Five CoE Faculty Members Obtain Translational Seed Awards

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The UMass Amherst Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) has selected five faculty members from the College of Engineering (CoE) to receive Translational Seed Awards to advance their applied research-and-development efforts. The CoE recipients are Assistant Professor Prabhani Atukorale of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) Department, Professor Caitlyn Butler of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Associate Professor Jungwoo Lee of the Chemical Engineering Department, Associate Professor Yubing Sun of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, and BME Professor and Department Head Thai Thayumanavan. See Original article published in the UMass News Office.

The News Office article reports that “Awarded teams will receive seed funding of between $50,000 and $100,000 each to achieve translational milestones with the goal of moving UMass Amherst research, know-how, and scholarly and creative works towards impact through startup ventures, out-licensing of patented or copyrighted work, scalable engagement with external-partner organizations, or other vehicles.”  

Atukorale’s project is pursuing research on “Super Vax,” which involves cancer vaccinations with “super adjuvant” nanoparticles. Butler’s project is titled “Phos-For-Us,” a novel platform to remove excess phosphorus from wastewater. Lee is developing “MetaBone,” based on human-bone organoids to screen for therapeutics. Sun is working on a project called “Above Nerves,” which is studying 3D human-brain models for drug discovery and toxicology. And Thayumanavan is researching so-called “Polytacs,” or “protein scissors” to treat lung cancer.

The News Office says that “Funding for these awards is provided by the Manning Innovation Program, the U.S. National Science Foundation Accelerating Research Translation Program (award #2331351), and the IALS with the aim of advancing UMass Amherst translational and applied R&D….”

The catalyst for this program was the initial gift from UMass Amherst alumnus Paul Manning and his wife, Diane, who committed $1 million through their family foundation to establish the Manning Innovation Program. This gift provided three years of support in advancing a robust and sustainable commercialization pipeline of applied- and translational-research projects from UMass Amherst. (May 2025)