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Cornell University

Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response

Funding Opportunities

(NEW) Seed grants awarded for pandemic prevention and response.

During Summer 2022, The Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response (CCPPR) welcomed proposals from interdisciplinary teams of faculty across Cornell focused on pandemic prevention and response. We have awarded seed grant funding to seven teams across Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medicine. Congratulations to the following teams!

  1. The Interaction of Public Health Emergencies: Understanding Nation-wide and City-wide Spatiotemporal Dynamics of COVID-19 Transmission in a Warming World
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Arnab Ghosh
    • Schools/Departments:
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine
      • Cornell University, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
      • Cornell University, Department of Statistics and Data Science
    • CCPPR areas of focus: Prevention, prediction, preparedness, and response
    • By applying “big data” research methods to assess how heat emergencies alter COVID-19 transmission, investigators will generate new knowledge about how climate change may increase the risk and consequences of pandemics.
  1. Scaling Data-Driven Psychological Interventions for Pandemic Healthcare Workers using Large Language Models and Explainable AI
    • Principal Investigators: Dr. Logan Grosenick and Dr. Nili Solomonov
    • Schools/Departments:
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Weill Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Sackler Institute of Developmental Psychobiology and the Feil Family Brain & Mind Research Institute
    • CCPPR areas of focus: Response
    • By applying artificial intelligence methods to a large database of electronic mental health record, investigators will increase understanding about the incidence and characteristics of psychological stressors and mental illness in healthcare workers during pandemics.
  1. Designing policy solutions for the early inclusion of pregnant people and children in vaccine trials
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Sallie Permar
    • Schools/Departments:
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Department of Pediatrics
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Department of Population Health Sciences
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
    • CCPPR areas of focus: Protection, preparedness, response
    • Investigators will analyze current United States laws, regulations, and ethical and scientific beliefs to change the emerging infectious disease vaccine development and research paradigm from default exclusion to default inclusion of children and pregnant people.
  1. Preventing pandemics through ecological countermeasures: a neglected opportunity at the confluence of human health, climate, and biological diversity
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Raina Plowright
    • Schools/Departments:
      • College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Public and Ecosystem Health
      • College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability
    • CCPPR areas of focus: Prevention
    • Investigators will attempt to close to the gap between what governments know and what they for preventing spillover by developing evidence-based policy recommendations that can be used at multi-national and national level.
  1. Clinical utility of viral load quantification in influenza infections
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Lars Westblade
    • Schools/Departments:
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Department of Pediatrics
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
    • CCPPR areas of focus: Protection
    • Investigators will advance development of an assay that measures how much influenza is in your body during an infection and whether the level of virus impacts the likelihood you infect others or have a worse health outcome.
  1. Broad-based pre-exposure prophylaxis for respiratory viruses of pandemic concern: the “invisible mask”
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Gary Whittaker
    • Schools/Departments:
      • Cornell University, Department of Public and Ecosystem Health
    • CCPPR areas of focus: Preparedness, response
    • Building on existing research in their laboratory, investigators will develop drugs that can be delivered directly into the nose to prevent and treat respiratory viruses.
  1. Improved identification and characterization of globally emerging antimicrobial resistance genes through a combined bioinformatics and synthetic biology approach
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Martin Wiedmann
    • Schools/Departments:
      • Cornell University, Department of Food Science
      • Weill Cornell Medicine, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
    • CCPPR areas of focus: Preparedness, response
    • Investigators will identify genetic markers of drug-resistant bacteria to improve public health officials’ ability to track how “super-bugs” spread through the community.