Outside Support Fuels Scientific Innovation
Heidi Opdyke
- Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications, MCS
- Email opdyke@andrew.cmu.edu
- Phone 412-268-9982
Breakthroughs begin with a question, but it takes support to pursue the answer.
Across Carnegie Mellon University’s Mellon College of Science, discoveries are made possible in large part with resources provided by federal agencies, but also critically with the help of a network of corporate partners, private foundations and individual donors. These investments give faculty and students the freedom to push boundaries and create breakthroughs.
“External support is often the catalyst that transforms promising ideas into meaningful discoveries,” said Jeff Miracle, chief advancement officer for the Mellon College of Science. “It gives researchers the flexibility to pursue high-risk, high-reward work and ensures that students can engage in hands-on learning that prepares them to lead in science and beyond.”
With federal research funding more competitive than ever, partnerships with corporations and foundations have become essential to advancing new ideas from concept to impact.
As part of the MCS advancement team, Edward Dunlea, senior director of corporate and foundation relations, and Ally Jump, associate director of corporate and foundation relations, connect MCS with external stakeholders to generate partnerships, funding and collaborative opportunities.
“The groundbreaking science and next-generation talent at universities help corporations tackle real-world challenges within their organizations, and foundations and alumni accelerate progress in fields that they care deeply about,” Dunlea said. “The goal is to find the matches where those interests align with the research interests of MCS researchers.”
Tackling a global health challenge
For Drew Bridges, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, that kind of support has been essential.
As antibiotic resistance makes infections harder to treat worldwide, Bridges studies biofilms — communities of bacteria that clump together on surfaces and make infections more resilient. His goal is to prevent infections before they begin.
Early investment from the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge and medical progress, makes his work possible.
“The Curci Foundation’s support gave us the financial stability and protected time we needed to pursue ambitious, high-risk experiments,” Bridges said. “With that backing we could develop and refine the fluorogen activating protein imaging platform. This enabled us to capture high-resolution, long-term movies of entire biofilm communities, something that was impossible with traditional fluorescent proteins.”
Early-career funding can fuel innovation
Chris Eur, assistant professor of mathematical sciences, was named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow. Selected from more than 1,000 nominees, the fellowship provides flexible funding to advance his work at the intersection of algebraic geometry and combinatorics, particularly in matroid theory.
His research explores how geometric methods can illuminate discrete structures such as graphs and matchings, with applications spanning mathematics, computer science and physics. Eur was nominated by June Huh, a Princeton University professor and 2022 Fields Medal recipient, the highest honor in math.
“Chris is among the best in combinatorial algebraic geometry in terms of his ability to prove, compute, and construct,” Huh said. “His contributions to recent projects highlight his growing influence in the field. Chris consistently assumes leading roles, collaborates generously, and shows exceptional promise as an emerging leader in the field.”
Another early-career winner, Irene Kaplow, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department, was named a Searle Scholar. The honor, awarded by the Searle Scholars Program, provides funding to support high-risk, high-reward research across disciplines in the biological and chemical sciences.
Kaplow’s research examines how gene regulation shapes traits across species, with a focus on enhancers — noncoding regions of the genome that control when and where genes are expressed. Using machine learning, her lab identifies patterns of enhancer activity linked to evolutionary traits and improves predictive models across species.
The Searle Scholars award supports her efforts to distinguish genetic signals tied to long-term evolution from those influenced by environmental factors such as diet, advancing understanding of how genetics and environment interact in health and disease.
“This award is going to be incredibly valuable in supporting my work. It will provide support for a Ph.D. student who can focus on some exciting ideas my lab has developed that we have struggled to get funded due to us being a new lab that has not yet produced much preliminary data. It will also allow us to purchase some new equipment that can help us expand cell culture work in the lab.”
Advancing the frontiers of quantum physics
In physics, foundational support enables exploration at the smallest scales and in the new frontier of the quantum world.
With a $1.3 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Associate Professor Sufei Shi designs and fabricates moiré superlattices, which are structures formed by overlapping crystal layers, typically twodimensional semiconductors. His research into the quantum properties of these two-dimensional materials could advance fundamental understanding of light-matter interaction and inform the design of next-generation quantum devices, with implications for quantum information processing and sensing.
“Our approach is unique in combining condensed matter physics and device engineering with knowledge from atomic physics, enabling a new regime of quantum information science: scalable and flexible quantum simulations,” he said.
Using advanced nanofabrication and optical techniques, Shi traps and manipulates excitons within moiré structures to control their behavior. This work has the potential to guide future advances in quantum technologies.
“The Moore Foundation grant has provided me critical support for hiring postdoctoral researchers,” Shi said. “It allows me to explore high-risk/high-gain work that would otherwise not be possible.”
Training the Next Generation of Scientists
Foundational support fuels discovery while shaping the next generation of scientists.
In the Department of Chemistry, a gift from the PPG Foundation is creating new opportunities through the PPG Scholar Teams program. By pairing graduate mentors with undergraduate researchers, the program immerses students in collaborative, faculty-led research early in their academic careers.
“It’s critical for undergraduates to learn about research in practice while graduate students are in a position to help them grow, said Bruce Armitage, professor, department head and co-director of the Center for Nucleic Acid Science and Technology. “The funding from PPG allows the department to support the students and faculty conducting research and build those experiences in ways that are meaningful and sustained.”
Over the summer, the first cohort included five groups, including one in Armitage’s lab. They conducted a range of chemistry research from developing computational methods to simulate potential solvents to identifying safer ways to remove heavy metals from the bloodstream.
A shared investment in the future
Together, these partnerships represent a shared investment in MCS faculty and their work. By connecting curiosity with opportunity, external partners help ensure that the next generation of breakthroughs — and the scientists who drive them — can take shape at Carnegie Mellon and beyond.
