Research Accelerator Projects Receive Funding, Find Momentum

The best ideas often emerge in collaboration with others. This understanding helped inspire Dean Dani Fallin, PhD, and Executive Associate Dean for Research Strategy Carmen Marsit, PhD, to launch the Rollins Research Accelerators initiative last year.

Each Accelerator was assigned a working group that brings together leading researchers in six core areas where there is great public need and strong Rollins expertise: aging, digital health and wearables, exposomics, maternal and child health, mental health, and nutrition. These working groups are interdepartmental in nature and were charged with facilitating collaboration, supporting projects in the group’s subject area, and championing innovation.

That approach has proven fruitful. Just under a year after the Rollins Research Accelerators were announced, several pilot projects are underway. Earlier this fall, 16 projects received funding as part of a recent gift by the O. Wayne Rollins Foundation. One of these projects, which is looking to test whether PFAS or “forever chemicals” can be removed from a person’s body through medication, also recently received an NIH R01 award. 

“It’s exciting to see the range of projects that are happening,” says Marsit. “These projects ask big questions and take new approaches. Some of these projects may have been harder to support through traditional mechanisms, so we're able to really push them forward.”

Visit the Rollins Research Accelerators web pages to view a list of all funded projects.