A brain tumor may not sound like a difficult thing to grow in the lab, but once you remove the tumor from the brain itself, most of the time it fails to grow. This failure rate has sparked new research through an NCATS UO1 grant for Shawn Hingtgen, PhD and his colleagues, including fellow UNC cancer researchers Andrew Satterlee, PhD, and Albert Baldwin, PhD.

While many children born with a cleft lip or palate may struggle to speak clearly, speech therapy can help them learn how to correctly articulate certain sounds. With the help of a FastTraCS grant followed by funding from the NC Biotechnology Center, Rishma Shah and colleagues have created a Bluetooth-enabled retainer that tracks tongue placement along the palate and encourages correct articulation.

UNC welcomes Melissa A. Haendel, PhD, FACMI, as the Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor in the Department of Genetics within the School of Medicine. Haendel will serve as the Director of Precision Health & Translational Informatics and contribute her expertise as Deputy Director of Computational Science at NC TraCS.

Erin Carey, MD, MSCR (director of the Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery Division at UNC) is taking on a new role as co-executive director of FastTraCS, in large part out of a desire to help other medical professionals find, interrogate, and resolve similar gaps in everyday medicine.