The new Ascending Star Fellowship provides mentorship, funding and other support to high-performing associate professors. The goal is to boost the national impact of the fellows’ scholarship, with a heavy focus on work in diversity, inclusion and community empowerment.

The UofL Office of Research and Innovation launched the program last year, selecting its inaugural class in partnership with the . This year’s class — representing four schools — includes:

• , an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy whose work focuses on feminist bioethics, specifically on clinical encounters��between�� health��professionals and��members��of��marginalized communities;��
• an associate professor��in the Department of Mathematics whose work focuses on developing analytic��and computational tools, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to study nonlinear fluid equations;
• , an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, whose research focuses on electrochemistry, wastewater treatment, solar cells and more;��
• , an associate professor in the Department of History whose work lies at�� the intersection of human rights, religion and foreign relations history;
• , an associate professor in the College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development, whose work focuses on health promotion, with a particular focus on underserved populations and rural communities;
• , an associate professor in the Kent School of Social Work, whose work focuses on utilizing trauma-informed organizational change interventions to disrupt systems of oppression and investigating the scope and complexity of child trafficking across the U.S.;
• , an associate professor in the Hite Institute of Art & Design and a nationally recognized glass artist;��
• , an associate professor in the College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development whose work focuses on the intersection between Black education and sociopolitical factors and the role sociopolitical forces play in creating disparities in Black education;
• , an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, whose work focuses on microfluidics, electrokinetics and colloid science, including tracing the unique “DNA” of whiskey.��

“I’m extremely pleased with the quality and diversity of the work already being done by this new cohort,” said M. Cynthia Logsdon, the Office of Research and Innovation’s director of research academic programs, who leads the fellowship program. “They’re already stars, but with the Ascending Stars Fellows program, we hope to help them in advancing their scholarship, magnifying their national recognition and extending the impact of their work.”

In addition to other supports, the and UofL’s , aimed at improving equity for female STEM faculty, will provide educational and enrichment activities geared toward advancement of diverse communities and populations.

To be considered for the program, faculty must be associate professor rank, must be nominated by their unit and must show a “consistent record of scholarship with the passion and desire to achieve greater national recognition.”

The program provides training and $50,000 in funding that helps university researchers translate the ideas they develop in the lab into new, technology-backed startups. Participating teams complete an intense, two-month bootcamp learning about commercialization, engaging with industry and talking to potential customers.

Two projects from UofL were chosen to participate in recent bootcamp cohorts:

• BioCaRGOS, short for Capture and Release Gels for Optimized Storage (bioCaRGOS), uses a novel water-based stabilizer to enable storage of sensitive biospecimens like RNA, DNA or proteins at low temperatures for long periods of time, including during transport to remote locations. The project team includes: co-inventors Gautam Gupta and��Rajat Chauhan, both in the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, and business mentor Jeff Cummins, who also is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with the UofL Office of Research and Innovation.

• ARNA, short for , an artificially intelligent health care robot created to provide round-the-clock patient monitoring and allow nurses to focus more on direct patient care by taking on some of their time-consuming tasks. The project team includes: co-inventors Dan Popa and Sumit Kumar Das, of engineering, and business mentor Mary Tapolsky, of the UofL Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship.

Chauhan, of the BioCaRGOS team, said the experience helped his team find an industry commercialization partner. They currently are seeking partners for an upcoming application NSF Partnerships for Innovation program, which allows NSF-backed projects like his to work with industry on research and development and accelerate the technology’s path to market.

“Vaccine stability (especially for COVID-19) remains a critical challenge and is the critical bottleneck for effective distribution of the state-of-art MRNA based vaccines to current population,” said Chauhan, BioCaRGOS entrepreneurial lead and a postdoctoral research scientist. “Our technology has the potential to advance the delivery of vaccines at room temperature, a feat that cannot be achieved currently.”

Teams must be nominated for the national I-Corps bootcamp, and must first complete a regional . Both the BioCARGOS and ARNA teams completed UofL’s I-Corps site program — part of UofL’s suite of��, that also includes the UofL , NIH and NSF programs. I-Corps at UofL requires successful participation and completion of , UofL’s own 10-week entrepreneurial bootcamp.

“These programs support commercialization of the work being done by our researchers here at UofL,” said Jessica Sharon, UofL’s director of innovation programs. “We’re proud of the ARNA and BioCARGOS teams, and their work to accelerate product development of their innovations to address unmet needs in the market.”��