Two NC State faculty members have been awarded Institutional Development Grants from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBiotech) to fund new lab equipment.
Eric Stone, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, will receive $200,000 to purchase a NextSeq 500 DNA sequencer that will expedite research projects such as biofuel generation, pollution surveying and remediation, and agricultural crop improvement.
Michael Stoskopf, professor of aquatics, wildlife and zoologic medicine and of molecular and environmental toxicology at the Center for Marine Sciences and Technology in Morehead City, will receive $72,500 for a recycling system that will reduce by at least 90 percent the use of liquid helium and nitrogen in the imaging and spectroscopy magnet at the Marine Magnetic Resonance Facility.
These grants are among 33 awards totaling $2.4 million that NCBiotech awarded to companies, universities and other organizations across the state in the first three months of 2015.
New Grants for Commercialization
In related news, NCBiotech has launched a new funding program to help commercialize scientific discoveries at North Carolina universities. BIG, the Biotechnology Innovation Grant, provides up to $100,000 to full-time faculty to help them prepare for patenting or to conduct other pre-marketing studies to determine whether their intellectual property is viable.
The grants require a 10 percent match as well as a partnership between the scientist receiving the award and one or more business partners.
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