NCInnovation ramps up grants to NC universities with focus on health care, AI

Cancer treatments, futuristic bandages, a new Alzheimers drug and microscopic robots that can be injected into farm animals to combat parasites were just some of the research projects approved Wednesday for new state-backed grants.

At a time when the federal government is slashing funding for university research, NCInnovation is ramping up its own efforts: The grants approved Wednesday were for nearly triple the amount the group handed out last year in its initial round of funding.

NCInnovation is backed by $500 million from state taxpayers, approved by the legislature in the 2023 state budget, as well as tens of millions more in donations from the private sector. It’s tasked with identifying research at North Carolina’s public universities with commercial promise — and to then provide the professors the funding they need to help take their ideas from the classroom to the private sector, creating jobs and bringing economic investment to the state as they do so.

Research Triangle Park, which has helped the Triangle region boom over the last 50 years, is made up of many companies that count local professors among their founders. But only three of the state’s 16 public universities are located in the Triangle region, and NCInnovation seeks to repeat the success of RTP in other parts of the state, in cities home to those other universities.

The group approved its first round of grants last year, totaling $5 million. The newest round of grants approved Wednesday was for just under $14 million.

“This work is changing the world, and it makes me really proud to be a part of it,” said Kelly King, the retired banking executive who previously led BB&T and Truist, and who now chairs NCInnovation’s board of directors.

Many of the grants will go to projects looking to use artificial intelligence to either solve problems or vastly speed up work in pharmaceuticals, health care and farming — all multibillion-dollar industries that are massive pieces of the North Carolina economy. King said the research reflects “an extraordinarily dynamic, changing world.”

• Winston-Salem State: Training nurses with a new program that combines virtual reality and AI to simulate medical incidents, as well as likely emotional reactions, that nurses will need to be able to respond to.
• UNC-Chapel Hill: Helping pregnant women in rural areas with no local maternal health care options get ultrasounds quickly, by using an ultrasound machine that can attach to a smart phone and generate images that can be analyzed by AI.
• Appalachian State: Identifying parasites in livestock with a robotic microscope and AI, with the potential to cut down the time needed for that work from days to just minutes.
• East Carolina: Improving strategies to treat stuttering, by uing AI and virtual reality.

Several other projects were pitched as having potential use for the military, sports teams and disaster response efforts: Research is underway at UNC-Wilmington and N.C. A&T to identify people who are more at-risk of sustaining neck and knee injuries. And at N.C. State work has already been underway to create bandages that have small batteries built into them, which can use electrical signals to quickly heal deep, irregularly shaped wounds. It was developed with diabetic foot ulcers in mind, but the new grant funding approved Wednesday will help the team pivot to military uses as well.

Some of the grants are for research at UNC-Pembroke into a new chemical compound to reduce certain proteins that build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, as well as a UNC-Charlotte project that aims to use lasers to stabilize pharmaceuticals for shipping and storage instead of having to refrigerate them — a concept that could potentially lead to massive financial savings.

A separate UNC-Charlotte project also receiving funds seeks to develop new treatments for pancreatic cancer, a particularly deadly form of cancer, and a Fayetteville State researcher seeks to cut down on cancers in the first place with a new type of pesticide based on hemp rather than carcinogenic chemicals.

As NCInnovation ramps up its work, though, it's also facing financial uncertainty due to political disagreement over its state funding.

Although Republican state lawmakers agreed to give it the $500 million in last year's budget, not all agreed with that decision. It has had a target on its back since then, including from political appointees on its board of directors.

The new 2025 state budget might reimagine the group's funding structure entirely; the Senate has proposed one plan for shuffling money around but the state House has yet to release its own budget plan. However, that House plan is expected to be made public as soon as next week.

During Wednesday's meeting one of the group's critics serving on its board of directors, businessman and Republican Party insider Art Pope, raised a number of issues he had with past lobbying spending and tax filings made by the group, as well the fact that a subcommittee focused on audits hasn't met for six months. Pope previously called for an audit of the group and earlier this year Republican Auditor Dave Boliek released his report, finding no major issues but promising to keep an eye on it.

Pope and several others on the board have pushed for greater transparency and access to internal documents, and he said Wednesday he thought it had made improvements, even if he still had some concerns.

"I voted against the pilot grants a year ago becuase I thought it was a flawed process, not a fully transparent process," he said Wednesday, adding that he was voting in favor of the new grants because "this process has been very different. Completely open.”