Faculty-led research projects ranging from reducing chronic pain in sickle cell disease patients to optimizing Black maternal health and identifying gaps in Virginia secondary education curricula are among the 10 projects that have been awarded funding from the 2024 Virginia Commonwealth University Breakthroughs Fund.

Now in its third year, the VCU Breakthroughs Fund has supported more than 30 projects through investments totaling nearly $6 million. The fund helps transdisciplinary teams to design unique, creative and innovative large-scale approaches to confront the grand challenges identified in the One VCU Strategic Research Priorities Plan.

Upon award completion, project teams are expected to compete for external funding. Projects that received Breakthroughs awards in the program’s first year are close to completion and are preparing external grant applications so that their important work can continue and expand.

The Breakthroughs submission, review and funding process is coordinated by VCU’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. Applications are reviewed by faculty members, subject matter experts and the SRPP Advisory Council, with their recommendations receiving final review and approval by P. Srirama Rao, Ph.D., VCU’s vice president for research and innovation.

We are better when we’re working together to address the grand challenges our society faces. The VCU Breakthroughs Fund encourages and inspires applicants to lean on their colleagues from other disciplines to tackle these issues in ways that are more creative, ways that think outside the box, working in unity to advance the research that lifts lives and breaks down the traditional barriers leading to transformative innovations and original solutions.

P. Srirama Rao, Ph.D.
VCU Vice President for Research and Innovation

To qualify for funding, projects must have a diverse team of researchers, including faculty under-represented in their field, early-stage investigators, trainees and students, and multiple principal investigators from two or more schools/colleges across the university.

The 2024 grant recipients/PIs from the VCU Breakthroughs Fund and their research projects included Susan Bodnar-Deren, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology in the College of Humanities and Sciences; Kristina Hood, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences; and Nancy Jallo, Ph.D., associate professor of family and community health in the School of Nursing; for their project, “Birth in Color Integrated Support Program: An Innovative Community-based Approach to Optimize Black Maternal Health.”

To learn more about the VCU Breakthroughs Fund, as well as additional internal funding opportunities under the One VCU Research Strategic Priorities Plan, visit the plan website.

To explore external funding that supports knowledge creation in and across all disciplines, visit the OVPRI funding page.

A version of this story was originally published by VCU News