-Ithaca and Weill Medical College faculty response to the 2005 Seed Grant initiative clearly demonstrates the diversity of intercampus collaborative synergies that exist within our university," said Richard Coico, Cornell's vice provost for inter-campus affairs and a professor of microbiology and immunology at WCMC. "Cornell's brightest and most creative scientists and educators have identified collaborative partners at each campus and defined projects that will undoubtedly generate new knowledge and create unique, world-class student training opportunities," he said.

The projects selected for funding range from research on tuberculosis, HIV and stem cells to development of a clinical research training course for biomedical engineers, among others.

For example, Nathaniel Hupert, assistant professor of public health at WCMC, and Jack Muckstadt, professor of operations research and industrial engineering in Ithaca, are teaming up to build a biodefense model that will help public health and emergency planners to improve allocations of patients across an area's hospitals in the aftermath of public health catastrophes.

Another award was given to develop an annual two-month clinical research training course at WCMC for Ithaca campus biomedical engineering (BME) Ph.D. students. The project, led by Yi Wang, associate professor of physics in radiology and other researchers at WCMC, and Lawrence Bonassar, associate professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Program in Biomedical Engineering (BME) in Ithaca, will give first-year BME graduate students exposure to research encountered in clinical practice. BME students typically have strong physical or quantitative science background but tend to lack exposure to clinical health sciences.

The 12 projects include 14 researchers from the Ithaca campus and 20 from WCMC. By coincidence, among the award winners there are six principal investigators from each campus, said Coico.

"The resources have been shared very fairly," said Coico. "That in part reflects the quality of the applications we received across the board."

To be eligible, proposals must be in one of five focus areas: biodefense and public health; cancer biology; chemical biology and neuroscience; computational biology; and nanomedicine and biomedical engineering.

Funding of $600,000 for the seed grants was shared equally by the Office of the Provost at each campus.