Arizona Teams Win Grants

Photonics and biophotonics collaborations in Arizona will receive grants totalling $10 million from Science Foundation Arizona, which is giving nearly $10 million to eight Arizona research teams through its Strategic Research Group program.

Anthony Muscat, an associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Arizona (UA), will receive a two-year grant of $625,000 to partner with Semiconductor Research Corp., Intel Corp., Sematech, SEZ America and ASM International to develop a sustainable process for the high-volume manufacturing of electronics and photonics. The process has the potential to change the methods used in nanoscale device fabrication while conserving water and decreasing materials costs, the foundation said.

Yong-Hang Zhang, professor of electrical engineering and director of the Center for Nanophotonics at Arizona State University (ASU), will receive a $500,000 grant toward a research collaboration between his team members at ASU, UA and several industry partners to develop innovative ultrahigh efficiency solar cells using semiconductor nanostructures for electricity generation.

Cun-Zheng Ning, a professor of electrical engineering at ASU, will receive a $50,000 grant to strengthen existing partnerships with the University of Arizona and Motorola with a goal of establishing a federally funded Photonics Research Center with the universities and industry.

Jeffrey Cossman, chief scientific officer of the Tucson-based Critical Path Institute, created to support the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in its effort to implement the Critical Path Initiative, will receive $2,161,000 over two years and will partner with Ventana Medical Systems of Tucson to establish a standard model system used for the validation of diagnostics in targeted therapy, using lung cancer as the prototype for this model. The Critical Path Iniative is "a national effort to modernize the scientific process through which a potential human drug, biological product or medical device is transformed from a discovery or "proof of concept" into a medical product," according to its Web site.

David Galbraith, professor of Plant Sciences and member of the BIO5 Institute at UA, will receive $2,172,000 over two years to cement a collaboration between High Throughput Genomics (HTG) of Tucson and BIO5 to establish the Chemical Genomics and Translational Research Center (CGTR). The CGTR will use an assay developed by HTG to create other applications, leading to clinical development and diagnosis tools.

Robert Penny, chief operating officer and chief medical officer of the International Genomics Consortium (IGC), will receive $2 million over two years to collaborate with Ameripath, a provider of anatomic pathology services and dermatopathology in disease diagnosis for physicians, hospitals and clinical laboratories, on the Expression Project for Oncology (expO). ExpO will use the biospecimen research and resources at IGC to create a publicly accessible scientific and information database. "In addition to implicating the research for more accurate diagnoses and therapy of cancers, this infrastructure will attract additional medical industries and biotechnology projects to Arizona,"SFAz said.

Chieri Kubota, a UA associate professor of plant sciences, and Guy Cardineau at ASU's School of Life Sciences, will receive a planning grant of $50,000 to demonstrate controlled-environment production of biopharmaceuticals.

Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz) was initiated in 2006 by Flagstaff 40, Greater Phoenix Leadership and the Southern Arizona Leadership Council. This effort builds on work done by the Flinn Foundation and its consultants, the Battelle Memorial Institute, in creating the Arizona Bioscience Roadmap. Of the eight programs funded, four are two-year grants of up to $1 million per year and three are one-year awards intended to seed new partnerships.

The eighth grant recipient will be announced in a few weeks, SFAz said.

“SFAz will foster, grow and cement research partnerships with significant industry leaders in the state such as Honeywell, Intel, Motorola and Ventana,” said William C. Harris, SFAz president and CEO. “These collaborations further anchor these industries to the state.”

For more information, visit: www.sfaz.org