The University of Michigan has announced the first 50 interdisciplinary, collaborative projects that will receive grants as part of its creative MCubed program, launched earlier this year.
The initial projects cover such wide-ranging topics as "Adaptive Health Communications Over Mobile Devices," "Carbon Capture and Storage," and "Digital Environments Cluster Publishing Series." School officials announced the winners during a live-tweeted lottery that was held on Wednesday. Each project will receive a $60,000 grant, and all feature a trio of professors from two or more disciplines who will join forces and blend their expertise in the first round of what is planned to be a two-year, $15 million pilot program. Another 200 projects are slated to receive funding.
Mark Burns, who chairs the MCubed executive committee and is T.C. Chang Professor of Engineering, professor of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at U-M, is quoted in a November 28 University of Michigan News Service article. "MCubed essentially eliminates many of the hurdles to funding that faculty members typically have to think about. They don't have to fit the project into the topic of a recent call for proposals, or worry about how their work fits within the confines of a particular funding agency's target topics." Burns continues, "They can just focus on the impact of the work. This type of intellectual freedom is important in innovative work."
See the full list of these 50 MCubed projects, and learn more in the "Inside MCubed" blog.
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