North Carolina Collaboratory opens offices
On March 22, campus leaders gathered to cut the ribbon on the Collaboratory’s new dedicated space on campus in the Kenan Labs.
In 2016, N.C. General Assembly established the North Carolina Collaboratory to facilitate the dissemination of policy and research expertise of the UNC System and other universities across the state to solve North Carolina’s most pressing challenges through collaboration. In 2018, the Collaboratory received its first large appropriation of $5 million to study per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in North Carolina. Since then, the Collaboratory’s funding has grown to $148 million and includes research partnerships with experts from every part of the state. After seven years of Collaboratory staff working from various locations of Carolina’s campus, the ribbon cutting marked the opening of the official, dedicated offices for the Collaboratory.
“What began as an initial annual recurring legislative appropriation of $1 million quickly expanded to a total of $148 million – almost half of which is devoted to COVID-related projects,” said the Collaboratory’s Executive Director Jeffrey Warren. “To address this rapid and unprecedented growth, operational support from Carolina enabled a critical scale-up of our abilities to plan, manage, measure and assess our research portfolio and its outcomes.”
At the ribbon cutting, Warren highlighted several current research projects funded by the Collaboratory that immediately impact the state and its citizens, including:
- After the initial study on PFAS, the Collaboratory assembled a team to test water supplies in more than 400 locations across the state and then created a resin-based filtration technology to filter out the harmful contaminants.
- During the COVID-19 outbreak, Associate Professor Ronit Freeman’s lab developed rapid COVID-19 test strips using sugar-based polymer technology.
- North Carolina has the largest lithium deposits in North America and the mineral is necessary for manufacturing batteries. The Collaboratory is funding research on lithium extraction with minimal environmental impact.