UT sees record growth in research expenditures

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, achieved another research record, reporting expenditures totaling $384 million in the 2024 fiscal year and building on last year’s record by approximately $50 million.

“UT researchers and their partners are doing cutting-edge research that strengthens the Tennessee economy and addresses the needs of Tennessee communities,” said Deborah Crawford, vice chancellor for research, innovation and economic development. “Because of our land-grant mission, we are committed to making life and lives better here in Tennessee and around the world through our research and innovation.”

The university is growing its research expenditures with multidisciplinary projects that solve problems important to Tennessee and the country. It’s a change that Chancellor Donde Plowman celebrated in her 2024 Flagship Address in September.

“We shifted our research strategy to focus less on individual efforts and instead to go after big collaborative projects,” she said, thanking Crawford for her vision and leadership. “Our ambition has fueled more creative solutions and new technologies that will impact the lives of everyday people.”

A strong research university also plays a key role in bolstering the state’s economy and workforce by providing talent, creating jobs and supporting new businesses. Researchers across each of UT’s 14 degree-granting colleges and schools are developing solutions that create a more just, prosperous and sustainable future for the state and the nation.

New materials fuel Tennessee innovation

Faculty and students in UT’s Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, an $18 million initiative funded by the National Science Foundation, are developing AI-based design techniques and sophisticated tools to create next-generation materials. Building on East Tennessee’s long-standing strengths in advanced energy, CAMM researchers are creating innovations in materials critical to Tennessee’s nuclear energy supply chain.  Quantum materials are also a focus of the center’s work, recognizing Chattanooga’s growing strengths in quantum-based secure communications and computation. Faculty and students work closely with partners in industry to ensure that research outcomes make their way quickly to the marketplace.

“The common threads running through and uniting our work include AI design tools, in situ analysis and neutron scattering techniques,” said Claudia Rawn, CAMM deputy director and director of education, outreach and recruitment. “AI and machine learning are guiding our experimentalists as they synthesize and characterize the properties of new materials critical to the success of Tennessee businesses.”

Drawing on the collective talent of dozens of UT faculty, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, CAMM faculty and students work closely with local schools to share STEM lessons and activities.

“We’re igniting a passion in the next generation of Tennessee innovators,” said Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Kate Page, a CAMM faculty leader.

Understanding human-driven factors that lead to pandemics 

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Nina Fefferman and her colleagues received an $18 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study how, when and why an infection in a population spreads or causes an epidemic or pandemic.

Fefferman secured the funding to launch the NSF Center for Analysis and Prediction of Pandemic Expansion. The center focuses on identifying the factors that constitute the “perfect storm” leading to the spread of infection across populations and continents.  As they understand better how pandemics form and expand, the center’s researchers will also identify ways to prevent or mitigate them.

APPEX builds on Fefferman’s previous work and adds members from government, industry and nongovernmental organizations to those from UT and four other universities as they work to identify the human-driven factors that constitute ideal conditions for pandemic expansion.

“A lot of pandemic research is immunology and virology — work that happens in medical schools — but that’s only two parts among the very many parts that come together to create a pandemic,” said Fefferman, who has worked in pandemic preparedness for 20 years.

Other factors that may contribute to whether an infection evolves into an epidemic or pandemic include the built environment, economic resources, media, safety systems engineering, social networks and surveillance along with other fields such as ecology, health care and pharmaceuticals.

“Think about it: A very small portion of an epidemic is what is happening inside one person,” Fefferman said. “Public health is about changing the lives of an entire population. That’s the point of bringing together a multidisciplinary team of researchers — to gain a globally better understanding of how to interrupt the spread of infection so we help people before they ever get sick.”

UT partners with Cherokee Health Systems to improve maternal and child health 

UT and Cherokee Health Systems are expanding their unique research-practice partnership thanks to a $650,000 Institutional Challenge Grant from the trustees of the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation and the Bezos Family Foundation.

UT has a long history of working with CHS, a federally qualified health center that provides outpatient services to more than 65,000 Tennesseans annually. The institutions have neighboring units in Knoxville’s Cherokee Mills office complex, where CHS runs a pediatric and OB-GYN clinic.

CHS and UT are working together to develop a training program that equips CHS health care practitioners and UT faculty and students with the knowledge they need to deliver evidence-based clinical interventions that improve health outcomes in Tennessee communities.  In one example, CHS and UT seek to improve maternal and child health outcomes for Black and Latina pregnant teens, creating health care environments that empower women to advocate for their needs and provide them with community resources to support healthy pregnancies.

“Community health centers are typically tasked with providing access to care for under-resourced communities, and we recognize that part of that charge involves contributing to the scholarly literature [and] to the knowledge base about best practices to improve the health of a community,” said Parinda Khatri, chief executive officer of CHS. “Here what we’re doing is really bringing in the strength of both organizations — UT with the research methodology and scientific rigor, and then our work in the trenches with under-resourced communities — in order to create something better than what we could do individually.”