UCSC Awarded Several Government Grants

National Institute of General Medical Sciences Grant Awarded to UCSC

The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) received a federal grant totaling $377,776 per year for five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to study T cell signaling.

"Our research addresses a fundamental process used by our immune T cells to recognize virus-infected cells and developing tumors in the body," said Professor Nikolaos Sgourakis, a professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"We will employ a new technology combining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy (done at our new $2.5M UCSC NMR facility), with powerful computational methods to provide insight into the first critical steps of T cell activation at the molecular level. The knowledge gained from our detailed molecular description will enable us to develop new therapeutic molecules for emerging immunotherapy applications to combat viral infections, and cancer."

Congressman Panetta stated, "This federal investment will help UCSC continue to develop medical applications that will not only benefit the Central Coast, but our entire country."

National Human Genome Research Institute Grant Awarded to UCSC

The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) received a federal grant totaling $819,502 from the National Human Genome Research Institute. The funds will be used for a project called "Dockstore," a platform for sharing tools & workflows on the Cloud Commons.

"The analysis of large swaths of healthcare and high-throughput data is increasingly essential to making discoveries in biomedicine," said Benedict Paten, a professor in the Biomolecular Engineering Department at UCSC. "To ensure discoveries from this scientific work are reproducible we need to be able to package these analyses, making them findable, sharable and accessible digital artifacts that can be reused in further study by the scientific community. The funding provided will allow us to grow dockstore.org into a platform in which scientific analyses can be openly shared and rerun with just a few clicks."

Congressman Panetta said, "I am proud that with this federal investment, UCSC will be able to build on their current scientific progress in biomedicine and help other research institutions to do the same."

NOAA Grants for UCSC

1. The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) will receive a federal grant totaling $136,647 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The funds will be used to produce forecasts of ocean conditions along the entirety of the West Coast of the United States, delivering predictions up to a year in advance. The University will use this capability for marine animal management, and to advise fisheries on what areas are likely to yield the best catch of targeted species.

   "The end product of this work will be a tool that predicts when and where fishers are most likely to catch the fish they want to catch, while also avoiding bycatch of non-targeted species including turtles, sharks, and sea lions," said Michael Jacox, Physical & Biological Scientist in University of California, Santa Cruz's Institute of Marine Sciences.

   "With the help of this federal grant, UCSC will improve the management and sustainability of fish stocks off of the central coast of California," said Congressman Panetta.

2. The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) will receive a federal grant totaling $414,885 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The funds will be used to quantify the impact of three regional Integrated Ocean Observing Systems (IOOS), namely the Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS), the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS) and Mid-Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS). This project will look at each of these regional associations and its impact on the analysis and forecast systems that assess the health of our ocean.
3. The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) will receive a federal grant totaling $566,827 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The funds will be used to develop the framework to identify climate-resilient management strategies and evaluate the impacts of climate change on marine species and fishing communities off of the West Coast of the United States. The University will use this capability to project the impacts of climate change on ocean conditions and distributions of marine species, and model the economic impacts of changing conditions on fisheries and fishing communities.

"We will now be able to conduct a comprehensive, end-to-end evaluation of the impacts of climate variability and change on U.S. west coast fisheries, including everything from physical and biological changes to economic impacts and the outcomes of possible management strategies," said Michael Jacox, Physical & Biological Scientist in University of California, Santa Cruz's Institute of Marine Sciences.

Congressman Panetta commented, "NOAA's investment in UCSC will help our communities and businesses plan for and react to the changing environment."