Grand Challenges Grants 2.0 Direct UMD Research to Societal Good

Pressing societal needs like expanding access to mental health services, heading off pandemics and reducing educational disparities aren’t neatly divided among academic disciplines—and neither is the University of Maryland’s signature initiative to address them.

On Thursday, UMD announced the launch of 11 high-impact research projects representing more than 40 disciplines across campus, funded by nearly $15 million over three years through the Grand Challenges Grants Program.

It’s the next step in an ongoing commitment to channel the university’s research power into advancing solutions for the public good. In 2023, the first round of Grand Challenges Grants committed $30 million to 50 projects spanning every college and school—the largest investment of its kind in the university's history, resulting in an additional $55 million in external funding.

“The inaugural program demonstrated extraordinary impact due to the breadth of expertise and collaborative spirit across our research enterprise,” Senior Vice President and Provost Jennifer King Rice and Vice President for Research Patrick O’Shea said in an email to the campus community. “Through Grand Challenges 1.0, faculty developed innovative approaches to issues from climate resilience to food insecurity to educational equity and more, strengthening partnerships across disciplines, engaging students in new opportunities, and positioning the university for greater external funding, scholarly impact and public engagement.”

The projects funded this year by Grand Challenges Grants 2.0 were selected from nearly 80 proposals from every college and school involving 400 researchers. The projects will also receive a 50% matching in-kind and/or cash investment from their college or unit. Institutional Awards will total $1.5 million, Impact Awards are $1.05 million, and Team Awards will total $600,000. 

“These projects exemplify the power of interdisciplinary collaboration to generate new ideas, accelerate discovery and address the grand challenges facing communities in Maryland, across the nation and around the world,” Rice and O’Shea said. “We are inspired by the vision and innovation reflected in these projects, and grateful to everyone who submitted proposals.” 

Read on to learn about individual projects.

IN-PLACE: Interdisciplinary Network for Place-Based Learning, Action and Community-Engaged EnvironMental Health 
PI: Associate Professor Jessica Magidson, Psychology; Co-PIs: Professor Byoung-Suk Kweon, Plant Science and Landscape Architecture; Senior Agent Alexander Chan, University of Maryland Extension; Associate Professor Jana VanderGoot, Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Assistant Professor Jayson Porter, History; Associate Professor Andrea Lopez, Anthropology; Associate Clinical Professor Amy Green, Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership; Associate Professor Jennifer Roberts, Kinesiology; Assistant Professor Noah Triplett, Behavioral and Community Health.
IN-PLACE connects time spent in nature with evidence-based mental health care through community partnerships, research and campus programming to simultaneously address the interconnected challenges of mental health, environmental health and health disparities.

Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Research Collaborative (WHIRC) 
PI: Associate Professor Marie Thoma, Family Science; Co-PIs: Associate Professor Jioni Lewis, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education; Professor Alisa Clyne,Bioengineering; Assistant Professor Ang Li, Electrical and Computer Engineering.
WHIRC is a campuswide interdisciplinary collaborative that advances translational research, workforce development and evidence-based policy to close critical knowledge gaps in women's health across the lifespan, leveraging AI and community-engaged approaches to drive real-world improvements for a historically underrepresented population in medical research.

Predictive Biology Hub for Human and Environmental Health
PI: Professor Joshua Weitz, Biology; Co-PIs: Professor and Chair Evan Economo, Entomology; Professor Meredith Gore, Geographical Sciences; Distinguished University Professor William Fagan, Biology; Assistant Professor Nikolas Francis, Biology; Professor Michelle Girvan, Physics; Associate Professor Philip Johnson, Biology; Associate Professor Haizhao Yang, Mathematics; Assistant Professor Nan Xu, Bioengineering. 
This initiative develops new predictive tools to mitigate pandemics, improve human health outcomes, and sustain vital ecosystems in the face of emerging global threats across biological scales, from pathogens and ecosystems to brain networks and bioinspired design.

Sustainable and Ethical AI Infrastructure
PI: Distinguished University Professor Eric Wachsman, Materials Science and Engineering; Co-PIs: Associate Professor Paul Albertus, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Professor Anand Patwardhan, Public Policy; Professor and Associate Dean Yueming “Lucy” Qiu, Public Policy; Professor and Associate Dean Wedad Elmaghraby, Decision, Operations and Information Technologies; Associate Professor Joshua Linn, Agricultural and Resource Economics. 
This project integrates engineering, economics and policy analysis to help Maryland and the nation balance the surging power and water demands of AI data centers with sustainability, affordability and national security goals, while identifying near- and long-term technological solutions for sustainable infrastructure.

Maryland Initiative Against Superbugs (MAS) 
PI: Assistant Professor Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics; Co-PI: Assistant Professor Seth Dickey, Veterinary Medicine. 
This project focuses on the discovery and engineering of bacteriophage: viruses that infect and kill bacteria. It will combine AI, computational modeling and experimental validation to identify and optimize bacteriophage, or phage, therapies capable of precisely targeting and killing drug-resistant superbugs.

Gut-Healing Smart Pill 
PI: Assistant Professor Younggeon Jin, Animal and Avian Sciences; Co-PIs: Distinguished University Professor Reza Ghodssi, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research; Assistant Research Scientist Justin Stine, A. James Clark School of Engineering; Associate Professor Katharina Maisel, Bioengineering. 
This project is developing a smart, swallowable capsule that precisely targets and activates the gut's natural repair mechanisms to heal damaged intestinal tissue, aiming to reduce surgical interventions, improve patient outcomes and lower the enormous costs of inflammatory bowel disease care.

Belonging for Immigrants and Refugees with Disabilities (BIRD) 
PI: Assistant Professor Veronica Kang, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education; Co-PIs: Associate Professor Julie Park, Sociology; Assistant Professor Sehrish Shikarpurya, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education. 
BIRD is a community-driven initiative that partners with grassroots organizations to provide culturally tailored support services, workforce training and policy advocacy for immigrants and refugees with disabilities to reduce systemic barriers and improve access to education, healthcare and community resources.

AI for Precision Cancer Treatment 
PI: Professor Teng Li, Mechanical Engineering; Co-PIs: Assistant Research Professor Lianping Wu, Mechanical Engineering; Associate Professor Xiaodi Wu, Computer Science. 
This project integrates quantum computing and machine learning to design single-atom catalysts, an emerging approach for improving early cancer detection and treatment efficacy, offering a faster, more cost-effective path to safer therapies that minimize damage to healthy tissue.

The Air We Share: A Public Health Revolution for the 21st Century
PI: Distinguished University Professor Donald Milton, Global, Environmental, and Occupational Health; Co-PIs: Professor Jelena Srebric, Mechanical Engineering; Associate Research Professor Kathleen McPhaul, Global, Environmental, and Occupational Health; Assistant Professor Huang Lin, Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Distinguished University Professor Maureen Cropper, Economics; Professor Anna Alberini, Agricultural and Resource Economics; Distinguished University Professor Abba Gumel, Mathematics, Institute for Health Computing. 
This project aims to revolutionize indoor air safety by advancing the science of airborne infection transmission, demonstrating clean air interventions in homes and healthcare settings, and building the research infrastructure and next-generation leadership needed to make safe indoor air a universal public health standard.

Land-Sea Exchange Network for Salinity (LENS): An Early Warning System for Detecting and Managing Salinity Risks
PI: Associate Professor Kate Tully, Plant Science and Landscape Architecture; Co-PIs: Associate Professor Becky Epanchin-Niell, Agricultural and Resource Economics; Professor Sujay Kaushal, Geological, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. 
LENS brings together experts across numerous fields to track salt levels from land to coastal waters and develop an early warning system to help policymakers and communities identify, manage and reduce the environmental and economic impacts of saltwater intrusion and road salt pollution.

Sustainable Precision Aquaculture Network for Shellfish (SPANS) 
PI: Professor Miao Yu, Department of Mechanical Engineering; Co-PIs: Professor Nikhil Chopra, Department of Mechanical Engineering; Professor Yang Tao, Bioengineering; Agent Hemendra Kumar, University of Maryland Extension; Principal Agent Associate Matt Parker, University of Maryland Extension; Principal Agent Don Webster, University of Maryland Extension. 
SPANS aims to transform oyster farming into a precision, data-driven industry that addresses global food security, restores water quality and revitalizes coastal economies, leveraging robotics, AI, big data and internet of things technologies to modernize shellfish aquaculture in the Chesapeake Bay.