Facilities and Resources
One of the challenging aspects of a grant application is ensuring all of the facilities and resources included have current information. The Center for Women’s Health Research has identified the most commonly used UNC-Chapel Hill resources utilized by our PIs and continues to work on refining and verifying the accuracy of the content.
Centers & Programs
The Carolina Population Center (CPC) is a community of elected scholars and professionals collaborating on research and methods that advance understanding of population issues. The center provides the intellectual environment and resources to support UNC faculty, allowing truly interdisciplinary projects that transcend departmental lines and geographic boundaries. The CPC works to create new knowledge about population size, structure, and processes of change, develop new sources of data to support population research, promote the development and use of innovative methodologies, build skills and capacity to train the next generation of scholars, and disseminate data and findings to population professionals, policy-makers, and the public. CPC faculty and students work together on path-breaking research to address population issues in North Carolina, across the US, and in 85 countries. The center is rich in expertise, with 64 active faculty fellows (representing 15 departments in 3 schools or colleges), 40 predoctoral and postdoctoral scholars, and a highly skilled staff. The CPC’s primary research areas include Demography, Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Population Health. The CPC offers a wide variety of tools and resources, such as Methodological Consultative Services, Research Communications & Library Services; biospecimen collection, storage, and management; and a Secure Data Facility. The CPC supports more than 50 ongoing research projects funded by federal and foundation support.
Updated: 3/13/2019
The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research (Sheps Center) is one of the oldest and largest centers of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1968, the Center now has an annual operating budget of over $17 million and houses over 200 staff including faculty-level research fellows, research assistants, programmers and data entry personnel, librarians, business office and other support staff, as well as graduate assistants, visiting international research fellows, and pre- and post-doctoral fellows. The Center offers an extensive array of resources and services to the proposed project.
Since its establishment in 1968, the Sheps Center has offered a wide variety of opportunities for students and fellows from several disciplines to participate in multi-disciplinary research. A number of fellows affiliated with the Center have completed doctoral dissertation research sponsored by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In addition, the Center hosts NRSA fellowships in Health Services Research, Mental Health Services and Systems Research, Primary Care Research, and Training in Epidemiology and Clinical Trials. Collaborative relationships for pre-doctoral research and training exist between the Center and several departments of the UNC-CH School of Public Health, as well as the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Sheps Center maintains a state-of-the-art computing services and support infrastructure. An internal information systems staff provides daily administration and technical support for more than 180 high-end personal computers and a cluster of servers. All personal computers are connected to a 100 megabit, switched network for shared filespace and shared print services. File and print services are provided via Linux servers with RAID 5 disk arrays and twice daily backups: one on-site and one off-site. Web services are provided using Linux servers and a collection of Open Source web tools that allow dynamic, interactive web pages with relational database connectivity. The Center maintains a full complement of sophisticated software applications for statistical analysis, project management, spatial analysis, mapping, web publishing, graphics production, and data management. The Sheps Center augments its information services by partnering with the University’s information technology group for larger-scale filespace services, enterprise-level software, and high-end computing power. The Center’s sub-network is connected to the University’s network via a dedicated high-speed, fiber optic connection.
The Sheps Center endeavors to preserve the privacy, confidentiality, and security of protected health information that may be part of research datasets. Protected Health Information (PHI) will be handled according to appropriate Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Regulations. Research staff who work with PHI are required to complete appropriate HIPAA training and periodic updates. All personal computers and servers are located in lockable offices. The server room is accessible only to designated systems administrators. Original data tapes and backup tapes are stored in locked offices with copies secured in at least one other off-site location.
The Sheps Center employs two professional librarians and one part-time library assistant who oversee the Center’s library holdings and conduct bibliographic searches from electronic sources including the UNC Health Science Library’s extensive collections, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and worldwide resources such as the Cochrane Collaboration. Search results can be captured and made available to requesting staff in a matter of minutes. These librarians also support a unique collection within the Center, the Rural Policy Collection, which includes over 11,000 items related to rural health, primary care, and health policy, containing federal, foundation, and commission reports, papers and articles from journals not likely to be found in normal searches of health-related literature files dating back to 1978. The collection regularly deposits and cross-references items from the Office of Rural Health Policy, the US General Accounting Office (GAO), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), the Bureau of Health Professions, and other centers for health services research across the US and in other countries.
The Sheps Center employs two Information and Communications Specialists who assist in the development of written and published materials and have experience working with wire services and television outlets. These individuals copy edit manuscripts, prepare fact sheets, and respond to short-term queries for information. In addition, they have significant experience conducting interviews for both print and television media. Staff in the Sheps Center produce press releases and manage press events in collaboration with the UNC Office of Public Affairs that have resulted in both statewide and national attention. In addition, the Cecil G. Sheps Center employs two web specialists who enable the Sheps Center to maintain a high-profile of its research activities on the web, as well as give researchers the capability to offer instant access to time-sensitive publications via PDF format.
Beyond these primary computing resources, the Sheps Center, as part of its multidisciplinary focus, maintains numerous collaborative relationships with several University Schools and Departments through which its computing capability is enhanced. The available services include redundant, enterprise-scale Oracle servers with client connectivity software and complete backup and disaster recovery; the availability of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maintained by the Cartography Lab in the Department of Geography; access to GIS mapping files and spatial analysis files maintained by the University’s GIS data librarian; an extensive collection of secondary data maintained by the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, a campus-wide resource that is designated a depository for all National Center for Health Statistics datasets and whose data collection includes full US Census Depository materials including intercensal data sets.
Updated: 3/13/2019
Funded originally in 1998, the purpose of the UNC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) is to provide infrastructure to support investigation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic using clinical research, behavioral research, research into HIV biology and pathogenesis at the molecular level, and educational outreach. The UNC CFAR is a consortium of 3 complementary institutions: UNC, RTI International, and FHI 360, with each institution providing complementary strengths to the breadth of the research effort. The UNC CFAR brings together one of the largest groups of scientists in the country covering the entire spectrum of HIV/AIDS-related research to reinforce research interests and enhance the research potential at each institution. The current UNC CFAR membership includes over 200 active researchers and over three times that many researchers receive news of CFAR events, programs and HIV/AIDS-related funding opportunities. CFAR offices are conveniently located in close proximity to researcher’s offices on the UNC Health Affairs Campus. The CFAR is organized into specialized cores, each of which has dedicated leadership and support personnel. These cores include: Administrative, Developmental, Biostatistics, Clinical, Clinical Pharmacology/Analytical Chemistry, Virology/Immunology/Microbiology, Social & Behavioral Science, and International.
Biostatistics Core
The purpose of the CFAR Biostatistics Core is to accelerate successful HIV/AIDS research by direct provision of biostatistical support and by arranging mutually beneficial collaborations between CFAR researchers and statistical scientists.
The CFAR Biostatistics Core provides biostatistical support that is readily available to CFAR investigators and to other CFAR Cores. They provide statistical consulting services that range from brief professional consultations to invention of new statistical methods. They also collaborate on the framing of hypotheses and on the development of study designs, grant applications, journal articles and presentations, selection of statistical methods, performance of statistical computations and interpretive analyses, and research database management consultation and support.
The offices of the Biostatistics Core are located within the Department of Biostatistics in the Gillings School of Global Public Health (GSGPH) at UNC. The UNC Hospitals and Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Nursing are less than 200 yards away. Each member of the Biostatistics Core has a modern desktop computing system. For mobile presentations and consultations with Core users IBM T41 notebook systems are used. From their desktop computer systems, all Core members have access to printers, secure directories, and dedicated remote batch-computer servers. Through the Department of Biostatistics, the Core has access to a very wide range of state-of-the-art statistical, imaging, GIS and genetics applications for data analysis as noted above. Authorized members of the Biostatistics Core also have direct network access to other servers on the UNC campus, in particular to the CFAR server maintained by the Clinical Core, which contains the UNC CFAR Clinical and Research Database. The Department of Biostatistics provides the Core with a wide landscape of computing resources, including secure e-mail, on- and off-site duplicate storage arrays, a number of high performance computing clusters on various hardware and software platforms, and a modern computing lab for Biostatistics graduate students. Strong institutional support allows the Biostatistics Core to take full advantage of an array of existing resources, relationships, and infrastructure in the Department of Biostatistics within the GSGPH.
Clinical Pharmacology and Analytical Chemistry Core
The Goal of the CFAR Clinical Pharmacology and Analytical Chemistry (CPAC) Core is to provide comprehensive study design, bioanalytical, and data analyses support to animal and human clinical pharmacology investigations in the HIV/AIDS arena. The Core provides a centralized unit to facilitate the pharmacological and analytical studies of HIV/AIDS related clinical, translational, and basic science research at UNC-CH and at our collaborating institutions, and to establish collaboration with AIDS investigators at other national and international institutions. The focus of research in the laboratory is to understand and predict complex drug interactions, optimize drug dosing in special patient populations (e.g., pregnant women), and to understand and optimize the pharmacology of oral and topical antiretroviral medications for preventing HIV transmission. To this end, the lab has developed optimal methods to quantitate drug concentrations in multiple biological matrices including blood, hair, genital secretions, and breast milk. All analyses are conducted in a CLIA-certified, state of the art analytical laboratory that includes high performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet, fluorescence and mass spectroscopy detection. The laboratory is centrally located in the UNC School of Pharmacy, with convenient access for the HIV/AIDS investigators at UNC.
Updated: 5/23/2019
The Center for Bioinformatics (bioinformatics.unc.edu) at UNC-CH was established in 1999 to provide resources to help bench scientists take advantage of computational tools in biology. Since then, the Center has grown and diversified to address various information technology-based needs of researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill. The Center for Bioinformatics manages UNC-CH site licenses for several commercial software packages (Vector NTI Suite, Partek Genomics Suite, Lasergene DNASTAR, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis) and provides support and training for all UNC-CH site-licensed software and most freeware applications that are related to bioinformatics. The Center’s staff are responsible for data processing, data management, initial analysis and distribution of all data generated at UNC High Throughput Sequencing Facility (HTSF). They have worked with a number of open-source software tools (including but not limited to SAMTOOLS, Bowtie, TOPHAT, BWA, SOAP2, MAQ etc.) that are used for analysis of deep-sequencing data. Hardware support for the facility includes four Dell Poweredge 2950 servers running Redhat enterprise Linux (EL4) (each with 2 x 2.66 GHz Quad core Xeon CPU’s, 32 GB RAM, 6 TB of disk storage) available for management/analysis of data from the next-gen sequencers within the Center, and a 30TB iSCSI SAN for next-gen sequence data analysis and storage. A small Linux cluster (20 node) was recently installed shortly to help facilitate large-scale analysis of sequence data. In addition to open source software programs meant for analysis of next-gen sequence data (maq, ChIP-seq, mosaik, phred/phrap/consed) there are two network licenses for CLC Genomics Workbench.
Updated: 4/24/2019
The CEHC has a mission to reduce the burden of environmental disease through interdisciplinary research on mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and translational research on strategies of prevention, mitigation and cure. The Center encourages and facilitates collaboration among basic researchers, public health scientists and clinicians to generate high impact discoveries that improve public health. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funds the CEHS. The CEHS focuses on: 1) high-impact discoveries to reduce the burden of environmental disease by enhancing innovative, interdisciplinary and translational research; 2) coordinating the Administrative Core, the Facility Cores and the Community Outreach and Engagement Core; 3) encouraging young and new investigators in environmental disease research by sponsoring a competitive Pilot Project grants program; 4) providing professional and transparent administration of the activities of the Center concerning budgets, seminars and symposia, career development, publication and proposal tracking, and communication and annual reports and 5) enhancing discourse with a Stakeholder Advisory Board and other affected communities to enhance public health through a highly effective Community Outreach and Engagement Core.
Updated: 9/13/16
The Center for Faculty Excellence, centrally located on the ground floor of Wilson Library, was established in 2008 as the successor to the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). As the campus’ pan-university faculty development center, the CFE provides holistic support to faculty members in all campus units across the spectrum of their professional responsibilities and activities: teaching, scholarship and research, leadership, and mentoring. The CFE directors are Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor Patrick Conway (economics), James Howard & Hallie McLean Parker Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication Ruth Walden (journalism and mass communication), and, since January 2012, Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics Eric Muller (law). The CFE provides signature programs in teaching and learning, leadership, and research. A few examples of the resources the CFE provides include: training for new and experienced mentors; helping junior faculty members identify suitable mentors; and assisting academic units in designing, implementing, evaluating, and improving their own mentoring programs. The CFE holds mentoring series, workshops for mentors, mentees, and program designers; and campus-wide discussions. There is also training in research, grant writing, project conduct and administration, and research team management.
Updated: 9/13/16
The UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HPDP) is one of 26 prevention research centers in 25 states. The UNC HPDP was recently awarded $3.75 million (cooperative agreement 1U48DP005017) to renew its status as a Prevention Research Center (PRC) through 2019. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding will help UNC researchers conduct innovative prevention research in North Carolina communities to help combat chronic disease with long-term solutions. The UNC HPDP partners with other prevention research centers to ensure effective health strategies are readily shared with other underserved communities. HPDP addresses pressing health problems by collaborating with communities to conduct research, provide training, and translate research findings into policy and practice. HPDP seeks to reduce health disparities through an emphasis on community-based participatory research to ensure that the community is involved in every stage of research. The UNC HPDP was selected as one of the CDC’s first three PRCs in 1985 and has maintained continual funding since its inception. Now composed of 26 academic institutions, the PRC program is an interdependent network of community, academic, and public health partners that conduct prevention research and promote practices proven to promote good health.
HPDP’s vision is to work in partnership to bring public health research findings to the daily lives of individuals and their communities with a special focus on North Carolina and populations vulnerable to disease. Their mission is to collaborate with research and community partners to enhance the ability of public health practitioners, individuals, groups, and communities to promote health and prevent disease; identify funding opportunities and support high quality research; conduct, evaluate, and disseminate innovative, community-based research; and develop education and training programs to translate research into public health practice.
Updated: 3/3/2019
The UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health (CMIH) is a leader in the translation of evidence-based research into maternal and child health practice across North Carolina, the Southeast, and nationally. CMIH seeks to model a system of excellence in the provision of care for high-risk infants and high-risk women of reproductive age; lead the translation of evidence-based care into community practice across North Carolina; and expand health services research in preconception, perinatal, and infant care nationally. The goal of the Center includes making sure parents of infants with special needs a) understand their diagnosis, b) have the information they need to make important decisions, c) have access to specialists who put best practice in play every day, d) are connected to resources that will provide them with the support they need, and e) are equipped to work with a health care team to maximize the health outcome for themselves and their babies.
For over 15 years, CMIH has focused on improving the health of women and infants, with support from the UNC Department of OB/GYN, UNC Healthcare, the Office of the Dean of the School of Medicine, and through foundations and agencies, including the USDHHS Health Resources and Services Administration and the NC Department of Public Health. Center members include faculty from Department of OB/GYN Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine; Department of Pediatrics: Divisions of Genetics and Metabolism, Cardiology, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine, Surgery, Cardiothoracic Surgery, General Pediatric Surgery, Pediatric Urology, Pediatric Plastic Surgery, Neurosurgery, Pediatric Radiology; Department of Medicine: Division of Nephrology; Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; Department of Otolaryngology: Division of Pediatric Otolaryngology; and the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.
The CMIH has recently pioneered efforts to provide COVID-19 maternal health resources. For more information about CMIH, please visit www.mombaby.org.
CMIH Clinical Services: CMIH provides case management services to 350 high-risk pregnant women and newborns with complex conditions each year. As part of this work, CMIH is located a 5-minute walk from the UNC Women’s Hospital and the UNC Newborn Critical Care Center. UNC Women’s Hospital, opened in 2001, houses ambulatory care clinics, inpatient labor and delivery, operating rooms, antepartum and postpartum wards, clinical diagnostic facilities, laboratories, and pharmacy services. The Labor and Delivery Unit (20,000 square feet) consists of four LDRPs and 10 LDRs. Labor and Delivery staff includes 39 RNs, four surgical technicians, and five unit-staff coordinators. The UNC Newborn Critical Care Center is a 58-bed Level IV nursery within the NC Children’s Hospital at UNC Health Care. The unit admits an average of 800-900 infants each year; 200-250 of these infants are <1500 g birth weight, and 100-130 are <1000 g birth weight. The Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine includes 9 core faculty members, 16 neonatal nurse-practitioners, and has a long history of excellence in providing clinical services, training, and research in newborn medicine. The CMIH clinical team includes two bi-lingual, licensed clinical social workers and an RN who works with clients up to two years after the birth of an infant with fetal anomalies and complex conditions. CMIH staff coordinates with the OB/GYN and Pediatric Departments, as most infants require at least three specialty services.
Office Space & Technology Services: The administrative suite of offices for the Center currently includes a large work area of approximately 300 square feet that houses an administrative assistant/secretary and a health information director. Office equipment includes two telephones, a RICOH/Aticio 450 copy machine, a Muratec Fax machine, a Hewlett- Packard laser jet printer 2100TN, and two computers (a 2.99 GB RAM Dell Computer-Intel dual core processor and a Dell Inspiron 3800 laptop computer with docking station). The adjacent 132 square foot office for the Executive Director, Ms. Sarah Verbiest, has identical computer and printer capabilities. CMIH furnishes desktop and laptop computers equipped with Microsoft Office, advanced statistical and qualitative analysis software, and supported by an in-house technology support group. The UNC School of Medicine’s secured network provides data storage, access to e-mail, internet, and the UNC library system.
CMIH Leadership: William Goodnight, MD serves as the Director of Fetal Care at the CIMH. Wayne Price, MD, Professor of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine in the UNC Dept. of Pediatrics and Alison Stuebe, MD, MSc, faculty in the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Div., serve as Co-Directors of CMIH. Sarah Verbiest, MSW, MPH, DrPH serves as the Executive Director/Principle Investigator of the Center.
Updated: 12/16/20
The Center for Oral and Systemic Diseases of the Comprehensive Center for Inflammatory Disorders (CCID) at the UNC School of Dentistry one of six NIH-NIDCR funded Centers for Excellence and is co-directed by Drs. Patrick Flood and James Beck. The CCID is a comprehensive center conducting fundamental and patient-based research in the area of inflammation ranging from “molecules-to-populations”. The CCID hosts a smaller center (Offenbacher and Beck, Co-directors) that focuses on the effects of oral infection and inflammation on cardiovascular disease, prematurity and diabetes. Approximately half the research programs of the CCID are managed under the Center for Oral and Systemic Diseases COSD. Dr. Offenbacher also serves as the clinical research program director for the CCID. Both Beck and Offenbacher have NIDCR research training grants in Oral Epidemiology and are Clinical Scholars in Oral and Systemic Diseases. Currently the CCID/COSD has $22,556,000 in federal and industrial support.
Updated: 9/13/16
The Center for Women’s Health Research (CWHR) was founded in 2000 as a joint effort of the School of Medicine and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. Their mission is to improve women’s health through research focusing on diseases, disorders, and conditions that affect solely women, predominately women, and/or women differently than men. Because the field of women’s health is extremely broad, the Center has adopted the following five topical areas to help focus research efforts over the next ten years: perinatal health; cancer; obesity and diabetes; cardiovascular health; and mental health and substance abuse. CWHR also emphasizes research related to sex-differences across the health-related spectrum and improving the delivery of health and healthcare services to women in the state, nation, and the world. As the focal point for women’s health research efforts on campus, CWHR stimulates scientific endeavors within, among, and across all schools, colleges, centers, and institutes on campus, while also advising the university’s Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development. The organization seeks to identify and link existing efforts in women’s health research with related work in other fields, bringing multiple perspectives to bear on the complex issues inherent in studying and understanding women’s health and wellness. The CWHR director, Wendy Brewster, MD, PhD, conferences annually with the director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) at the NIH to ensure UNC Chapel Hill is best meeting the demands of the continually evolving landscape of women’s health research. The Center also supports the existing/ongoing efforts to develop research opportunities for, and support the recruitment, re-entry, retention and advancement of women in their biomedical careers.
The Center has excellent resources to administer externally funded research projects. CWHR administers a multitude of contracts, grants, and clinical trials for a variety of researchers whose projects require more support, or more sophisticated support, than their home department can or wishes to provide. The Center’s administrative support for funded projects consists of such tasks as personnel actions (hiring and payments), purchasing, travel administration, accounting, financial management, and reporting to sponsor agencies — all administrative tasks that are generally handled at the department level. Principal investigators receive monthly statements regarding their research accounts. The Center will also handle such tasks as conference planning and management, multi-media design, website development and other administratively intensive tasks that are budgeted for in the grant itself.
CWHR occupies the “B” side of the building at 104 Market Street in Southern Village, a mixed-use community two miles south of the UNC Women’s Hospital. The building contains a lobby, offices, rest rooms, a kitchen, individual computer carrels, and outside porch and patio seating areas. Offices are private and come with plenty of work-space and lockable filing cabinets. The Center conference room seats up to 15 and contains a large pull-down screen, LCD projector/laptop with video teleconferencing capabilities, white boards, and flip charts. The conference room space is available for use by other colleagues in women’s health research for educational and professional meetings. A conference line is available, as is a private office space, with a dedicated phone line, that may be reserved by investigators and research staff as needed. An additional four computers and three network connections for laptops are available for use by students and other UNC-approved users on the School of Medicine secure network. Each computer is, at minimum, built with 4 GB of RAM and an Intel dual core processor. Current software applications maintained by the Center allow for statistical analysis, project management, graphics, web publishing, data management, and database production. Data are housed within password-protected folders assigned to specific personnel on the Center’s dedicated server. The Center’s Internet, print, network, and information technology needs are serviced by the School of Medicine Office of Information Systems.
Updated: 7/28/21
UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders was created in January 2006, under the leadership of the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, Dr. David Rubinow, an international expert in the evaluation and treatment of women with reproductive mood disorders. The Center offers an integrated clinical and research program with a multidisciplinary treatment approach involving, genealogic and mental health interventions to treat depression during pregnancy, Postpartum Depression (PPD), Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), and Perimenopausal Mood Disorder. The Center has undergone significant growth and expansion over the past few years in clinical, research, and educational areas. Investigators in the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders hold multiple funded R01 studies, institutional pilot grants and foundation grants. In addition, the Center sponsors an annual Women’s Mental Health conference that provides a platform for disseminating new research findings to clinical providers in North Carolina and beyond.
The clinical arm of the UNC Center Women’s Mood Disorder includes the Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, The Menstrually Related Mood Disorders Program, The Women’s Mood Disorders Psychotherapy Program, and most recently, the Perimenopause Evaluation and Treatment Program. Under the umbrella of these services, UNC physicians, psychologists, nurses, midwives, counselors and social workers work together to provide pharmacotherapy and empirically supported psychotherapy for reproductive-related mood disorders. Clinical services are provided at multiple outpatient locations with more than 2000 patient visits each year.
The center also supports the first specialty Inpatient Perinatal Psychiatry Unit in the United States. This free-standing 5-bed Inpatient Unit, directed by Dr. Mary Kimmel, was newly renovated in 2011 to provide state of the art, specialty care for women suffering from severe perinatal psychiatric issues. This Perinatal Psychiatry Unit sees approximately 100 patients per year.
Updated: 4/17/2019
The UNC Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) has expanded from the UNC General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) and is still one of the very first facilities of its kind, having received its initial funding from the NIH in 1960. Now, in grant year 51, this Center represents one of only a handful of GCRCs that have received continuous support from the NIH since the very inception of the Program. The new CTRC combines the old GCRC, NCTraCS and two patient services locations. The Burnett-Womack location, adjacent to the main hospital, houses clinic facilities: nursing and phlebotomy support and 15 exam rooms available Monday-Friday 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM. The UNC Memorial Hospital location provides clinic facilities: Intensive nursing support and phlebotomy services, 10 outpatient exams rooms and 10 inpatient rooms are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This location also offers a Research Subject Advocacy office, a Hispanic Outreach program, and, upon request, offers Biostatistical assistance and a Bionutrition core. Both facilities are equipped with specimen processing labs and equipment, -80 degree freezers and limited storage areas for study supplies. Center staff assists with the preparation of the IRB application, CTRC addendum, sponsor regulatory package, Investigational Drug Service request, budget negotiation, Office of Clinical Trials request form, and internal budget and internal processing forms.
At present, the CTRC UNC Memorial Hospital location is a modern, renovated 11,000 square foot inpatient-outpatient facility that occupies the entire third floor of the Bed Tower section of UNC Hospital in the very heart of the Medical Center. The south side is the Inpatient Facility which includes a spacious, centrally-placed nursing station and 10 private inpatient rooms, each of which is available to UNC investigators on a 24-hours/day, 7 days/week schedule. The north side of the CTRC is the Outpatient Facility, which consists of a reception area, a nurses’ station, an area used for the measurement of height, weight, and vital signs, a phlebotomy/blood processing room, six private, fully-equipped examination rooms and one small consultation room, an IV infusion room, and a waiting/dining room. The inpatient and outpatient rooms are contiguous which allows maximum flexibility in scheduling and staffing.
In addition to the inpatient and outpatient facilities, the CTRC makes a number of other resources available to all UNC investigators. These resources include:
- A consultation service that includes both a biostatistician and an epidemiologist. Both of these individuals are faculty members in our internationally recognized School of Public Health, and each has regular office hours on the CTRC. The biostatistician, Dr. Paul Stewart, has been instrumental in the development of the statistical plans for our investigators. The CTRC epidemiologist, Dr. David Weber, is a world-renown infectious diseases expert who also serves as the Director of Educational Activities for the CTRC.
- A core research laboratory, which provides specimen processing and storage and conducts a variety of sophisticated analyses including a mass spectrometry facility.
- A state-of-the-art computer facility staffed by a full-time Informative Core Director. A full-time computer systems manager (Mr. Clarence Potter) has created a local area network (CTRCnet) on the CTRC. This network makes available to all CTRC investigators an extensive array of both hardware and software. Furthermore, through existing high-speed connections within the School of Medicine Information Network (SOMIN), our computer center is easily accessible to investigators from throughout the medical center and UNC campus as well as from more distant sites.
- Research Subject Advocate Office. This office provides on-site oversight of all CTRC protocols from the perspective of subject safety. The office provides guidance to investigators in formulating safety-monitoring plans that are now required for all CTRC studies, as well as spot audits of the consenting process and investigator records.
The UNC CTRC is staffed by a dedicated and thoroughly professional group of individuals. The CTRC nurses, the informatics core director, the biostatistician, the clinical epidemiologist, and the program directors all work together as a team to ensure that each aspect of clinical investigation-from the design of the study to the conduct of the research, analysis of the data, and reports of the results-is carried out with utmost care and attention to every detail to ensure the safe and effective conduct of all aspects of our human investigation. In addition, the CTRC nursing staff does everything possible to make certain that each protocol is conducted in compliance with all aspects of human subjects regulations. As with each CTRC, our center recently received approval from NCRR to establish an Office for Research Subject Advocacy (RSA).
Updated: 1/28/21
The UNC Clinical Nutrition Research Center (CNRC) (DK56350), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), helps scientists discover the roles of nutrition in health. The Center, housed in the Schools of Public Health and Medicine, works to combine basic nutrition and studies of populations in an effort to answer questions on how the food we eat affects our bodies. The services offered by the CNRC makes it possible for investigators, inside and outside of the discipline of nutrition, to apply cutting edge nutrition methods in their research.
Services in the CNRC can be divided into three cores, the Administrative Core, the Nutritional Epidemiology Core, and the Nutritional Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Core with Body Composition and Energy Balance subcore.
The Administrative Core manages the CNRC enrichment program for health professionals and provides biostatistical support services which include consultation on study design, database development and management, and data analyses for several of the Cores within the CNRC. Since its creation, the Nutrition/Epidemiology Core has served a clientele from over 50 different projects.
The Nutrition Epidemiology Core offers expertise in the design and analysis of dietary assessment methods and tools in research studies. The core offers access to and searching of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) databases, access to the most comprehensive versions of the Nutritional Data System (NDS), and development of other nutrient and non-nutrient databases. The core trains users in the use of the Nutritional Data System (NDS). It has also developed a Glycemic Index Database and recently updated this with the latest publications in the area, bringing the database size to 1400 foods. Also available is the ‘mega-database’ which includes the complete USDA release 15, the CSFII 1994-1998 survey data not found in the USDA as well as additional datasets. The Core has also developed and has available a computer assisted self-interview program (CASI) diet history program including a selection of over 7,000 foods. The Core also maintains a digital food library and provides digital food photography for research projects.
The Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Core provides a state-of-the-art facility for nutrition research investigators. For molecular biology work, the Core provides a number of specialized techniques that were identified as the most popular assays used and requested by CNRU investigators. In addition, the Core consults with and assists investigators who may be just beginning to use molecular techniques in their research. The Core also assists in selecting and developing novel biomarkers. The Core facility is located in 600 square feet of laboratory space in the Medical Biomolecular Research Building. This site is used for training in molecular biology and for the majority of the biochemical assays. All equipment is located in this laboratory. The following list of equipment is available: ultracentrifuge, scintillation counter, gamma counter, fully equipped dark room, digital camera, thermocycler, water baths, gel dryer, plate washer, plate reader, spectrophotometer, microcentrifuges, cell harvester, -80o C freezers, gel electophoresis, cryostat and microtome, FPLC, and HPLC. In addition, the Core contains manuals and protocols for all procedures used.
The third component of this Core is a Body Composition and Energy Balance Service (BCEBS). Body composition analyses provided include: Hologic-Delphi Dual XRAY Absorptiometry (DXA), bioelectrical impedance analysis (RJL and Tanita), and anthropometrics (skin-folds, body circumferences, weight and height). For assessment of energy expenditure, a MedGraphics Metabolic cart is available to assess resting energy expenditure and respiratory quotient in the GCRC and a MedGraphics VO2000 measures energy expenditure in the field. Multiple Computer Science and Applications, Inc. activity monitors assess physical activity in a free-living environment. Diet assessment services are available in the General Clinical Research Center-CNRC Core and include 24-hour dietary recall, analysis of food records, food frequency questionnaire, hunger/cravings visual analog scales, and assessment of satiety. Other services include study design support, one-on-one consulting, body composition primer with references on-line, and on-line protocols to download.
Updated: 9/13/16
IGHID is a campus-wide institute that partners with the Division of Infectious Diseases and administers its affiliated research, clinical, and training programs. The Division of Infectious Diseases at UNC is one of the largest and most productive in the United States. Long a leader in the study of the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, the division is consistently ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News and World Report. At present, the institute manages approximately $60 million in research revenue and more than 75 affiliated faculty members. Relevant to this application is the global reach of IGHID. The institute provides administrative and fiscal oversight for highly productive research sites in Africa (Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo) and Asia (China, Vietnam). The administration is experienced in the management of large multi-country grants, often with multiple partner institutions from different countries.
Updated: 9/14/16
The UNC Lineberger Cancer Comprehensive Center (LCCC) Cancer Outcomes Research Program (CORP) is a highly integrated, multi-disciplinary research group comprising investigators from the UNC Schools of Medicine, Public Health, Information and Library Science, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Arts and Science. The CORP has developed two innovative technology systems to support research: 1) the Integrated Cancer Information and Surveillance System (ICISS) which enables ‘big data’ analytics in a virtual, secure computing environment, and 2) the Patient-Reported Outcomes Core (PRO-Core), a survey system platform and scientific support for conducting patient-reported outcomes research.
The CORP occupies 4,000 square feet of shared office space to increase cross-disciplinary research and strengthen collaboration. This facility is located minutes away from the main campus, on the campus bus line, and has ample parking. It includes eighteen offices with desk space and networked computers for forty investigators and research staff, and two conference rooms with Polycom video-conferencing and Creston AirMedia to allow external participation in meetings and presentations via a web browser.
CORP investigators represent an innovative and inter-disciplinary group built through close partnerships between multiple Schools on campus including: Medicine; Public Health; Nursing; Information and Library Science; and Arts and Sciences. The CORP includes over 60 investigators from ~18 departments across campus as well as external partners. Investigators and research staff meet weekly at the ‘outcomes breakfast’ to engage guest speakers, discuss works-in-progress, and host mock-reviews. The CORP also hosts a monthly seminar series for presentations by national experts in patient-centered outcomes research, comparative effectiveness research, and health services research related to cancer prevention and cancer care, that is attended by investigators and clinicians from UNC and neighboring institutions. Investigators within the CORP also participate in active multimedia social networking programs and collaborate closely with broader Lineberger and University Cancer Research Fund programs.
Updated: 9/14/16
The McAllister Heart Institute (MHI), formerly the Carolina Cardiovascular Biology Center (CCBC), was established in 2001, as a multidisciplinary, multi-departmental facility that serves as a focal point for interaction among basic, translational, and clinical scientists studying all aspects of cardiovascular disease. It is a highly interactive, rapidly growing environment for scientists, trainees, and clinical investigators interested in understanding, treating, and curing cardiovascular diseases. Areas of specific interest include atherosclerosis and other vascular diseases, angiogenesis and cardiovascular development, cardiovascular physiology, and diseases of hemostasis. The core laboratories of the center are located in over 7,000 square feet of space located in the Medical Biomolecular Research Building and many center members also have laboratory space in their own departments. The mission of the McAllister Heart Institute is to advance the care of patients with diseases of the heart, blood, and circulation by encouraging basic, preclinical, and applied research to unravel the causes of cardiovascular disease and to provide new tools for diagnosis and treatment to promote the well-being of our patients.
Updated: 9/18/16
NC TraCS is the academic home of the NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) of UNC and serves as the central translational and clinical research resource for UNC. NC TraCS’ three overarching goals are: (1) to prepare and empower members of the academic community, health care providers, and citizens to participate in translating discoveries into health advances for individual patients and populations; (2) to provide the advice and resources necessary to design and execute innovative, worthy clinical and translational research projects; and (3) to ensure that the institute’s most promising discoveries and results rapidly become solutions to important statewide and global health problems. These goals are accomplished by maintaining a seamless network of connections among 18 cores: Biostatistics, Clinical Research Ethics, Clinical & Translational Research Center (CTRC), Community Academic Resources for Engaged Scholarship (CARES), Comparative Effectiveness Research, Core Lab Facilities & Resources, Early-Phase Drug Discovery, Education, FastTraCS, Information and Data Science (IDSci), Integrating Special Populations, Pilot Program, Proposal Development, Recruitment, Regulatory, Research Coordination & Management Unit (RCMU), Team Science, and Trial Innovation Network (TIN). Each core provides special expertise, unique research facilities, and the tools necessary to support research, from discovery to translation. All cores are multidisciplinary, share goals and missions, and are closely connected by TraCS Central, which develops, maintains, and tracks NC TraCS requests and initiatives.
UNC was awarded $58.1 million from the NIH in 2018 to renew its five-year CTSA for the third cycle. With the new award, UNC will broaden its reach across the state with outreach efforts touching each of North Carolina’s 100 counties. Over the last funding period, NC TraCS worked with over 350 practices, 130 community-based organizations, 88 percent of other CTSA hubs, and numerous non-CTSA universities through pilot awards or other initiatives. The Institute provided leadership for a number of high-impact multi-center clinical trials in HIV, diabetes, obesity, cancer, and pregnancy, among others.
Since 2013, NC TraCS has included a research partnership with RTI International (RTI) to support joint translational research projects, and develop best practices to train, support, and retain a diverse clinical and translational research workforce. UNC’s CTSA also includes North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T), collaborating with UNC and RTI on initiatives to strengthen NC A&T’s clinical and translational research resources and its workforce. For its third award cycle, North Carolina State University joined the UNC CTSA as a full partner. NC TraCS is governed by some of UNC’s and RTI’s most accomplished scientists and clinicians with extensive experience in each of the five domains of NC TraCS–translational, clinical, basic, and population sciences research, and operations. Its directors are John Buse, MD, PhD, and since July 2020, Nicholas Shaheen, MD, MPH, who replaced Timothy Carey, MD, MPH. Dr. Carey will continue to chair the NC TraCS Pilot Program Study Section and participate in informatics and mentoring.
Capitalizing on the joint research strengths at UNC and its partner institutions, NC TraCS has also created three strategic initiatives to focus on three research foci that typically have proven to be stumbling blocks for translational researchers. The strategic initiatives are (1) Transformative Technologies- next-generation technologies that will transform clinical research and practice, (2) Comparative Effectiveness Research – comparative effectiveness research studies to provide definitive evidence of the benefits and harms of tests and treatments in the real-world community setting, and (3) Drugs, Devices and Diagnostics Development (4D)- resources dedicated to accelerating drug, device, and diagnostic development. All resources, services, and initiatives are multidisciplinary, share goals and missions, and collaborate with one another and with RTI. Finally, as one of about 70 medical research institutions in the national CTSA Consortium, NC TraCS works to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and safety of clinical and translational research conducted across the country.
**Optional – below are descriptions of a few of the cores that can be included if applicable to the proposal**
The Biostatistics Core provides timely, state-of-the art biostatistical collaboration for study design and analysis. The core offers daily walk-in hours for short-term, faculty-level input on statistical design or analysis, and provides more detailed consults for external grant and all NC TraCS pilot grant submissions. With the IDSci, the core co-manages the TraCS Clinical Research Data Management System (CRMS).
NC TraCS Regulatory Core: The goal of Regulatory Core is to provide education and assistance to investigators and study personnel early in the research process to assure conformity with regulatory and institutional requirements. Advocacy for the rights of the research participant is another important focus and resources are available to support their rights and wellbeing. The Regulatory Core strives to make compliance a seamless, coordinated process by partnering with investigators to: (1) incorporate regulatory compliance and subject safety at the earliest stages of research planning, (2) simplify adherence to good clinical practices and streamline the research process, and (3) provide oversight programs that enable investigators to conduct research successfully and safely.
Affiliated Centers: NC TraCS collaborates with several campus-wide centers to promote various aspects of professional development. The UNC Center for Faculty Excellence (http://cfe.unc.edu), for example, provides campus-wide support for faculty development. This includes course redesign support, workshops for faculty, introductions to new teaching approaches and technologies, and one-on-one consultations. Of particular relevance to this application are the Mentoring Lecture Series, the Core Skills Program for Faculty Leadership, and – for trainees – the PI Development Lecture Series and the Seminar Series for Early Career Faculty Development. Similarly, the UNC Center for Bioethics (http://bioethics.unc.edu) hosts regular conferences and special events focused on various aspects of clinical and research ethics. The Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds and the Research Ethics Ground Rounds are held every 1-2 months and offer state-of-the-art discussions about contemporary ethical challenges.
Recruitment Services were established in 2009 to assist researchers with subject recruitment and retention. The primary goal of Recruitment Services is to assist individual investigators and research teams in meeting their targeted enrollment goals. Recruitment Services provides web-based recruitment tools including an internet-based volunteer engagement and study listing system called Join the Conquest. In addition, individual consultation on protocol feasibility, strategies, tactics and educational webinars are available.
NC TraCS Recruitment Services connects researchers with resources from across the UNC-CH campus, local community and state to achieve recruitment goals. For example, the office conducts feasibility assessments and collaborates with the Carolina Data Warehouse-Health (CDW-H) to help the investigator identify appropriate patient populations internally for potential study enrollment. In addition, the Office connects investigators with the National Recruitment Registry: ResearchMatch.com, a CTSA Consortium effort that provides a national registry of individuals willing to participate in clinical studies.
The Trial Innovation Network (TIN)* is a collaborative initiative within the CTSA program composed of three key organizational partners: the CTSA hubs, the Trial Innovation Centers (TICs), and the Recruitment Innovation Center (RIC).The multi‐disciplinary TIN Hub Liaison Team leads scientific, training, and implementation aspects of the network and helps investigators utilize all local CTSA resources for initiating multi-center clinical. They use experience and knowledge of the local environment to innovatively operationalize the network for UNC, tailoring general network plans into more specific action plans.
Updated: 1/28/21
The UNC-Chapel Hill Clinical Nutrition Research Center recently re-named the Nutrition Obesity Research Center- NORC, funded by the National Institutes of Health- NIDDK (DK56350), helps scientists discover the roles of nutrition in health. The UNC Nutrition Obesity Research Center is one of 12 centers in the country funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases that is specifically designed to provide support and expertise for scientists studying the role of nutrition and obesity in public health. Since its inception in 1999, the NORC has adapted and translated expertise in community, population-based and clinical studies to facilitate the cross-disciplinary transfer of ideas and information to the laboratory, and vice versa, for the development of cutting-edge nutritional sciences and obesity-related research. Support and expertise in the areas of bioinformatics, biostatistics, clinical research, genomics and epigenomics (human & mouse genetics) is available through the concierge services at NORC. Core facilities associated with NORC include the Animal Metabolism Phenotyping Core, the Diet, Physical Activity and Body Composition Core, the Nutrition Communication for Health Applications & Interventions and the Molecular Biology, Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolomics Core.
Updated: 3/13/2019
The UNC Superfund Research Program seeks to understand the human health and environmental risks associated with exposure to toxic chemicals found at hazardous waste sites. We bring together a diverse group of more than 70 scientists, engineers, science communicators and trainees with the goal of improving how these risks are calculated and communicated. The interests of the UNC Superfund Research Program include: improving our ability to evaluate risk from low-dose exposures, developing biological markers that indicate when a person has been exposed to a chemical; using a systems biology framework to understand the pathways of environmental disease and how chemicals can cause changes to our DNA, understanding how individuals differ in their susceptibility and risk, and how our genes play a role in the development of disease, improving methods to measure chronic exposure and bioavailability of toxic chemicals in the environment, evaluating factors that influence toxicity of soil during and after bioremediation.
Updated: 9/20/16
Data & Computing
The UNC Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) handles everything from email and individual desktop/laptops to large research projects, administrative offices, electronic medical records, and communications services that include a campus data network, fiber and microwave technology, and support for smartphones, mobile and wireless devices. They strive to provide a state-of-the-art environment that will support the highest level of multidisciplinary research and help UNC-Chapel Hill become the premier research university in the U.S.
ITS has major computing equipment that is available to researchers through the University’s central services. These include: a large multi-processor workstation cluster running the Unix operating system with access to terabytes of storage; a robotic tape cartridge system with multiple drives used by a variety of centrally-provided machines for backup and archival; an IBM 3090 computer running MVS/ESA with JES2 and VM/CMS both under VM/XA (a large water-cooled mainframe with a vector (supercomputer) facility); 52 IBM 3380-type disk drives (at least 80 billion bytes); 1 STK 4400 automated cartridge system that is a robotic retrieval system capable of storing 6,000 high-density tapes and delivering them to users within 30 seconds; several local 3174/3274 controllers; 9 STC 3670 tape drives (6250bpi); computer tape backup in separate buildings. Also, UNC has 10 megabit per second switched ethernet to the desktop, 100 megabit connections to all campus buildings, and gigabit connections to the larger Internet as an early adopter of Internet II. The North Carolina Supercomputer Center is located in the Research Triangle Park between Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham. The Supercomputer Center has a Cray Y-MP/432 with associated equipment. The UNC-Chapel Hill data network currently supports more than 40,000 users with approximately 90,000 connected devices in more than 300 buildings with high-speed interconnectivity between buildings. The core routing architecture consists of a redundant infrastructure with 40 Gbps inter-switch connectivity and multiple 10 Gbps links to redundant border routers. The campus network has more than 4000 Ethernet switches and more than 5000 Wi-Fi access points.
An extensive library of software is available on the UNC campus via site licenses or volume purchase agreements. The collection includes all the common statistical analysis languages and packages (SAS, Stata, S-Plus, SPSS-X, BMDP, SUDAAN, etc.); development languages (C++, C, Java, PL/1, Fortran, etc.) Packages such as SAS are available on multiple platforms. An analysis can scale from the smaller capacities of a personal computer, then on to the larger capacities of a departmental Unix workstation and finally to the multiple-processor workstations and clusters provided centrally by the campus information technology organization.
Two recent major implementations within the IT network at UNC are 1) the Epic electronic medical record system within UNC Health Care, and 2) ConnectCarolina, a multi-phased project to develop and implement a fully integrated administrative infrastructure for the University. Both systems are now live, and clearly demonstrate UNC’s commitment to excellence in information technology support of the many missions of the University.
Updated: 1/11/22
The Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science is the oldest facility of its kind in the US, and one of the oldest in the world. Founded in 1924, the Odum Institute supports the social science teaching and research mission at UNC by providing a range of consulting services on quantitative and qualitative methods, GIS and spatial analysis, survey research, and data management. The Institute offers more than 100 workshops every year, a graduate certificate program in Survey Research Methods, and a number of summer courses through the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research and for graduate students from underrepresented groups through the National Science Foundation’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program. The Odum Institute operates a world-renowned data archive that continues to be a leader in archive tool and support development. Their staff members help researchers develop grant proposals, provide full pre- and post-award support, and work aggressively to help bring teams of scholars together in part through an annual interdisciplinary seed grant competition. The Institute also partners with other scholars, research teams, Centers, and Institutes to pursue research grants consistent with its mission. On an annual basis, the Odum Institute serves more than 2000 users in their computer labs, logs more than 3200 individual consultations, and offers more than 3600 seat hours of instruction through its 100+ workshops. Services offered by the Odum Institute include the following:
Data Archives
The Institute maintains the country’s third-largest archive of computer-readable social science data. Holdings include national and international economic, electoral, demographic, financial, health, public opinion, and other types of data to meet a variety of research and teaching needs.
Grant Services
The Institute’s grant services include assistance with the development and submission of research proposals and the administration of grants for social science faculty and graduate student researchers.
Survey Methodology
The Institute provides consultation in survey methodology, construction of measurement instruments, sample design, and selection of appropriate data collection methods, especially the use of personal, telephone, and mail surveys.
Statistical and Computing Services
The Institute’s statistical and computing services include short courses and individual consultation in data analysis, data management, programming, and use of hardware. The Odum Institute’s Computer Laboratory provides access to computing software, hardware, and expertise in data analysis.
Other Services
The Institute sponsors interdisciplinary faculty working groups; provides faculty research awards; offers short courses in data access, grants, statistical computing, survey research, and text analysis; and occasionally sponsors faculty colloquia.
Updated: 3/13/2019
The UNC Perinatal Database, among the first comprehensive computerized obstetric databases in the country, was created in 1996 to establish and maintain an ongoing record of care and outcomes for UNC patients. Clinical information of over 50,000 deliveries at the UNC Women’s Hospital have been captured in this database since its inception. This database is used for clinical operations, for research, and for quality control. For each antepartum admission, and after delivery and discharge, complete details of the admission including prenatal care, antepartum problems, events in labor and delivery, complications of labor and delivery, procedures, medications received, outcomes, infant data, postpartum procedures, and discharge instructions are abstracted from Epic by experienced obstetrical nurses. A data entry specialist enters the resulting datasets into a relational database. The Health Information Director at the UNC Center for Maternal Infant Health supervises the UNC Perinatal Database entry team. The database is maintained in Microsoft SQL Server and housed on a hospital server. Data are backed up nightly. Every month, for quality control purposes, range and consistency checks are performed to identify and correct irregularities or missing values. A delivery report with obstetrical statistics is then produced. Programming support is available to researchers who wish to conduct analyses from the database.
Updated: 9/20/16
The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) was launched in 2004 as a collaborative institute involving the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University with a mission to develop collaborations that combined the expertise and resources of these three world-class universities and North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park area. RENCI has a 24,000+ sq foot facility at 100 Europa Drive (Chapel Hill) as well as multiple campus engagement sites including ones at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh, and UNC-Chapel Hill. The engagement sites at these universities engage and involve faculty, students and researchers from across the state. These sites are also interconnected by high performance networking (10 Gbs links) enabling the creation of large virtual organizations to meet the needs of research and education, as well as support economic development. RENCI builds, tests and deploys data technologies for 1) Medicine and Genomics: secure virtual workspaces for research using patient data; cyberinfrastructure to support whole genome sequencing; visual analytics on patient data to improve clinical care; 2) Environmental Sciences: HPC and visualization to model coastal storm surge; software and cyber tools for interoperability and sharing of hydrology data and models; and 3) Data Management: testing, packaging, and support for the iRODS code base to ensure a production-quality data management solution. Recently, RENCI was named by the National Science Foundation as a collaborating institution on a $3 million pilot project to create a model and strategic plan for a Cyberinfrastructure Center for Excellence.
Optional language for genetics related projects
In collaboration with faculty in the UNC Department of Genetics and Carolina Center for Genome Sciences, RENCI is developing the data infrastructure researchers at UNC Chapel Hill need to support advanced genetic sequencing research. This custom-built system will enable basic and clinical researchers in many fields to access, process and query genetic information from thousands of individuals. RENCI experts in data management, informatics and software development work directly with UNC researchers to incorporate full and partial genomes into the system, as well as variant information and annotations, and to develop an interface to allow researchers to use the database to address research questions. This project will benefit from the informatics tools developed from this collaboration.
Updated: 3/13/2019
The Research Computing division of UNC-Chapel Hill provides expert scientific and information technology consultants and cyberinfrastructure to the scholarly and research community of the university. The consultation staff includes nine scientists and scholars who have experience across a wide range of disciplinary communities from the physical sciences to the life sciences, from the computational sciences to clinical research, from social/behavioral sciences to the humanities. Cyberinfrastructure includes two large computational clusters. One cluster is designed specifically for high-performance computing needs with more than 11000 conventional cores where each node has 512-GB memory (8052 at 2.4GHz, 2000 Skylake core) and 1440 Knights Landing cores, parallel scratch filesystem, and low-latency interconnect fabric (Infiniband EDR). The second cluster is designed specifically for high-throughput and data-intensive processing needs: it contains more than 6000 cores (each node minimum of 256-GB memory), including five (5) large 3-TB memory nodes, thirty (30) Skylake nodes each with 750-GB memory, and nodes for “Big Data” workloads, accessing 3-PB of shared high-performance storage. Cyberinfrastructure administration and consultation is available at no cost to researchers. The division’s aim is to ensure that research efforts have a stable, consistent, available, and expert, resource for all phases of the research lifecycle.
Researchers are finding it increasingly common that granting agencies require servers that host their data be in compliance with various federal guidelines. The most common request is for a server which is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant, and the most recent is for servers that are in compliance with the Federal Information Security Management (FISMA) Act. UNC’s IT Research Computing has carefully designed servers which are fully HIPAA and FISMA compliant and have all the accompanying documentation needed to fulfill the requirements for compliance.
Storage for research data accessed on the above systems includes more than 5 petabytes of disk, comprising locally attached disks; network-attached shared scratch space; and network-attached shared file systems. Supported file systems include Lustre, Isilon OneFS, GPFS and NFS. An archival mass storage system, with a current capacity of more than 700 TB, is also available. Infrastructure components are housed in an 11,000 square foot data center with more than 2 megawatts of power 800 tons of cooling available. The data center is staffed and monitored 7x24x365. Computing services in Research Computing are largely based on an underlying common campus architecture that includes Kerberos authentication, role-based authorization and shared, centrally installed and managed software applications when practical. More than two hundred software packages and utilities are offered for use on the central systems. By relying on ITS to maintain the hardware, security environment and software builds of computing systems, researchers are free to devote their time to science and research rather than to system administration.
Updated: 5/23/2019
Departments
The UNC Department of Biostatistics was recently ranked the 4th highest Biostatistics Department in the nation. It has 50 Faculty members, 68 permanent staff members, 130 temporary employees, and 184 students (165 graduate students and 41 undergraduate students). The Department of Biostatistics occupies a total of 32,099 square feet in three locations and has a state-of-the-art conference room located in McGavran-Greenberg Hall, which seats 20 people. It has a drop-down projector, wireless capabilities and conference calling facilities. Dr. Hudgens’s office is in McGavran-Greenberg Building. The Department of Biostatistics contains numerous biostatistics cores for other UNC centers and institutes, such as the UNC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Biostatistics Core, the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Biostatistics Core, the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NCTRaCS) Institute Biostatistics Core, the Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (CEHS) Biostatistics Core, and Epidemiological Methods Facility Core. The Core also has close ties to statistical science professionals who are located in other departments and schools, including: the Departments of Statistics and Operations Research; Psychiatry; Epidemiology; and Genetics; and the Schools of Dentistry, Nursing, Medicine, and Pharmacy. The UNC Chapel Hill campus is a rich source of biostatistical resources, such as the extensive holdings and online services of two specialized libraries: the Health Sciences Library; and the Brauer Library dedicated to Mathematics, Statistical Science, Computer Science, and Physics. The local Research Triangle region, which includes RTI International, FHI 360, Duke University, and North Carolina State University, is also an important resource of statistical and biomedical research. Major equipment and resources in the UNC Department of Biostatistics include:
General Computing
The Department of Biostatistics performs a large quantity of statistical computing and simulation for research and teaching purposes. As a result, the computing landscape in the Department is varied and wide. Currently the Department consists of several different work units with varied needs and varied equipment. The equipment is spread over various networks and two computer labs that are interconnected via the campus backbone. SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Red Hat Enterprise Server (RHEL), Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012 R2, Windows 7 are the supported Operating Systems with a wide range of computing equipment from IBM, HP, Dell and other manufacturers.
The Department of Biostatistics’ network presently operates from 113 Physical Servers, 38 Virtual Servers, 70 Thin-clients, 107 Physical Desktops and 45 laptops: 116 SLES11 64-bit Servers, 21 Windows servers and 5 VMWare ESXi servers for hosting virtual machines. Two of the SLES 11 Virtual servers host the department’s logon nodes in our high-performance computing cluster (HPC), 1 SLES 11 server hosting the SLURM Master which schedules and dispatches all jobs submitted to the computing nodes. 98 of the physical servers are dedicated as computing nodes, running SLES 11 64-bit, and are responsible for processing jobs that are submitted from the logon nodes. 1 server is dedicated for very high memory intensive jobs and has 256GB of memory available. There are 5 ESXi servers are used to host 38 Virtual Machine and each Virtual Machine is dedicated for a specific service such as, print services, LDAP caching, SYSLOG, Splunk, DNS, DHCP, Proxy, Network Access Control, Database, Web, and thin client management. All servers with the exception of the virtual machines are running RAID-1 disk arrays. All Departmental data is hosted on a flexible and redundant storage cluster from the manufacturer EMC Isilon and currently has 172TB of space available for data storage. Data from the Isilon cluster is mirrored 24/7 to a separate physical location for backup and Disaster Recovery purposes. Monday through Friday, our secondary storage takes a snapshot of the Departmental data and is used for backup purposes. Snapshots are stored for 60 days then removed from the system. All desktops in the department are connected to the network using 1000MB Ethernet, all laptops are connected to the network via 1000MB networking or 54Mb wireless. The local network consists of several switches connected by fiber optic cable. Each of the local area network connects to the campus backbone and maintains up too 20Gb transfer rates.
The Department of Biostatistics owns and maintains about 441 computers and networked peripherals. This includes IBM-compatible machines, laptops, network printers, network scanners, and other network devices. By offering application serving, web and print services our computer facilities continue to meet the department’s needs for research, training, and administration.
| Servers | Workstations | Laptops | Printers | Thin Clients | |
| On-site | 151 | 107 | 0 | 38 | 70 |
| Off Campus | 0 | 19 | 45 | 11 | 0 |
| Total | 151 | 126 | 45 | 49 | 70 |
| Total Devices: 478 | |||||
The Department of Biostatistics currently uses a very wide range of statistical, imaging, GIS and genetics applications used to analyze data. The list of applications consists of Affymetrix Powertools, bedtools, bioprospector, bismark, boost, bowtie, brat, bsmap, casava, ccseg, cufflinks, dtitk, dti tract, epd, fastphase, fsl, freesurfer, gambit, gcta, hammer, hapgen, hapstat, hdf, hyperlasso, ibeat, igvtools, itk, isolasso, jags, mach, maq, methylseqpipeline, minimac, penncnv, plink, plinkseq, Qt, Revolution R, rrbsmap, samtools, statscan, shapeworks, slicer, spharm, tabix, tophat, vcftools, VisualAnalyticTkt, wsdl, Arcview GIS, CART, DBMS Copy, Dchip, Fiber Tracking, Fiber Viewer, FSL, Head Circumference, IRIS, ITK-SNAP, GenePix, JMP, Map Maker, Map Manager QTX, Mathematica, Matlab, MRIcro, MRI Watcher, nQuery, Qtlcart, R, S.A.G.E., SAS, ScanAlyze, Slicer, SNAP, Splus, Stata, StatXact, Sudaan, Treeview, Valmet, and Winbugs.
Security for Biostatistics Computing
The servers and clients are separated in to 3 firewalled networks (zones ) which are managed and monitored by central campus. In addition to the network-based firewalls, all hosts have strict host based firewalls to further reduce possibilities of internal or external network-based attacks. Campus logs all network traffic that passes through the firewall and notifies of any anomalous events. All Windows and Linux server logs are sent to our central loghosts which monitor and alerts for any type of anomalous activities. All servers undergo weekly Qualys scans and any level 4 or 5 vulnerabilities are remediated within 30 days. Microsoft Windows laptops use full disk encryption and all MAC laptops use home directory encryption. Both types of encryption meet the FIPS 140-2 standard for auditing purposes.
Patch and application management for all windows desktops and servers and managed centrally from Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). Reports from SCCM are generated monthly and reviewed for any failed installations and action is taken within a reasonable time to remediate any issues. Patch and application management for all linux servers are centrally managed through custom designed scripts for ease of administration.
Campus Research Computing: ITS Research Computing provides resources to support and promote computational research at UNC-Chapel Hill. High performance and high throughput computing resources include a 704 node (8064 core) Dell Linux cluster, Kill Devil, with QDR Infiniband interconnect and a minimum of 4 GB memory per core; a smaller 2300-core HP Linux cluster with QDR Infiniband interconnect and at least 6 GB of memory per core; and two 32-core servers with one terabyte of memory each to accommodate codes that require extremely large amounts of RAM. The Kill Devil cluster also includes 64 NVidia Tesla GPUs (M2070).
Storage for research data accessed on the above systems includes more than 2.5 petabytes of disk, comprising locally attached disks; network-attached shared scratch space; and network-attached shared file systems. Supported file systems include Lustre, Isilon OneFS, GPFS and NFS. An archival mass storage system, with a current capacity of more than 700 TB, is also available. Infrastructure components are housed in an 11,000 square foot data center with more than 2 megawatts of power 800 tons of cooling available. The data center is staffed and monitored 7x24x365.
Centrally provided and managed software applications include a variety of Fortran and C compilers; Gaussian, Amber, Insight II, and dozens of other open-source packages commonly used in the biosciences and physical sciences. In addition, standard mathematical and statistical software such as Mathematica, Matlab, Stata, R, and SAS are available, as are GIS applications, including ArcGIS, and visualization/image processing packages such as ENVI and IDL. Virtual computing software developed at North Carolina State University has been deployed on many nodes of the general-purpose computer cluster to allow researchers to run Windows or Linux-based applications easily on central computing systems. Computational scientists on staff in Research Computing are available for consultation on use of systems, applications, modeling, analysis and code optimization.
An Oracle database server and campus-wide Oracle site license can be used to provide backend database capabilities for applications and projects. In addition to hosting research databases, Research Computing’s database administrator can be leveraged by projects to ensure professional management of databases, freeing up researchers to focus on their actual research. Expert assistance is also available for performance analysis, code porting and code parallelization.
Condor-based grid capabilities have been deployed centrally and in various campus units, and Research Computing staff can also facilitate access to Open Science Grid and XSEDE national resources. In addition, Research Computing provides and supports a CentOS-based Linux image (Tar Heel Linux), customized for use with the UNC technology infrastructure, and a software application repository to enable rapid deployment of distributed Linux workstations on campus. Codes developed and tested in these environments can easily scale up to the central compute clusters.
Computing services in Research Computing are largely based on an underlying common campus architecture that includes Kerberos authentication, role-based authorization and shared, centrally installed and managed software applications when practical. More than two hundred software packages and utilities are offered for use on the central systems. By relying on ITS to maintain the hardware, security environment and software builds of computing systems, researchers are free to devote their time to science and research rather than to system administration.
Office
The Department of Biostatistics occupies a total of 32,099 square feet in three locations. One of these locations is on campus in the McGavran-Greenberg Building, one is adjoining the campus (Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center), and the third is approximately one-half mile from the campus (Carolina Survey Research Laboratory). Of this, about 25% is used for departmental administration and service facilities. The remainder is assigned to faculty, students, and research staff for education and research activities.
Meeting Space
The Department of Biostatistics has a state-of-the-art conference room located in McGavran-Greenberg Hall which seats 20 people. It has a drop-down projector, wireless capabilities and conference calling facilities. The Gillings School of Global Public Health (GSGPH) has 14 conference rooms available to all GSGPH departments furnished with drop-down projectors and internet connections. Also available is the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation Auditorium, the largest meeting space in the new Michael Hooker research center (physically connected to McGavran-Greenberg Hall). It has drop-down projectors and 104 built-in desks equipped with power and Internet connections. Five built-in cameras add video-conferencing capabilities for the School’s flourishing distance education and outreach programs.
Updated: 9/22/16
The UNC Department of Epidemiology is internationally recognized as a leader in epidemiologic research and training. The Department offers research training in most specialized areas including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, environmental and occupational health, health services/clinical epidemiology, reproductive health and infectious diseases. For the fiscal year 2015/2016, the Department was awarded in excess of $26 million in sponsored funding (research, training and public service) and ranks in the top five largest units at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the area of sponsored research awards. The Department’s current faculty consists of 68 regular full-time faculty and 143 adjunct faculty members. The Department has 214 graduate students enrolled, including 14 in the MPH program, 27 in the MSCR program and 151 in the Ph.D. program.
The Department of Epidemiology is headquartered in the four-story McGavran-Greenberg Building adjacent to Rosenau Hall across the street from the School of Medicine. The epidemiology administrative and office space occupies 10,928 sq. ft. and provides additional classroom space. Most of the department’s research staff occupies a research annex consisting of approximately 7,000 square feet of contiguous rental space in a commercial office building that is a 10-minute walk from McGavran/Greenberg Hall.
Laboratories
The Department of Epidemiology occupies approximately 10,000 square feet of laboratory space on the 3rd floor of the Michael Hooker Research Center, the 4-storySchool of Public Health laboratory research building which opened in 2005 and is adjacent to Rosenau and McGavran-Greenberg. Departmental labs work on a variety of pathogens (HIV, malaria, trypanosomes, Treponema pallidum, Noroviruses, Coronaviruses) as well as the molecular epidemiology of cancer and other chronic diseases. In addition, this floor also houses a service biospecimen processing and repository facility which functions as a centralized, coordinated, quality-controlled and quality assured facility for the processing (including DNA extraction) storage and distribution of human biospecimens.
The Biospecimen Processing (BSP) Facility, which is jointly managed by the Departments of Epidemiology and Genetics (Drs. Olshan and Evans, Co-Directors) is a centralized, coordinated, quality-controlled, and quality assured facility that processes biospecimens including blood products, urine, etc. and extracts genomic DNA with Gentra System’s automated Autopure LS instrument. This high-throughput instrument can process up to 96-samples per 8 hour period using a modified salt precipitation method with Gentra System’s Puregene chemistries. DNA isolated in the BSP is quantitated by quadruplicate optical density reading using a SpectraMax Plus 384 UV-Vis plate/cuvette spectrophotometer. The size of the DNA and its quality is analyzed by agarose gel electrophoresis both before and after restriction enzyme digestion. Alternative DNA quality analyses, such as PCR amplification and genotyping are also available. This facility has experience isolating high molecular weight genomic DNA which can be reliably PCR amplified and genotyped from a variety of study-collected sources including whole blood, buccal swabs and rinses, blood spots, and immortalized cells.
In addition to wet labs, the floor contains offices for PI’s, a shared tissue culture facility, a common instrument room, a conference room, cold rooms, warm rooms, dark room, an autoclave/dishwashing facility, a freezer room and a BSL-3 facility. Shared equipment include a film processor, scintillation counter, ultracentrifuge, and real time PCR machine. The biospecimen processing facility is equipped with a high-throughput DNA extraction robot (Autopure LS-Gentra systems), a gel documentation system, and a plate spectrophotometer. There are also multiple spectrophotometers, electronic balances, PCR machines, water baths, biohazard hoods, fume hoods, electrophoresis apparati, and centrifuges.
Information Systems
The Department of Epidemiology (UNC-CH) owns and maintains over 300 computers. Most are Intel Pentium-class computers no more than 4 years old running Windows XP Professional. All machines designated for use on campus are registered with the campus network, which provides access to the Internet and other campus resources. All computers at our primary location and at our research annex have access to several networked color and black/white laser printers operated by the department. The department has access to a variety of Internet/web-based services such as email services, web servers, shared calendars, as well as network resources such as network storage, applications development servers, and high-performance computing.
Computer Software
An extensive library of software is available on the UNC campus via university site licenses or volume purchase agreements. The collection includes all common statistical analysis languages and packages (SAS, Stata, S-Plus, SPSS-X, BMDP, SUDAAN, etc.). Packages such as SAS are available on multiple platforms. An analysis can scale from the smaller capacities of a personal computer to the multiple-processor high-performance computing workstations and clusters provided centrally by the campus information technology organization.
The Department of Epidemiology has a talented staff of seventeen computer programmers and support personnel. The programmers offer a wealth of experience in SAS, S-Plus, and Stata programming as well as research data management and web programming and development. The support staff addresses daily technical support issues and offers technical guidance on systems design, procurement and implementation issues. The support group is also responsible for operation of the departmental IT infrastructure which includes local area networks, shared filespace, shared print services, and research computing resources.
Updated: 10/2/16
The Department of Genetics integrates basic research with clinical care, focused on catalyzing breakthroughs in understanding the mechanisms, diagnosis and therapy of disease through integrating UNC’s formidable strengths in basic science, clinical medicine and high-throughput analysis. Terry Magnuson chaired the department from 2000-2016. His leadership resulted in a rich research environment where mammalian and human geneticists serve as the translational arm for genomic medicine, bringing practical applications from genomics into the clinical arena. The interim chair of the department is Fernando Pardo Manuel de Villena who will maintain this focus while UNC conducts a global search for a new chair.
The Department of Genetics embraces a unified program devoted to outstanding research, clinical care and teaching in all areas of genetics with a particular emphasis on the relationship of genomics to disease within animal models and on through human and clinical genetics. The department includes sixty-two primary faculty and twenty-one additional joint or secondary faculty, drawn primarily from clinical department faculty conducting genetics-related research and/or clinical work. The 2015 Blue Ridge Institute NIH rankings placed the Department as fifth in the country for genetics departments. Due to a generous gift from Vaughn and Nancy Bryson in 2005, the department was able to launch the “Bryson Program in Human Genetics.” A Central goal of the Bryson Program is to aid the integration of genetics into the clinic. In 2005, genetics clinics were created in coordination with nephrology and ophthalmology followed soon after by cardiology and dermatology genetic consult clinics.
Updated: 10/2/16
The Department of Health Behavior was founded in 1942 as the Department of Public Health Education. The mission of the department is to discover, develop, and disseminate knowledge that promotes the health of individuals and communities. The department’s more than 30 faculty and 55 adjunct faculty members have backgrounds in health education, behavioral science, international health, social psychology, medicine, medical sociology, and communications. The unifying factor for the various backgrounds of the faculty is a commitment to the disciplines of health education and the social and behavioral sciences. Active research topics include adolescent health, community-based participatory research, early detection and management of disease, health communication, health disparity reduction, HIV/AIDS prevention and control, obesity, diabetes and weight-related behaviors, tobacco control and regulation, violence prevention, and worker and workplace health promotion. The Department maintains close ties with the Gillings School of Global Public Health and with research centers, including the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Injury Prevention Research Center, the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, and the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.
Updated: 10/2/16
The Department of Health Policy and Management (HPM) provides one of the premiere public health and health management educations in the world and is consistently ranked as one of the top programs in the US (US News & World Report).The HPM’s program vision is to train the best and brightest health leaders of tomorrow in order to help make this world a better place to live. HPM has nearly 450 students enrolled in certificate, undergraduate and graduate programs. The Department’s large, diverse faculty of 40 members represent all of the major disciplines relevant to health services research, including accounting, anthropology, business, dentistry, economics, finance, health and hospital administration, law, medical care organization, medicine, operations research, organizational behavior, and policy analysis. Additionally, over 100 adjunct faculty members, with wide-ranging practice experience, contribute to teaching and learning. The Department provides sufficient office space, meeting space, telecommunications capabilities, and computing resources for investigators to perform research tasks, analyze results, and prepare manuscripts. The HPM research program takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying important and complex issues in health policy and service delivery. By applying innovative quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, researchers aim to improve the availability, quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care services, and reduce health disparities at the local, national, and international levels. In addition to publishing numerous articles, books, and book chapters, faculty members testify before Congress, serve on commissions, and provide consultation to various health care organizations and government agencies. Departmental research strengths the include cancer care, comparative effectiveness, financial management and performance, health outcomes, organization design and change, and quality of and access to care.
Updated: 10/2/16
The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Department was founded in 1950 and is one of the world’s leading academic departments for research, teaching, and practice in the areas of reproductive health and women’s health; infant, child and adolescent health; and health inequities and health economics. The MCH Department routinely works in close collaboration with domestic and global public health professionals, clinicians, policy and community leaders, academics, and a wide array of government, non-profit and private organizations to further the science of MCH and apply existing and new knowledge to the field. The MCH Department is one of eight autonomous and distinct administrative and academic units within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Other units include the Departments of Biostatistics, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Epidemiology, Health Behavior, Health Policy and Management, Nutrition, and the Public Health Leadership Program. The Gillings School of Global Public Health, along with four other Health Sciences Schools – Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Pharmacy – comprise the Division of Health Affairs, the Deans of which report to the UNC Provost. The Provost reports to the UNC Chancellor for UNC-Chapel Hill, which in turn is part of the 16-campus University of North Carolina system.
The department is physically located in Rosenau Hall, one of three School of Public Health buildings at UNC. Department of Maternal and Child Health physical resources have been substantially expanded and improved in recent years. The key departmental functions of research, teaching, and administration are conducted in an 8,519 square foot area on the fourth floor of Rosenau Hall. There are frequent opportunities for informal interaction and learning. A separate suite of offices is designated specifically for faculty research projects and includes state of the art information technology. The department maintains a network of over seventy devices, including desktop and laptop computers and printers. Each member of the department has access to a wide range of software applications, including word processing, data base, spreadsheets, statistical analysis, graphics, and electronic mail, on a network system. Departmental computer resources allow faculty and staff to link with University-wide computer facilities and the Internet. Graduate students have dedicated study rooms containing computer stations and individual work areas with computer ports.
In addition to the facilities in Rosenau Hall, the MCH Department utilizes classroom and seminar/conference space in the McGavran-Greenberg building as well as the amenities in the Michael Hooker Research Center, a 125,000 square foot teaching and research laboratory building designed as a physical environment for world-class instruction. The MHRC has allowed the School to expand its research, engage in more inter-departmental collaboration, and provide outstanding educational opportunities related to emerging public health issues such as environmental health, infectious disease, and nutrition. In addition to the wireless classrooms, seven centrally scheduled conference rooms in the atrium of the building are available to MCH, as well as a 104 seat seminar room. There is also an expanded Café in the atrium and approximately 3,000 square feet of “lounge/sitting/conversation space” which functions as a “living room” for the Gillings School of Global Public Health. On the second floor of the atrium, there is a reading balcony with library style study tables and lounge chairs. The building, and the current renovations to Rosenau Hall, will remarkably improve the physical amenities and resources available to the department, faculty, and staff in the coming years.
The Instructional and Information Systems Department (IIS) supports and coordinates computing resources at the School of Public Health. They maintain central systems for administrative, instructional, and research services and coordinate desktop computing services in all SPH departments. IIS works to build information technology bridges between the School and campus services. These services include file and print sharing, access to computing and network services at the School and campus levels, School and departmental student computer labs, wired and wireless network access, statistical computing services, electronic mail, and standard and specialized desktop research applications.
The MCH Department has easy access to the rich array of services and programs operating within the University campus. It is conveniently located on the UNC campus, contiguous to the Health Sciences Library and the other four health affairs schools. The UNC-CH campus is compact and self-contained – encompassing health facilities, professional schools, traditional academic departments, as well as the many other interdisciplinary training, research, and service centers and institutes. The Gillings School of Global Public Health is located near all the major health facilities of the campus, and nearly all University facilities are within a ten-minute walk.
UNC-Chapel Hill, the nation’s oldest public university (established in 1789) enjoys a reputation as one of the best public universities in the United States. The University’s 729-acre central campus is centrally located in Carolina’s Piedmont region (approximately equidistant between Washington, DC, and Atlanta, Georgia) in the Town of Chapel Hill. This region is readily accessible by highway to all parts of the state and through the Raleigh/Durham (RDU) airport, to all parts of the U.S. The Town, which was incorporated in 1819, presently covers an area of 21.1 square miles and has a population of 52,440 according to the 2002 estimate. The Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area (known as the Research Triangle) continues to be one of the nation’s fastest growing metropolitan statistical areas with a population of more than 1.6 million. This trend is expected to continue as the Triangle continues to receive accolades for being a top location to live, do business, and be educated.
The area contains a rich array of MCH agencies and related organizations with a well-established and well-regarded reproductive health focus at the global, national and state levels. The population of North Carolina continues to increase in diversity, with the Hispanic/Latino population now considered the fastest growing ethnic/racial population in the state. While UNC is close enough to Washington, D.C. and Atlanta for faculty and trainees to reach these cities in a one-day commute, the state is still largely rural with a strong agricultural tradition. Within an hour’s distance from Chapel Hill, faculty and students can interface with a public health service delivery system that reflects the complex challenges of responding to the needs of migrant, rural, small town, suburban, and urban MCH populations. The Research Triangle Park, only 20 minutes away, provides opportunity for collaborations with agencies such as the Research Triangle Institute and Family Health International. Faculty and students work with staff (and often, alumni) from these agencies; their experts also serve as adjunct faculty, guest lecturers, and departmental advisors.
Updated: 3/14/2019
The Department of Nutrition is one of seven departments in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Public Health and is the sole department in Public Health that is also part of the School of Medicine. The Department of Nutrition’s mission is to improve and protect the public’s health through teaching, research and practices that foster the best possible nutrition for the people of North Carolina and the world. The Department takes a cell to society approach in its three divisions: Nutritional Biochemistry, Nutritional Epidemiology, and Intervention and Policy. During FY 2015, the Department managed over $28 million dollars in sponsored research funding.
The Department of Nutrition consists of 48 primary faculty, 12 joint and 13 adjunct faculty, an administrative staff of 9, as well as postdoctoral fellows and research staff members. In the Fall of 2015, the Department had enrolled 174 students, including 52 doctoral students, 73 masters’ students and 49 bachelors’ students. The department has over 26,000 square feet of research, office and meeting space, including over 11,000 square feet of laboratory space. The Department is located on the second floor of McGavran-Greenberg Hall, Rosenau Hall and the Michael Hooker Research Center and all three buildings are connected via a sky walk. In addition, the Department leases research space off campus in the Eastowne Office Building nearby in Chapel Hill.
Laboratory
The Department of Nutrition has over 11,000 square feet of laboratory space, including 10,070 square feet in the Michael Hooker Research Center (MHRC), and 4,165 square feet in McGavran Greenberg Hall. Biochemistry trainees are provided lab space as needed to complete their research. The MHRC, open since 2005, contains state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, including tissue culture facilities, a common equipment room, a BSL-3 facility, a histology laboratory, a molecular biology laboratory, a biochemistry laboratory (including HPLC), a microscopy facility, a darkroom, walk-in cold and freezer rooms, and dishwashing and autoclave facilities. The laboratories in McGavran Greenberg Hall and MHRC are connected via a sky bridge, which allows for the sharing of equipment and shared facilities between all of the laboratories in the Department.
Nutrition Research Institute
The Nutrition Research Institute is dedicated to understanding why there are individual differences in metabolism and nutrient requirements. The institute comprises web labs with sophisticated analytic equipment for nutrigenomics; clinical facilities that include examination rooms and equipment, a pharmacy, phlebotomy laboratory, specimen laboratory, consultation rooms, a metabolic research kitchen; and metabolic rate assessment and body composition equipment. State-of-the-art facilities for human nutrition research include the following.
- Metabolic Research Kitchen (1,200 sq. ft.): This facility is utilized to prepare and deliver meals of exact composition. Staff are able to monitor consumption of meals, and to calculate the exact amounts of nutrients, micronutrients, and bioactives delivered. Four independent work stations, each with its own set of tools with the exception of large appliances, which are shared), one Dell Computer for kitchen office (Optiplex 780) and two Dell computers (Optiplex 780 Ultra Small Form) to sync with Ohaus scales (two each); HP Laserjet M3027; Mettler Toledo scales (two daily use scales and one analytical balance); 10 Software: Nutrition Data Systems for Research, ProNutra, ProNessy, Food Processor; Bally walk-in refrigerator/freezer; commercial kitchen appliances.
- Body Composition Laboratory (320 sq. ft.): This laboratory includes Lunar iDXA scanner (GE Healthcare): The DXA scanner’s body composition analysis software enables evaluation of fat mass, lean mass, bone density, and total mass for the entire skeleton and for individual sub-regions; BOD POD (Life Measurement, Inc.) that uses air displacement plethysmography to determine body fat; Xario Ultrasound (Toshiba) used in studies that require determination of fat composition of internal organs.
- Metabolic Rate Assessment Laboratory (250 sq. ft.): This includes two ParvoMedics TrueOne 2400 metabolic carts, one for measuring resting energy expenditure and another for measuring exercise induced changes in energy expenditure; electrocardiogram machine (Quinton), TrackMaster Treadmill; stationary bike (Lode Corival Bike Ergometer).
- Metabolic Chamber (415 sq. ft.): The Advanced Biosolutions Whole Room Calorimeter measures a person’s energy expenditure to an accuracy of within 35 calories per day. This device represents a slight improvement over the metabolic chambers installed at the NIH Clinical Center.
- Phlebotomy Lab and Examination Rooms (1,000 sq. ft.): Dedicated space for blood and urine collection, with a sample processing laboratory with a Thermo Sorvall RT1 Centrifuge; Biolis 24 Chemistry Analyzer with the capability to perform 100 diagnostic chemistry tests. In addition, the institute is the process of purchasing a hematology analyzer.
- Physical Examination Rooms (320 sq. ft.): This includes four examination rooms equipped with Midmark examination tables, sinks, privacy curtains, WelchAllyn Integrated Systems that includes blood pressure cuff, digital thermometer, otoscope, and ophthalmoscope.
- Pharmacy Suite: The 231-square-foot pharmacy suite is a locked room for storage of pharmaceuticals, placebos, or other treatments needed for clinical studies.
- Behavioral Assessment Suite: A networked dual camera to digital video disc system is part of two testing and observation rooms. Two EEG rooms include a 128-channel EGI electrophysiology system, an EGI photogrammetry system, a SmartEye Eye Tracking System, a BioPac System to measure autonomic nervous system functions, an Electric Maze to measure higher-order cognitive function and many elicited imitation props to measure memory. The behavioral assessment suite includes a mother’s room with a hospital grade Medela Breast Pump. There is a spacious play room outfitted with toys, art supplies, and age-appropriate furniture, as well as many high chairs, for effectively conducting behavioral tests on small children.
Diet and Physical Activity Core
The Diet and Physical Activity Core provides multidisciplinary aid to investigators for the purpose of improving and enhancing their dietary assessment research. Services include diet assessment, training and consultation; physical activity assessment training and consultation; body composition assessment; consultation; training on anthropometric measures; mobile body composition; research diet construction; research protocol design; and study implementation and training. Cores are described below:
- Diet Assessment services include diet recalls using the Nutrition Data System for Research (NDSR) 24-hour recalls and the National Cancer Institute’s Automated Self-Administered 24-hour recalls (ASA24); food record analysis (using NDSR); user recipe analysis (using NDSR); menu analysis (using NDSR); food frequency questionnaires; custom development; and administration of food frequency questionnaires.
- Diet Assessment Training services include 24 hour recalls (using NDSR or ASA24) and food records, menu or user recipe analysis.
- Diet Consultation services include consultation for project development; data analysis; database development; choice of biomarkers and write-up for dietary assessment.
- Physical Activity Training services include objective and self-report physical activity monitoring.
- Physical Activity Consultation services include consultation; project development; write up; and post-award assistance and consultation for data analysis and data reduction method.
- Body Composition Assessment services include: DXA; indirect calorimetry; PQcT; Bodpod and Peapod; anthropometric services- stadiometer, skin fold tests, tape measure, scales; and a Bioelectric Impedance Scale.
- Consultation and Concierge services include identifying advantages and disadvantages to help select the best tools; identifying where to find these tools; coordination of other services such as DXA, BodPod ∓ PeaPod; training of anthropometric assessments; height and weight (for adults and children); skinfold assessments; % Body fat regression equations; and circumferences.
- Research Diet Construction services include regular, research, therapeutic, inpatient, and outpatient meals.
- Nutrition Research Protocol Design Consultation services include pre-study consultation; study design; research diet; and methods development; developing menus; testing recipes; and training staff for production procedures.
- Study Implementation and Training services include nutrition counseling, questionnaire administration, screening for study participation, team meetings or training study staff.
- The Nutritional Biochemistry ∓ Molecular Biology Core includes atomic absorption spectrometry, choline and metabolites, molecular biology, nutritional biochemistry and metabolomics.
- Oxidative Stress analysis, including: catalase; glutathione peroxidase; glutathione reductase (GSH/GSSG); superoxide dismutase; lipid peroxidation products; thiobarbituric acid substances (TBARS); oxidized and reduced glutathione; and thioredoxin reductase.
- Inflammation (ELISA OR RIA) testing available includes: C-reactive proteins; E-selection; and VCAM-1 and ICAM-1.
- Cytokines and Adipokines services include: IL-6; IL-6 HS; IL-2; TNF-α; TNF-α HS; and adiponectin.
- Peptide Hormones analyzed include: ghrelin; Insulin; C-peptide; leptin; and prolactin.
- Nutrient analysis includes: vitamin C; vitamin E and ferritin.
- Drug Abuse Tests include testing for: amphetamines; barbiturates; benzodiazepines; cannabinoids; and cocaine metabolites.
- Other Assays including DHEA and urinalysis.
- Choline and Choline Metabolite assays include: choline and metabolites; betaine and fatty acid analysis; phospholipid fatty acids; folate; PEMT (high and low); extract and plate DNA; genotype (RT-PCR); and homocysteine.
NORC Concierge Services
NORC Concierge Services provide consultation support for the development, design and implementation of nutrition and obesity clinical and translational research. This includes: identifying research gaps and developing research plans; connecting investigators to potential mentors and collaborators; assistance with grant proposals, manuscripts and protocol reviews; facilitating development and implementation of pilot project grants; and linking investigators to appropriate services and core facilities on campus.
The NORC Animal Metabolism Phenotyping Core provides access to state of the art phenotyping techniques for metabolism and energy balance in mouse models of nutrition and disease. Services include: study design and implementation; body composition.
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- NORC Study Design and Data Interpretation services include expertise on study design, quality control and analysis methods.
- NORC Body Composition services use MRI technology to evaluate whole body composition of live mice without anesthesia, including fat, lean tissue, and free and total water. The MRI also has a tissue probe for organs or samples up to 10 grams and a biopsy probe for samples up to 300 milligrams.
- NORC Voluntary Exercise services include home cage and running wheel compartments. The devise is able to collect months of running distance, time spent running and speed in requested intervals. Data can be converted to day/night total distance, on wheel time and maximum speed. Total food and drink taken during experiments are also available.
- NORC Energy Expenditure services evaluate and interpret energy expenditure using new, state of the art indirect calorimetry from TSE Systems. The system measures O2 consumption and CO2 production, respiratory exchange rate and energy expenditure in the home cage environment.
- NORC Home Cage Activity services evaluate and interpret 3D (X, Y and Z dimension) home cage activity via light beams for up to 10-days using intervals between 1 to 60 minutes.
- NORC Food & Drink Consumption and Behavior measurement for rodents provides three sensors (drinking /feeding) per cage. In addition to simply evaluating food and drink consumption in real time, the system is able to monitor multiple diets or drink combinations and eating behavior patterns.
- NORC Bone mineral density services use a DEXA scanner to measure total bone mineral density (BMD), bone mineral content (BMC) and bone area (BA) are analyzed in anesthetized mice.
Metabolism and Metabolomics Core
The Metabolism and Metabolomics Core provides cutting edge nutritional metabolomics services, biochemistry methods, and molecular biology techniques for nutrition research. The goals of the core are to encourage and facilitate the use of biomarkers for nutritional epidemiological and intervention studies and to provide access to state-of-the-art techniques, equipment and cost-effective assays for investigators. The core also provides training for students and postdoctoral fellows. A number of platforms are available for use in the study of endogenous and exogenous compounds that represent the metabolome and the exposome:
- Expert opinion related to study design, sample selection/collection and storage, proposal review and development, manuscript development and review
- Untargeted analysis analytical methods of Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC) coupled with Mass Spectrometry (MS). UPLC-MS is performed using a variety of orbitrap (Orbi) and time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometry systems for the detection of signals. Innovative methods are used for peak picking and big data analysis in comparison with an in-house library established under conditions identical to the methods used for analysis of the study samples. Signals that do not match the in-house libraries are annotated through the use of literature and publicly available external libraries.
- Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Signals are assigned to metabolites through library matching, and using the structural information provided by the NMR chemical shift and coupling patterns.
- Targeted Broad Spectrum Metabolite Analysis via NMR and Mass Spectrometry. Quantitative targeted analysis of 188 endogenous metabolites is conducted using the Biocrates Absolute IDQ p180 Kit and LC-MS/MS.
- Cytokine Arrays. High-throughput, relative quantitation analysis is performed using the RayBiotech array.
- Atomic Absorption is used to determine the levels of arsenate, methylated and other organic forms of arsenic in solutions and/or matrices.
- Statistics and Multivariate Data Analysis is used to identify patterns and data trends that show the association of signals with phenotypic responses under investigation. These methods include supervised and unsupervised multivariate analyses, descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing and modeling (e.g., linear and logistic regression, structural equation modeling, random forest models).
- Pathway Analysis is used to map identified signals to biochemical pathways via specialized software, and expert biochemist interpretation.
Computer
The Department of Nutrition provides state-of-the-art computer resources for students, faculty, and staff. Each faculty, staff member, and trainee of the Department is provided a computer for daily use and has access to a wide range of software applications on a network system, including word processing, data base, spreadsheets, statistical analysis, graphics, and electronic mail. Departmental computer resources allow faculty, staff and students to link with University-wide computer facilities and world-wide web. Wireless connectivity is available in all conference rooms and most laboratories and research offices. Conference rooms with projectors, internet access and videoconferencing equipment are available to all faculty and staff. Collaboration through videoconferencing is facilitated within the Department through the use of our Virtual Teleconferencing system as well as BlueJeans Conferencing service which the Department provides access to for all faculty, staff and students.
Office
The Department of Nutrition has almost 3,000 square feet of faculty office space and over 4,500 square feet of office space for research projects. Office space will be provided for all trainees.
Equipment
Examples of laboratory equipment include the following: Lunar Piximus II X-Ray Densitometer, Sorvall WX-80 Centrifuge, Perkin Elmer FIAS-400 Flow Injection System, Roche Lightcycler 480 PCR System, Perkin Elmer Analyst 800AA Spectrometer, Agilent Tech 1100 HPLC System, CEM Mars 5 Microwave Reaction System, Bio-Rad Versa Doc MP4000 Imaging System, Roche Cobas Mira Plus Chemistry Analyzer, Bio-Rad Protean IEF System, Nanodrop 2000 Spectrophotometer, Bio Rad CFX Connect PCR System, Strathkelvin MT200 Respirometry System, Amersham Bioscience UltroSpec 3300 Spectrophotometer, Bio-Rad Icycler Thermal Cycler, Bio-Rad CFX96 PCR System, Amaxa II Nucleofactor, Bio-Rad Icycler IQ PCR Detection System, Beckman Z2 Couter Counter Analyzer, Accuri C6 Cytometer and an Echo MRI-100TM Analyzer.
Updated: 1/29/21
The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in UNC’s School of Medicine cares for women at every stage of their lives. Our faculty and staff strive to provide world-class patient care and search for new knowledge through robust research programs, and are committed to excellence in educational experiences for medical students, residents and fellows. It was ranked #12 in the 2020 U.S. News & World Report for Obstetrics and Gynecology Departments in Schools of Medicine and #18 overall for Gynecology—that’s #3 in the Southeast. The residency program is recognized as one of the best, ranking in the top three in the nation for clinical reputation by Doximity’s 2019 Residency Navigator for the fourth year in a row. In 2019, the UNC Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology was ranked 3rd among university Ob/Gyn departments in NIH funding, garnering more than $9 million in research dollars.
The Department has nine Divisions: Family Planning, General Obstetrics and Gynecology, Gynecologic Oncology, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Midwifery, Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery, Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, Fertility, and Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery. It also houses the UNC Horizons Program, a substance abuse treatment for pregnant and/or parenting women and their children, including those whose lives have been touched by abuse and violence; and UNC Global Women’s Health (GWH), a unique group of clinicians, researchers and public health professionals working to improve the health of women in the world’s poorest countries.
Office
Members of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology occupy the entire third floor of the Old Clinic Building which has been renovated to meet their office space needs. Each physician has a private office; all offices are equipped with state-of-the-art computers and linked to shared printers and other office equipment as needed. All computers are connected via the local area network to the University mainframe computers. Residents and fellows have individual spaces assigned; they also have individual telephones and computers linked to all needed shared services. There are several conference rooms and a library available for use. Additionally, there are small conference rooms and offices available for use in the Clinic space in Women’s Hospital, and at the Center for Women’s Health Research. Outpatient and inpatient obstetrics and gynecology are located adjacent to these academic offices in the UNC Women’s Hospital. The convergence of UNC Women’s Hospital with our Ob/Gyn offices described in this section allows for easy walking distance (<300 yards) to each other.
Clinic
Outpatient Facilities
The UNC Department of Ob/Gyn has multiple facilities for clinical care and research subject enrollment. There were 37,111 obstetrics patient visits at UNC departmental clinics in 2019, of which The Women’s Primary Healthcare division sees obstetrics and gynecologic patients at our UNC Hospital clinics, Hillsborough Medical Office Building and off-site clinics in Chapel Hill and Cary. Additionally, our department has outpatient specialty facilities at Rex Hospital, a 665-bed community hospital in Raleigh. Each site is staffed with an expert team of obstetricians and nurses to bring expert prenatal care closer to the community.
Gynecologic Inpatient Facilities
Gynecologic surgery and inpatient care occurs at our UNC and Hillsborough Hospital Campuses. The UNC Hillsborough hospital is a 68 bed facility that opened in September 2015 and is a state-of-the-art facility designed for serving our benign gynecologic services – Women’s Primary Health, Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery, Family Planning and Urogynecology divisions. Gynecologic Oncology and benign gynecologic services are also located at the UNC Women’s Hospital. Gynecologic surgeons have daily access to surgical facilities and provide inpatient and outpatient care at both sites.
Obstetrical Inpatient Facilities (Level III Perinatal Center)
The UNC Women’s Hospital opened in the fall of 2000 with increased capacity for the neonatal intensive care, neonatal intermediate care, and pediatric intermediate care units. The replacement facility has allowed the UNC Health Care System to bring into a single structure nearly all resources dedicated to the provision of health care services for women and infants. It also provides a health care environment that is safer, more efficient, and geared to delivering innovative services that improve women’s health outcomes. For example, all of the rooms in the new hospital are single-bedded. Such private rooms are important for women, not only for clinical reasons, but also to meet psychosocial needs such as allowing family members to stay in the room with the postpartum patient.
The facility has resulted in the addition of approximately 450,000 square feet of new space and the development of a two-story, glass, enclosed pedestrian concourse that connects the front entrances and lobbies of the NC Memorial Hospital, the NC Children’s Hospital, the NC Women’s Hospital and the NC Neurosciences Hospital. The new space includes Women’s Outpatient Services, Assisted Reproductive Technology Services, Gynecology Oncology, Urogynecology, Outpatient Services, Labor & Delivery/Birthing Center with four LDRPs and 10 LDRs, an Obstetric Inpatient Unit, a Newborn Nursery with 28 beds and 14 bassinets, a Women’s Resource Center, and a Gynecology/Gynecologic Oncology Inpatient Unit with 22 beds.
The Labor and Delivery Unit (~20,000 sq ft) consists of 4 LDRP’s and 10 LDR’s, each approximately 340 square feet. The monitoring capabilities in each room include pulse, EKG, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, central venous pressure, and pulmonary artery pressure, plus a centralized electronic fetal monitoring system. All fetal monitors are Hewlett Packard and the central fetal monitoring package is by Hillrom. Each room has an IBM workstation for charting on the computerized inpatient record and all fetal heart rate information and non-invasive maternal monitoring data streams automatically into the computerized record. There is a 300 square foot room designated for the care of high risk and critically ill women with invasive monitoring capabilities mounted at the bedside, as well as two portable hemodynamic monitors that can be used in any room. An ATL HDL 5000 ultrasound machine with color flow and pulsed Doppler capabilities is available. Three large operating rooms are located within the unit as well as a preoperative holding area, in which minor treatments such as decompression amniocentesis or breech version can be performed. Nursing stations are strategically located throughout the unit to streamline patient care. The labor and delivery unit is adjacent to the neonatal intensive care for ease of access.
Located one floor above the labor and delivery unit is the combined antepartum/postpartum unit with 28 private rooms (250 square feet each) and a newborn nursery (450 square feet) with 14 bassinets. Part of the central fetal monitoring system is 15 portable fetal monitors, connecting to hubs in each room. The nursing care in Labor and Delivery is provided by 35 full-time registered nurses, three scrub technicians and three unit secretaries. The antepartum/postpartum/nursery staff consists of 37 full-time RNs, six LPNs and three nurse aids with nine unit secretaries. In the adjacent medical school is a large wet laboratory with a refrigerated centrifuge and minus 70 degree freezers for study specimen processing and storage.
The UNC-affiliated Rex Hospital, expanded its programs and services for women with the opening of Rex Women’s Center in 2005. The Women’s Center includes the Rex Family Birth Center, a 40-bed maternity center. In addition to the 40 rooms, there is a fully equipped operating room for C-sections. The Birth Center is family-centered with specially trained staff, offering a comforting birth environment that is home-like, private and safe. Rex also has an 18-bed, Level III-A nursery with ability to care for babies down to 29-30 weeks’ gestation. Infants with more extensive medical care needs are transferred to either the WakeMed NICU or the UNC NICU, depending on individual conditions.
Annually there are ~4,000 deliveries at the UNC Women’s Hospital. Of these, ~3200 obstetrics patients (81%) initiate prenatal care at < 18 weeks’ gestation. An additional ~4800 babies are born each year at UNC Rex Hospital, with ~92% receiving prenatal care in the first trimester.
The Newborn Critical Care Center (NCCC) at The North Carolina Children’s Hospital (UNC)
The NCCC, which occupies the entire fourth floor of the North Carolina Children’s Hospital, is a state-of-the-art 20,400 square feet level IV facility with 48 intensive care and 10 intermediate care beds, including four isolation beds with the capacity for ventilator isolation (negative pressure). The NCCC is served by 11 board-certified attending neonatologists, 18 nurse practitioners, and more than 150 neonatal specialists who provide 24/7/365 coverage. A larger, multidisciplinary team of clinicians from N.C. Children’s Hospital, which includes social workers, pediatric pharmacists, respiratory care practitioners, dietitians, and physical and occupational therapists, complements the care provided by this core team. Our health care practitioners diagnose and treat about 900 newborns from more than 50 counties and throughout North Carolina each year. More than two-thirds of the newborns admitted to the NCCC annually are born at North Carolina Women’s Hospital, just a corridor away from the NCCC. The Pediatric Transport Team, part of Carolina Air Care, transports the remainder of infants to our hospital, many via helicopter that lands at the air-pad atop the adjacent UNC Neurosciences Hospital.
UNC Obstetric Ultrasound Unit
In 2019, 20,297 obstetric ultrasounds were performed at UNC clinics. The UNC Obstetric Ultrasound Unit is staffed by eight registered diagnostic medical sonographers under the on-site supervision of board certified maternal fetal medicine specialists. All are certified in fetal echocardiography and nuchal translucency. Our unit maintains American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine certification. Both sonographers and clinicians have expertise in obstetric ultrasound and are skilled in diagnosis and management of fetal anomalies. Our referral base is broad, encompassing much of central and eastern North Carolina, resulting in a broad range of anomalies diagnosed in higher numbers than seen in most ultrasound units.
Current equipment includes six HDI 5000 ATL ultrasound machines with color Doppler, pulsed Doppler, and 3D ultrasound; and one GE Voluson 730 with 4D capability. Two portable machines are also available to clinics, while a third machine resides in the emergency room. Computerized report generation allows digital storage of ultrasound images for documentation and study inclusion, as well as accurate retrieval of ultrasound findings for comparison and data retrieval. Merging records based on patient hospital identification number and initials achieves linkage with the UNC Perinatal Database. Information is available online to the physicians at UNC via a health system-wide integrated electronic medical record.
UNC also has an ultrasound unit in Raleigh located on the Rex Hospital campus in the UNC Specialty Women’s Center, directed by Dr. William Goodnight. The Rex unit receives referrals from many of the Rex private practices as well as western North Carolina, the AHEC and private practices delivering at WakeMed Hospital. This unit is held to the same standards as our UNC unit and is staffed by three registered diagnostic medical sonographers certified in fetal echocardiography and nuchal translucency. Annually, ~6000 obstetric ultrasounds are performed at Rex.
Inpatient Obstetric Ultrasound Services are also provided by MFM faculty at UNC Hospital. A GE Voluson s8 ultrasound, a GE Logiq P5 and a Sonosite portable ultrasound are located on Labor and Delivery, for vaginal or abdominal ultrasounds. The GE Voluson s8 machine has Doppler capability and superior imaging that allows detailed anatomy assessment and fetal procedures. These machines are available for triage assessments, biophysical profiles, amniotic fluid assessment, amniocentesis, intervention procedures including amnioreduction, fetal shunt placements, laser therapy, percutaneous umbilical blood sampling, and in utero fetal therapy. The Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology does not rely on the Department of Radiology for inpatient or outpatient obstetric or pelvic ultrasounds. Radiology residents receive training in obstetric and pelvic ultrasound from MFM and gynecology faculty.
Updated: 9/21/20
The Department has over 40 full-time faculty members providing expertise in all areas of radiology. The Department provides clinical diagnostic imaging, utilizing the most advanced imaging equipment available including: eight clinical MRI scanners (6x 1.5T, 2x 3.0T), nine clinical CT systems (including dual source and 128 slice systems), two multi-slice PET/CT, and clinical patient access to the BRIC PET/MR system. A variety of advanced image-guided, minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures such as radiofrequency, cryo and microwave ablation of tumors, uterine fibroid embolization, kyphoplasty, and occlusion of intracranial aneurysms are also available. The Department of Radiology has a fully integrated PACS system and a 3D imaging lab with advanced visualization software. Clinical scanners at UNC hospitals are ACR accredited for clinical use, and the clinical and research imaging equipment are NCI Centers of Quantitative Imaging Excellence (CQIE) qualified. At UNC Radiology, not only are we pioneers in pushing the boundaries of this exciting field, but we also take great pride in being leaders in providing the safest care available.
The main department is housed in a state-of-the-art facility completed in 2002. UNC Radiology also has a large presence (breast imaging and nuclear medicine) in the new North Carolina Cancer Hospital, completed in 2009. Research in the Department of Radiology is grouped into basic sciences and clinical. In the basic sciences, there are three main specific research areas: Breast Imaging, MRI research, Radiology Epidemiology, Translational Imaging Research. Clinical research in the Department is ongoing into: Cardiothoracic Diseases, Pediatric Diseases, Musculoskeletal Diseases, 3D Computer Rendering of MSK Joints, Cardiac Imaging and Cardiac Nuclear Medicine, PET/CT Imaging, Neurological Diseases, Abdominal and Pelvic Genito-urinary CT and MRI Ultrasound, Abdominal and Pelvic MRI, and Vascular Interventional Research. The department has 1000 square feet of dedicated clinical trials space within the newly constructed Marsico Hall for other outpatient x-ray imaging trials. This space includes full clinical trial support, changing rooms and private consultation rooms for consent. It currently houses the Digital Chest Tomosynthesis system to be used in this study. A dedicated DICOM reader study viewing system is available with Dual 3 MP monitors. 5 MP monitors are also available for breast reader studies.
UNC Radiology provides the foundation for the imaging needs in conjunction with the Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC), which will propel research into the imaging sciences. The BRIC was formed in 2005 to support image-based biomedical research across the UNC System. The BRIC is a statewide resource serving researchers across the state of North Carolina in a central facility that handles the acquisition, processing, analysis, storage, and retrieval of images. The center is currently located one block south of the UNC Hospital building complex and houses both human and animal imaging equipment.
The Department of Radiology is equipped with four MRI machines: Siemens 1.5T Vision (Conventional), Siemens 1.5T Symphony (Short Bore), Siemens 1.5T Sonata (Short Bore), and a Siemens 1.5T Avanto (Short Bore); four CT scanners: two Siemens Sensation 16 Multi-detector Scanners and two Siemens Somatom Plus four Spiral Scanners; seven ultrasound machines: six Sequoias and one IU22 ultrasound machine (with 3D and 4D capability); two Siemens fluoroscopy machines; and one PET scanner: Siemens Biograph single slice PET/CT. The Department of Respiratory Therapy provides one MVP-10 Infant MRI Ventilator. The NCCC has a GE AMX 4 portable x-ray machine that resides permanently in the unit that uses digital film, a Fuji SmartCR digital film processing station in the unit, and an AGFA IMPAX system that displays the films. Thus, the time from completion of the film to viewing the image is less than 10 minutes. Three FTE Pediatric Radiologists are available for consultation 24 hours/day.
Updated: 10/2/16
The Department of Social Medicine is an academic unit that incorporates the long-standing interest of the University of North Carolina and the School of Medicine in community medicine and health care delivery systems. It supports 19 primary faculty members and 7 permanent staff. The mission of the Department is to inform the work and thought of physicians on: (1) the social conditions and characteristics of patients, the social causes of illness and the social barriers to effective care; and (2) the social responsibilities of the medical profession. Members of the faculty apply their various disciplines to problems of the poor, elderly, chronically ill, and other categories of people with special health and medical care needs; questions of allocation, distribution, organization and financing of health resources; and health and medical care problems of North Carolina. The Department carries out its mission through a variety of educational, research and service activities in several venues and almost always in interdisciplinary collaboration throughout the Chapel Hill campus. The Department’s research and on-going interests include: cultural anthropology and health, epidemiology, health economics, history of medicine and public health, literature and medicine, medical care organization, biomedical ethics, medical sociology, medicine and the law, preventive medicine, and public policy in health and medical care. Social Medicine is a bridge between medicine and public health, and between medicine and the arts and humanities disciplines and unlike other departments in the University, serves as an interdisciplinary department, and employing faculty and researchers from across the campus and beyond to accomplish its mission.
Updated: 10/2/16
The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies seeks to expand the process of knowledge production by considering what it means to take gender, race, class, and sexuality seriously in explanations of the world. It provides a methodology that is interdisciplinary, multicultural, and feminist. The goal of the department is to offer courses and programming that take full account of the broadest spectrum of issues concerning women and gender in the US and globally. It supports 8 primary faculty members, 10 adjunct faculty, and 2 permanent staff. The department houses the distinctive Women and Science Program, directed by Women’s and Gender Studies and Anthropology professor, Dr. Silvia Tomášková. The program’s mandate is to work with the science departments on the UNC campus to attract and retain more women and minority students and faculty in the sciences and mathematics and to encourage greater attention to gender, women’s, and feminist issues in these fields.
Updated: 10/2/16
Divisions
One of nine divisions in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UNC Global Women’s Health (GWH) is a unique group of clinicians, researchers, and public health professionals working to improve the health of women in the world’s poorest countries. Led by Dr. Jeff Stringer, the division currently has 11 faculty members and 2 fellows, based in Chapel Hill, Lusaka, Lilongwe, and Johannesburg. Collectively, this group has raised over $200 million in funding for its work from government and private foundation sources. The core competencies of its faculty reflect the diversity of women’s health issues worldwide: safe obstetrics, preterm birth, obstetric fistula, family planning, and women’s cancers. Because of the high prevalence of HIV found in sub-Saharan Africa, a geographic focus for the division’s ongoing work, issues of HIV prevention and treatment (including prevention of mother-to-child transmission) have also been heavily emphasized.
Updated: 3/12/2019
The Division of Infectious Disease (ID) at UNC is one of the largest in the United States, with a growing faculty of nearly 50 physicians and researchers, and more than 200 support staff. Division faculty members are responsible for a General ID Consult Service, an Immunocompromised Host ID Consult Service, an inpatient ward service, and a clinic at UNC Hospitals that cares for nearly 1,600 patients with HIV infection. The ID Division provides medical leadership of the HIV/STD Program for North Carolina, the Wake County Health Department, the Durham County Health Department, and the North Carolina Corrections Facilities. Clinical, teaching and research activities are conducted in each of these venues. The Division has thrived in STI and HIV research and is the only institution to retain a continuously NIH-funded STI Cooperative Research Center (29 years) and the UNC STD/HIV Training Program, which has had continuous NIH T32 support for 39 years.
Updated: 10/3/16
The animal facilities available at UNC-CH are provided through the Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine (DLAM). The DLAM supports research in animal facilities on and off the UNC-CH campus. Federal and foundation funding sponsors over $60 million in essential animal research on the UNC-CH campus conducted by the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Public Health, Pharmacy as well as the Departments of Biology, Chemistry and Psychology. The DLAM supplies daily care to approximately 65,000 animals (98% of which are rodents) in animal facilities totaling 85,000 square feet of space and over 200 animal rooms. Facilities vary from 1,500 to 20,000 net square feet in size, with the majority in the 5,000 to 14,000 net square foot range. As a result of this decentralized approach, most investigators find their animals conveniently located in buildings housing their laboratory space. The animal facility is Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) approved and under the supervision of John Bradfield, DVM, PhD. Four veterinarians, one post-doctoral veterinarian and four veterinary technicians provide the bulk of the Division’s animal health care services. In addition, over sixty laboratory animal technicians furnish a humane, healthy and comfortable environment for the animals under their charge, exceeding all prevailing national standards for care. Support facilities are present within UNC-CH including an animal models core, mouse histopathology core, animal clinical chemistry and gene expression facility, metabolic phenotyping core, among others.
Updated: 11/1/16
The UNC Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM) offers obstetrical care for women with pregnancies that are complicated by maternal disease or problems with the fetus. The Division is home to 17 faculty members and 6 fellows. The MFM Division is housed in an office suite within the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology on the third floor of the Old Clinic Building. Each MFM physician has a private office equipped with computers and telephones. In addition, the Division has a conference room equipped with a state of the art LCD projector and high definition monitor. The Center for Maternal and Infant Health is co-located within the division. The Center has approximately 500 square feet of office space. UNC is a member of the MFMU Network, which was established by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in 1986 and includes 12 clinical centers in the US. The MFMU research office (approximately 300 square feet) is located within the Women’s Hospital, and outpatient obstetrics is located adjacent to Labor and Delivery. All offices described in this section are within easy walking distance (<300 yards) of each other.
The Division of MFM maintains personal computers with Intel dual core processors and a minimum of 2.99 GB RAM. These computers are used by the MFM physicians and support personnel. All personal computers in the UNC network are linked to a sophisticated information technology system maintained by the University of North Carolina via fiber optic cable allowing the high speed access to the Internet and the UNC Computing Center. This centralized computer facility consists of a SUN ES-1000 with 32 400 MHz processors and 16 GB of main memory. Internally, the MFM Division possesses an impressive inventory of computing power configured to accommodate the most demanding of research designs. All computers are networked to Novell and Linux file servers, an arrangement that allows users to exchange files and to print to networked peripheral devices. The servers also function as repositories for shared applications and administrative and project-related information. The MFM Division maintains a full complement of sophisticated current software applications that are used for statistical analysis, project management, graphics, web publishing, data management, and databases.
Other office equipment is readily available for network use including 17 laser jet printers (two in MFM offices, two in the Center for Maternal and Infant Health, three on Labor and Delivery, three in the Ultrasound Unit, and seven in the Clinic area), six copiers (one in MFM, one in the Center for Maternal & Infant Health, two in L&D, and three in the obstetrical clinics), and five facsimile machine (one in MFM, one in the Center for Maternal and Infant Health, one in L&D, and two in the obstetrical clinics).
Updated: 12/16/20
The Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine provides care for critically ill newborns and premature infants in North Carolina Children’s Hospital’s Newborn Critical Care Center (NCCC). The NCCC is a 58-bed facility served by 11 board-certified attending neonatologists, 18 nurse practitioners, and more than 150 neonatal specialists from UNC Hospitals. The Center averages 800 admissions annually, providing care to newborns from over 50 counties in North Carolina. The newborns we care for are typically born either prematurely (i.e., before the end of the 37th week of pregnancy) or with life-threatening birth defects or medical conditions. The NCCC is a regional referral center for advanced therapies, including extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), nitric oxide therapy, high frequency ventilation and the latest surgical techniques.
The Division of Neonatal–Perinatal Medicine is also committed to improving neonatal care by engaging in clinical research. Our faculty have diverse research interests and are involved in national and global research. We work collaboratively with the Duke Neonatal Perinatal Research Unit as a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Neonatal Research Network (NRN) site and participate in the Pediatric Trials Network (PTN).
The Division occupies six sets of offices/rooms on the fourth floor of the UNC Memorial Hospital building as well as some individual faculty offices and laboratories in the adjacent buildings. The fourth floor of the UNC Memorial Hospital and the NC Children’s Hospital have contiguous hallways that provide easy access to the NCCC facilities. The administrative suite for the Division (Suite 4018) contains six, 167-276 square foot offices. These house four individual faculty members, an office for an administrative assistant, and an office for the neonatal fellows. There is also a 288 square foot central area with modular furniture work spaces for a full-time secretary and one accountant. Centrally shared resources include one laser printer, one scanner, one photocopy machine, and a fax machine. Each office or work area includes at least one fully networked PC workstation (9 total) and telephone. Faculty computers also are equipped with data analysis and statistical software packages available through the University’s mainframe computers (see above). All computers are connected via the local area network to the University mainframe computers.
The Division’s classroom (Room 4013) is used for meetings and educational conferences. With 180 square feet it can seat 16 and has a blackboard, projection screen, slide projector and VCR/monitor. This space is augmented by the conference room in the NCCC (see above) that adds teleconferencing capabilities. Having two conference rooms/classrooms will facilitate scheduling the multiple ongoing administrative and research meetings, formal didactics, and educational conferences in which the Division is involved. A 320 square foot suite (Suite 4011) has two offices and an anteroom. Each work area is equipped with a networked PC workstation and printer similar to the Divisional office equipment and a telephone. Room 4010 is an undivided 192 square foot space subdivided with modular furniture into work stations for 6 Neonatal Nurse Practitioners. There are two centrally located PC workstations and telephones. A 96 square foot office (Room 4009) currently contains two PC workstations and telephones for a Neonatal Nurse Practitioners. Room 4008 is a 160 square foot room is used to support clinical research. It has two desk spaces, storage units, file cabinets and two computer stations with network connections. This area for support of clinical research and is used for research personnel when the support space adjacent to the NCCC (see below) cannot accommodate all the office needs of these personnel.
The Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine is linked to the UNC system via the School of Medicine’s intranet connections. Individual computing capabilities for the Division and Center are included in the description below. Individual computers and local systems such as printers for the Division and Special Infant Care Center are maintained by the Department of Pediatrics’ computer support service which has three dedicated staff. They provide hardware and software support, and same-day technological support for most computing problems.
The Division has 30 computers, 15 of which have at least a 2.1 gigahertz Pentium 4 processor with 2 GB of RAM. All systems use Windows 7 operating system and include the following common software: Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Hummingbird TN3270, Adobe Acrobat, Java (RTEngine), and Symantec Antivirus. In addition, the statistical programs STATA, SAS, and SPSS as well as Endnote, a software tool for publishing and managing bibliographies, are available on an as needed basis. The UNC Health Sciences Library electronic resources are available on or off-campus. Finally, each individual is able to log on to his/her computer from any computer in the world via the internet using a secure remote software package.
Backup and data replication: Backing up the K:\ drive are server class 400GB SAS drives in a RAID5 configuration. These disk drives are actually four hard drives that function as a single large drive. This means that if one of the physical drives crash, the other three continue without a problem. When the drive is replaced, the other three will rebuild it. If two drives die, the technology is able to reconstruct the data without loss. Tape backups on the K: drive occur at 7:00pm nightly. Full Backups run every Friday at 7:00pm. This backup collects all files that are present in the K:\shared, K:\users, and K:\apps folders. Differential Backups, which backs up everything that has been changed since last full backup (on Friday), are run nightly (Sun-Thurs). The Tapes are maintained in an Exabyte tape library unit that holds 20-400-800GB LTO3 tapes. Data on backup tapes are preserved for about two-four weeks before they can be overwritten. Periodically, at about six month to one year intervals, a tape is archived for historical purposes.
Updated: 3/12/2019
The Division’s ten providers evaluate and treat pelvic floor dysfunction including urinary tract, vaginal, and colorectal dysfunction; pelvic organ prolapse; and complex benign conditions involving the pelvic organs and musculature such as fistulas and congenital anomalies. The Division has two office locations which optimizes subject recruitment. The Raleigh and Hillsborough offices are brand new facilities, each having 10-12 exam rooms, 2 procedure rooms, 3-6 physician consult rooms, and a large conference room.
The Division is housed in an office suite within the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology on the third floor of the Old Clinic Building. Each physician has a private office equipped with computers and telephones. The Department maintains personal computers with Intel dual core processors and a minimum of 8 GB RAM. These computers are used by the physicians and support personnel. Each is connected to the Departmental and UNC Networks. Each clinic exam room, consultation room, and operative suite within the UNC Women’s Hospital has a personal computer dedicated exclusively to record-keeping. These computers are linked to the Clinical Work Station of the UNC Hospitals, making hospital census, laboratory results, operative and radiology reports, discharge summaries, and clinic notes available online.
All personal computers are linked to a sophisticated information technology system maintained by the University of North Carolina via fiber optic cable allowing high-speed access to the Internet and the UNC Computing Center. This centralized computer facility consists of a SUN ES-1000 with 32 400 MHz processors and 16 GB of main memory. Internally, the Department possesses an impressive inventory of computing power configured to accommodate the most demanding of research designs. All computers are networked to Novell and Linux file servers, an arrangement that allows users to exchange files and to print to networked peripheral devices. The servers also function as repositories for shared applications and administrative and project-related information. The Department maintains a full complement of sophisticated current software applications that are used for statistical analysis, project management, graphics, web publishing, data management, and databases.
Updated: 3/12/2019
Established in 1993, UNC Horizons is a substance use disorder treatment program for women of childbearing age, including pregnant and parenting women, and is a division of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Horizons offers outpatient substance use disorder treatment at sites in Carrboro and Raleigh, NC, and long-term residential treatment in Chapel Hill for women and their children. Horizons also operates its own licensed childcare center, the UNC Horizons Child Development Center, which is co-located with the outpatient treatment site in Carrboro. Programming focuses on addiction education, relapse prevention, parenting, healthy relationships, health and safety, trauma recovery, and job readiness. Horizons offers group treatment, individual therapy, child clinical services, prenatal and postpartum care, pediatric care, psychiatry services, and case management. In its OB/GYN and psychiatry clinics Horizons offers Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD). Over the past few years Horizons has also expanded its programming to focus on providing services to women in incarcerated settings and helping to connect them to treatment and resources as they leave incarceration. Across all of its programs Horizons serves approximately 250 women each year and can house 32 women with their children at a time in the residential programs. Women who complete the residential programs typically stay in the program for nine months. Organization-wide Horizons currently employs 59 staff members.
Horizons is recognized at both the state and national levels as an exemplary treatment program for women. SAMHSA has highlighted Horizons as a model treatment program, and in 2022 the Pew Charitable Trust featured Horizons on its website as one of the nation’s best practice models. Horizons has a long track record of helping women to achieve long-term recovery and healthy lives, allowing them to achieve their goals and re-establish relationships with their children. For decades Horizons has also served as a site for NIH and other funded research and evaluation projects, and has a research team trained in research methodology and GCP. The connection that Horizons has with UNC also allows the organization to help train the next generation of providers for this extremely high-risk population of women and children. Learners from many fields, including social work, obstetrics, psychiatry, pediatrics, psychology, nursing, and human development, complete internships and rotations at Horizons.
Facilities
Horizons has residential programs in Chapel Hill that contain 30 treatment apartments for women and their children, as well as office and treatment spaces. The Horizons outpatient site in Raleigh, NC contains office and treatment spaces. The support for this proposed project will primarily occur from the outpatient treatment site in Carrboro, NC at 410 North Greensboro Street. Horizons began delivering services in this newly build space on May 1, 2017. The program occupies approximately 12,000 square feet at this site, which includes administrative and staff offices, the outpatient treatment program, medical clinic rooms and the licensed childcare center. Specific spaces include:
First Floor:
- Three group meeting/treatment rooms, which can be combined for large events or activities
- Kitchen for cooking classes and functions
- Restrooms
- Client lunchroom
- Food pantry, clothes closet, donations room
- 5 childcare classrooms
- Childcare center Director’s office
- Teacher office with multiple workstations
- Childcare kitchen
- Laundry room for childcare center
Second Floor:
- One large and one small conference room
- 23 staff offices/ individual therapy rooms
- Workspaces for trainees and interns
- Child therapy room with two-way mirrors
- Kitchen/ breakroom/ work room
- 3 medical clinic examination rooms
- Clean/dirty linen rooms to support medical clinic spaces
- Reception waiting room
- Restroom
Across its sites Horizons owns approximately 60 computers for staff use, and a fleet of minibuses, large passenger vans, and minivans to transport patients and their children.
Updated: 6/29/22
General UNC & Research
Unlike many universities in which the medical center is miles distant from main campus, the UNC Academic Affairs campus and the Health Affairs campus are contiguous. This proximity fosters ongoing intellectual collaboration between faculty investigators from a wide variety of disciplines, as noted in this application. Among the disciplines under the Academic Affairs division, a number of departments have high national rankings. According to the 2020 US News and World Report’s “Best Colleges,” the departments of Library Science, Chemistry, Social Sciences, Public Affairs, Statistics, Psychology, Social Work, Business, and Computer Science, are all ranked in the top 25 for the quality of their graduate programs. Overall, UNC ranks fifth among US public universities and 28th among all institutions of higher learning. UNC has a strong presence nationally in the medical/academic research community based on national rankings for research universities in the US. UNC ranks 11th among US universities in research support, with > $1 billion in research grants and contracts in fiscal years 2020. More than half of this funding is for multi-investigator projects. UNC-Chapel Hill was fifth among leading private and public research universities for the level of federal funding ($701 million) devoted to research and development in all fields during fiscal 2018 (NSF, 2018). Carolina also has an exceptionally strong program of postdoctoral training, with more than 1,200 postdoctoral fellows who have been attracted to Chapel Hill because of its research strengths. According to the most current data available (FY 2018), Carolina is 15th in federal obligations for fellowships, traineeships, and training grants.
UNC is known for its academic exceptionalism. It is one of only three public universities that ranked in the top 50 in all nine measures by the Center for Measuring University Performance (CMUP, 2018).Twenty two faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and 12 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Two full-time UNC faculty members have been awarded Nobel laureates: Drs. Oliver Smithies and Aziz Sancar. In 2007, Dr. Oliver Smithies, the Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Smithies, along with Mario R. Capecchi of the University of Utah’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Sir Martin J. Evans of the United Kingdom, shared the 2007 Nobel Prize “for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells.” Smithies passed away in 2017 after more than two decades as a faculty member at UNC. In 2015, Aziz Sancar, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Tomas Lindahl of the Francis Crick Institute and Paul Modrich of Duke University, for his work mapping the cellular mechanisms that underlie DNA repair. Aziz Sancar has been a professor and UNC since 1982. UNC is the 21st most cited university in the world (Center for World University Rankings, 2018-2019).
Updated: 9/17/20
Each Division, Department, and Center utilizes its own office space on the campus of UNC-CH, all of which are located a short walking distance or campus bus ride from one another. This unique campus layout maximizes critical linkages between the Divisions, Departments, Hospital, and University. The office resources include communications using state-of-the-art equipment with the UNC-CH Information Technology Services and an intranet of micro-computers used for word and data processing, presentation development, and desktop publishing. There is immediate, 24-hour electronic communication with co-workers located throughout the world via its Internet video conferencing. In addition, laboratory space is available to each establishment conducting clinical research.
Updated: 10/3/16
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), founded in 1789, is the flagship campus of the first public university in the United States. It occupies a 729-acre campus, with approximately 30,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students and 3,900 faculty. A critical aspect of UNC is its culture of collaboration. UNC-Chapel Hill is a highly collaborative single campus with strong multidisciplinary intellectual cooperation. The University is one of fewer than ten universities, public or private, with all five health affairs schools (Nursing, Public Health, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry) co-located on the same campus and in close geographic proximity to an extensive cadre of undergraduate and graduate programs, many multidisciplinary research centers and institutes, and the UNC Health Care System. The University is ranked prominently by national publications in categories such as academic quality, affordability, diversity, engagement, and global presence. U.S. News and World Report’s 2021 “America’s Best Colleges Ranking” guide ranked UNC 5th among the nation’s public universities for the 19th consecutive year in a row and 28th overall among both public and private universities . UNC thrives in research, with more than $1 billion in annual research and development expenditure; in the 2019 National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey, UNC ranked fifth in the nation in federal research expenditures. UNC is ranked 17th among all universities and 6th among public universities in NIH funding, receiving more than . All six basic science departments in the UNC School of Medicine (Pharmacology, Biochemistry & Biophysics, Microbiology & Immunology, Biomedical Engineering, Genetics, and Cell Biology & Physiology) and three clinical departments (Obstetrics & Gynecology, Family Medicine, and Emergency Medicine) ranked among the top 10 in the country in NIH funding in 2019. Research at UNC has quadrupled over the past 20 years, making Carolina the 11th largest overall US research university.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the UNC Health Care System has a wide variety of resources that make this an ideal environment for conducting this research. Our Laboratory, Clinical, Computing, Office, and Other resources are described below.
Updated: 9/17/20
UNC is one of only four public universities that have all five schools of the health-related disciplines (Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Nursing, and Public Health) located on a single, contiguous campus. Additionally, UNC Academic Affairs campus and the Health Affairs campus are within close walking distance. This arrangement encourages the formal and informal exchanges that enhance the concepts and resources of individual researchers, often resulting in new, cross-disciplinary collaborations. Each of these schools has attained a position of national leadership in its respective field. In the 2021 US News and World Report Graduate School Rankings: the School of Pharmacy was ranked #1; the Gillings School of Global Public Health was ranked #2; the School of Nursing was ranked #3; and the School of Medicine was ranked #23. The Schools of Public Health and Pharmacy were among the top three performing units in NIH grant and contract dollars received by the faculty at UNC, garnering $109.6 million, and $19.3 million in fiscal year 2019. The School of Medicine ranked #17 in NIH funding ($316.3 million), with $510 million in funding from all sources in 2019. In FY 2020, led by the School of Medicine, these five schools combined received more than $1 billion in research funds. When faculty members conduct research at UNC, they collaborate across disciplines, departments, and schools, and partner with scientists at other institutions in North Carolina and worldwide. In FY According to the 2018 HERD survey, UNC ranked 4th in the US for federally funded health sciences research investment, with $35 million devoted to clinical trials research.
Updated: 9/21/20
Part of the UNC Library system, the UNC Health Sciences Library (HSL) is the primary library for the UNC-CH Schools of Public Health, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy, and UNC Hospitals. The HSL has superb staff (60 full-time positions), facilities, and collections, and is considered to be among the best medical school libraries in the United States and Canada. The HSL serves the health information needs of the entire university with more than 176,307 print and non-print titles and access to over 200 electronic databases. There is an exceptional collection of over 10,000 electronic serial publications, over 14,000 electronic books, over 4,600 streaming video titles, and over 340,000 total print volumes. The number of electronic resources held has more than doubled since the 1997-98 academic year. The HSL is a Resource Library for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, meaning that it participates in national and international interlibrary loan consortia. This participation allows the Library to borrow materials quickly from other libraries around the nation and the world. Hundreds of electronic journals and databases such as PubMed, CINAHL, ISI Citation Databases, BIOSIS, PsycINFO, eFacts, Lexi-Comp are available through the Library’s website. Faculty, staff, and students can access electronic resources from home. Information about other resources and databases can be obtained at the library’s Internet Desk, which is staffed on a full-time basis by technical experts. The HSL staff is available to assist in complex literature searches. Additionally, the HSL is a participant in faculty and student education related to the retrieval of electronic information and use of specific computer applications software.
The six-story building underwent extensive renovation, completed in early 2005. The HSL is fully wireless, with guest wireless access, and equipped with 64 public computer workstations, 20 small group study rooms, 2 teaching labs with a total of 45 workstations, 3 video conferencing facilities, 2 well-equipped public conference rooms, and a coffee shop. The Research Hub @ HSL, opened in 2015, offers video/web conferencing technologies, large screen displays paired with a variety of data analysis and visualization software, and an event space with web streaming capability. The library seats 578 people (401 open seats, 35 café, 50 classroom seats, 65 conference room seats, and 27 Research Hub seats).
HSL is ranked among the top academic health sciences libraries in the nation, and it is one of the largest of its type in the US. It is known for providing innovative electronic services to special clientele including public health practitioners and off campus students, and for its digital library development. Librarians offer a variety of additional services including customized literature searches and electronic applications development. The library supports internship opportunities for advanced health information professional training. In addition to providing users with an array of informational, instructional, and research resources, the libraries offer a wide range of campus-wide reference and referral services, most of which are now available remotely via the Internet or campus computer networks.
Updated: 3/6/2019
The UNC Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) handles everything from email and individual desktop/laptops to large research projects, administrative offices, electronic medical records, and communications services that include a campus data network, fiber and microwave technology, and support for smartphones, mobile and wireless devices. They strive to provide a state-of-the-art environment that will support the highest level of multidisciplinary research and help UNC-Chapel Hill become the premier research university in the U.S.
ITS has major computing equipment that is available to researchers through the University’s central services. These include: a large multi-processor workstation cluster running the Unix operating system with access to terabytes of storage; a robotic tape cartridge system with multiple drives used by a variety of centrally-provided machines for backup and archival; an IBM 3090 computer running MVS/ESA with JES2 and VM/CMS both under VM/XA (a large water-cooled mainframe with a vector (supercomputer) facility); 52 IBM 3380-type disk drives (at least 80 billion bytes); 1 STK 4400 automated cartridge system that is a robotic retrieval system capable of storing 6,000 high-density tapes and delivering them to users within 30 seconds; several local 3174/3274 controllers; 9 STC 3670 tape drives (6250bpi); computer tape backup in separate buildings. Also, UNC has 10 megabit per second switched ethernet to the desktop, 100 megabit connections to all campus buildings, and gigabit connections to the larger Internet as an early adopter of Internet II. The North Carolina Supercomputer Center is located in the Research Triangle Park between Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham. The Supercomputer Center has a Cray Y-MP/432 with associated equipment. The UNC-Chapel Hill data network currently supports more than 40,000 users with approximately 90,000 connected devices in more than 300 buildings with high-speed interconnectivity between buildings. The core routing architecture consists of a redundant infrastructure with 40 Gbps inter-switch connectivity and multiple 10 Gbps links to redundant border routers. The campus network has more than 4000 Ethernet switches and more than 5000 Wi-Fi access points.
UNC connects to the statewide network, NCREN (North Carolina Research and Education Network), that provides connectivity to all schools in the UNC system, all K-12 schools in the state of North Carolina, many private colleges and universities, community colleges, state government, and the North Carolina TeleHealth Network (NCTN). Through NCREN, UNC-Chapel Hill connects via IPv4 and IPv6 to Internet2 for connectivity to other universities across the country and to multiple ISPs for commodity Internet services.
An extensive library of software is available on the UNC campus via site licenses or volume purchase agreements. The collection includes all the common statistical analysis languages and packages (SAS, Stata, S-Plus, SPSS-X, BMDP, SUDAAN, etc.); development languages (C++, C, Java, PL/1, Fortran, etc.) Packages such as SAS are available on multiple platforms. An analysis can scale from the smaller capacities of a personal computer, then on to the larger capacities of a departmental Unix workstation and finally to the multiple-processor workstations and clusters provided centrally by the campus information technology organization.
Client Services, a group within the UNC School of Medicine Office of Information Systems, provides computer support and problem resolution to all members of the School of Medicine. Computer support consists of telephone triage and ad-hoc solutions for walk-in and deskside support as well as student and faculty laptop support. Client Services provides several free services including LDAP email accounts with 20 megabytes of server storage space, Lyris lists, installation & upgrade of supported medical school software, access to the Internet and network connectivity.
Educational Technology Group (ETG) provides web, digital media, and video conferencing services. Their staff includes professional web designers, web application developers, video producers, and video engineers. ETG works with faculty to develop curricular materials for the online curriculum. ETG also develops non-curricular projects including websites, database applications, and videos/digital media on a fee-for-service basis. The Network Services staff provides the technical support for the School of Medicine network. They configure, install and monitor the electronic switches that make up the School of Medicine network backbone in concert with ITS Networking. They also install and activate new network ports throughout the School of Medicine. The Systems Group provides support for centralized computing resources for the School of Medicine in support of the School’s mission. The Systems Group manages School wide resources including host name registration, web services, and electronic mail; and local resources such as departmental file and print services. The Systems group consists of two sub-units that include Microsoft Systems Administration and Unix Systems Administration.
The Research Computing division of UNC-Chapel Hill provides expert scientific and information technology consultants and cyberinfrastructure to the scholarly and research community of the university. The consultation staff includes nine scientists and scholars who have experience across a wide range of disciplinary communities from the physical sciences to the life sciences, from the computational sciences to clinical research, from social/behavioral sciences to the humanities. Cyberinfrastructure includes two large computational clusters. One cluster is designed specifically for high-performance computing needs with more than 11000 conventional cores where each node has 512-GB memory (8052 at 2.4GHz, 2000 Skylake core) and 1440 Knights Landing cores, parallel scratch filesystem, and low-latency interconnect fabric (Infiniband EDR). The second cluster is designed specifically for high-throughput and data-intensive processing needs: it contains more than 6000 cores (each node minimum of 256-GB memory), including five (5) large 3-TB memory nodes, thirty (30) Skylake nodes each with 750-GB memory, and nodes for “Big Data” workloads, accessing 3-PB of shared high performance storage. With respect to GPUs, Longleaf includes both consumer-grade and enterprise-grade cards. For consumer-grade GPUs, Longleaf includes five (5) nodes each with 8 Nvidia 1080GTX cards, comprising over 100,000 CUDA cores). Longleaf includes sixteen (16) nodes each with four (4) Nvidia Volta GPUs with NVLink—totaling 480 double precision TFLOP/s; or 960 single precision TFLOP/s; or 7680 Tensor TFLOP/s). In their own special purpose cluster, there are three Nvidia DGX-1 boxes (each has 8 Voltas with NVlink) and a DGX workstation (having 4 Voltas with NVlink)—adding 210 double precision TFLOP/s; or 420 single precision TFLOP/s; or 3360 Tensor TFLOP/s. For permanent storage, Research Computing offers more than 5-PB cluster mounted via NFS and 11-PB of active archive. For smaller scale needs Research Computing provides two virtual desktop solutions: (i) VCL, a self-service private cloud for virtual scientific workstations; (ii) SRW, a Secure Research Workstation enclave for computing on sensitive and regulated data per NIST-800 controls (with secure file transfer solutions). Cyberinfrastructure administration (i.e., nine systems administrators) and consultation is available at no cost to researchers. With respect to cyberinfrastructure, Research Computing provides an institutional allocation for each element and incremental charges for resources above that allocation. The division’s aim is to ensure that research efforts have a stable, consistent, available, and expert, resource for all phases of the research lifecycle.
Two recent major implementations within the IT network at UNC are 1) the Epic electronic medical record system within UNC Health Care, and 2) ConnectCarolina, a multi-phased project to develop and implement a fully integrated administrative infrastructure for the University. Both systems are now live, and clearly demonstrate UNC’s commitment to excellence in information technology support of the many missions of the University.
Updated: 3/6/2019
The primary purpose of the Office of Clinical Trials (OCT) is to facilitate the conduct of clinical trials at UNC. The OCT is dedicated to advancing high quality clinical trial research in accordance UNC’s educational, research, clinical care and community service mission. The OCT serves as a central resource for UNC faculty, staff and departments involved in clinical trials research and for sponsors seeking to conduct clinical trials at UNC by serving as the point of contact for questions or issues related to clinical trials. OCT is responsible for the administrative, regulatory, and institutional requirements to establish and conduct clinical research at UNC, which is supported through contracts with private industry and other entities. The OCT provides assistance and consultation in budget development and preparation; develops and provides education and training on the requirements and procedures related to the conduct of clinical research; assists researchers, staff and departments with clinical trial project development; serves as an expert resource for information on the issues and requirements for the conduct of clinical research; develops and implements programs and initiatives, based on monitoring and assessment, to enhance the quality of clinical research and support regulatory compliance; and provides oversight and assistance with registration of clinical trial information and posting of results as appropriate in clinicaltrials.gov. To facilitate and streamline the startup, conduct and administration of clinical trials, the OCT strives to standardize the processes for clinical trials to ensure consistency, efficiency, and compliance with Federal, State and University requirements; identify and/or support development of new clinical research opportunities in collaboration with our clinical research teams; and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration for clinical research and incorporate available resources throughout the University and UNC Health Care.
Updated 3/7/2019
The OHRE is responsible for ethical and regulatory oversight of research at the UNC that involves human subjects. The OHRE administers, supports, and guides the work of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and all related activities. Any research involving human subjects proposed by faculty, staff, or students must be reviewed and approved by an IRB before research may begin, and before related grants may be funded. The OHRE and the IRBs are critical components of the coordinated Human Research Protection Program, which serves to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects. All components of this program must work together to ensure institutional compliance with ethical principles and regulatory requirements. The OHRE provides a significant number of services to the academic community including: 1) Integrated oversight of ethical and regulatory issues in human subjects research conducted at UNC Chapel Hill; 2) Effective and efficient IRB review, with expertise of more than 70 members across six IRBs and proactive consultation and training; 3) Development of common tools and resources, including online application forms for all IRBs, and the automatic creation of informed consent documents through the online process; 4) OHRE web site and campus-wide help desk; 5) Online system for managing and tracking protocols; 6) Facilitation and strengthening of links to other entities involved in oversight of human research at UNC Chapel Hill; 7) Provision of additional resources to improve services and functioning, such as compliance and monitoring, training and education, information services and administration; 8) Achievement of accreditation for UNC through the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP).
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has committed to uphold regulatory and ethical standards through a Federal Wide Assurance approved by the federal Office for Human Research Protections and our agreement is FWA4801. OHRE and the IRBs are guided by Standard Operating Procedures. An Advisory
Committee with broad representation across campus also provides counsel to OHRE. The Biomedical IRB, formerly School of Medicine IRB, reviews research involving the School of Medicine, School of Pharmacy, UNC Hospitals, and research in other units that involves biomedical interventions. Expertise is focused on medical, surgical, physiological or pharmacological studies and includes research with drugs, devices, counseling, or other interventions.
Updated: 3/7/2019
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill academic and research communities benefit from a library system that perennially ranks among the best research libraries in North America. Nearly three dozen libraries support the University’s academic and professional programs. Their combined collections exceed 4M print volumes, 3M government publications and 14M manuscripts. A network of libraries and reading rooms across the campus supports the University of North Carolina’s academic, research, and professional programs. More than three hundred library staff members provide library services to Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff as well as researchers from throughout North Carolina and across the globe. The combined book and serial volumes held exceeds 8,200,000 (including 1.5 million e-books); 5.2 million microforms; 1.6 million government publications; 496,684 audiovisuals; 287,600 maps; and 2.4 million graphic items. UNC’s Southern Historical Collection, with more than 24 million unique items, is the largest collection anywhere of materials that document the region. In terms of subject scope, campus libraries cover most areas of the fine arts, biomedical and physical sciences, humanities, law, and social sciences.
The University Library, also known as the Academic Affairs Library, consists of the Walter Royal Davis Library, the main library that principally serves the humanities and social sciences; the Robert B. House Undergraduate Library that includes the major reserve reading materials and the Media Resources Center; the Louis Round Wilson Library, a special collections facility that includes the Manuscripts, Maps, and Rare Book collections, the North Carolina Collection and gallery; and nearly a dozen branch libraries covering art, biology, chemistry, geological sciences, information and library science, math/physics, marine sciences, music, and city and regional planning. The Health Sciences Library, the Katherine R. Everett Law Library, and several independent libraries, including, for example, the Carolina Population Center Library, Highway Safety Research Center Library, and Park Library of Journalism and Mass Communication complete the campus network.
The Library is a member of the Association for Research Libraries, a non-profit organization operated and maintained by its participating institutions for the sole purpose of increasing the library research materials available to its readers. The UNC-CH Library system also participates in the Triangle Research Libraries Network, a library consortium involving UNC-CH, North Carolina State University, Duke University, and North Carolina Central University, allowing UNC faculty, staff, and students to borrow materials from the other university libraries.
Updated: 3/7/2019
Hospitals & Clinics
The Women’s Hospital opened in the fall of 2000 with increased capacity for the neonatal intensive care, neonatal intermediate care, and pediatric intermediate care units. The replacement facility has allowed the UNC Health Care System to bring into a single structure nearly all resources dedicated to the provision of health care services for women. It also provides a health care environment that is safer, more efficient, and geared to delivering innovative services that improve women’s health outcomes. For example, all of the rooms in the new hospital are single-bedded. Such private rooms are important for women, not only for clinical reasons, but also to meet psychosocial needs such as allowing family members to stay in the room with the postpartum patient.
The UNC Women’s Hospital has approximately 450,000 square feet in a single structure, with nearly all resources dedicated to the provision of health care services for women. It houses ambulatory care clinics; a 22-bed gynecologic/ gynecology oncology unit; a Labor and Delivery unit (a Level III referral center) with 24/7 anesthesia coverage, 15 L&D rooms, 5 triage rooms, 3 operating rooms, and a 2-bed recovery room; a 28-bed all-private-room maternity care center; a 13-bed ante-partum unit; clinical diagnostic facilities, laboratories, pharmacy services, and lactation services. Approximately 4000 babies are born each year at UNC Women’s Hospital, with ~10-12% of these deliveries complicated by pre-existing or gestational diabetes mellitus.
The Labor and Delivery Unit (~20,000 sq ft) consists of 4 LDRP’s and 10 LDR’s, each approximately 340 square feet. The monitoring capabilities in each room include pulse, EKG, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, central venous pressure, and pulmonary artery pressure, plus a centralized electronic fetal monitoring system. All fetal monitors are Hewlett Packard and the central fetal monitoring package is by Hillrom. Each room has an IBM workstation for charting on the computerized inpatient record and all fetal heart rate information and non-invasive maternal monitoring data streams automatically into the computerized record. There is a 300 square foot room designated for the care of high risk and critically ill women with invasive monitoring capabilities mounted at the bedside, as well as two portable hemodynamic monitors that can be used in any room. An ATL HDL 5000 ultrasound machine with color flow and pulsed Doppler capabilities is available. Three large operating rooms are located within the unit as well as a preoperative holding area, in which minor treatments such as decompression amniocentesis or breech version can be performed. Nursing stations are strategically located throughout the unit to streamline patient care. The labor and delivery unit is adjacent to the neonatal intensive care for ease of access.
Located one floor above the labor and delivery unit is the combined antepartum/postpartum unit with 28 private rooms (250 square feet each) and a newborn nursery (450 square feet) with 14 bassinets. Part of the central fetal monitoring system is 15 portable fetal monitors, connecting to hubs in each room. The nursing care in Labor and Delivery is provided by 35 full-time registered nurses, three scrub technicians and three unit secretaries. The antepartum/postpartum/nursery staff consists of 37 full-time RNs, six LPNs and three nurse aids with nine unit secretaries. Adjacent to the unit is a large wet laboratory with a refrigerated centrifuge and – 70C freezers for study specimen processing and storage.
Updated: 4/16/19
The Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center (LCCC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the only public comprehensive cancer center for the people and state of North Carolina. Established in 1975, the UNC Lineberger organizes cancer research and care at one of the nation’s premier public universities and academic medical centers. It is the largest research entity at UNC with one of the largest space allocations on campus and more than 325 affiliated faculty members from more than 40 different departments and disciplines. The LCCC is a national leader in cancer research with its members holding more than $69 million in National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding (10th nationally in 2020). As one of only 51 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, UNC LCCC was rated as exceptional – the highest category – by the National Cancer Institute. The center brings together some of the most exceptional physicians and scientists in the country to investigate and improve the prevention, early detection and treatment of cancer.
The UNC Lineberger mission is to reduce cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality in North Carolina and the nation through research, treatment, training, and outreach. In pursuit of that mission, the Center’s objectives include fostering interdisciplinary basic and translational cancer research through the organization of multidisciplinary care and population science programs. The aim is to impact prevention, early detection, and clinical and outcomes research, and to provide progressive training programs for students and fellows from disciplines across the University and Medical Center. In Fiscal Year 2019, more than 203,000 outpatient visits were made at the hospital and its affiliated clinics. The LCCC offers nearly more than 230 clinical trials of the latest treatments developed at UNC or available through affiliation with national clinical trial groups. Between 2015 and 2019, UNC was the 15th most productive institution in the world for publishing cancer research studies, according to 2020’s Nature Index.
First under the leadership of Director Emeritus Dr. Joseph Pagano followed by Dr. H. Shelton Earp and now under the direction of Dr. Norman Sharpless, the LCCC has grown remarkably. Between 2008 and 2018 the LCCC has drawn nearly $800 million in overall extramural funding, including NIH and NCI grants. With the opening of the new laboratory and office wings in 1997, the Center’s Lineberger Building doubled in size from 40,000 to 80,000 net square feet. The Center combats cancer from all directions by uniting faculty members from the five Health Affairs Schools including: Medicine, Public Health, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy, as well as faculty throughout the College of Arts and Sciences and other professional schools. In addition, the UNC Lineberger offers nationally recognized training programs for the next generation of physicians, nurses, scientists and public health professionals. Center members are organized into nine established and well-funded scientific programs in three major areas: basic laboratory, clinical, and population science.
Basic Laboratory Science
The five basic laboratory science programs include Cancer Cell Biology, Virology, Immunology, Molecular Therapeutics, and Cancer Genetics. The central themes in these five programs are the regulation of cell growth, replication, and gene expression, parameters key to a molecular understanding of the neoplastic phenotype, its etiology, its progression, and potential therapy. These themes encompass perturbation by viral, hormonal, and environmental carcinogens and the function of the immune system challenged by the cancer cells. Each program develops its own orientation to problems of cancer regulation but then shares these insights with scientists in other programs.
Clinical Science
The clinical science programs, including the Breast Cancer Research Program and the Clinical Research Program, encompass clinical and translational research, institutional, regional, and national clinical trials, research on novel drug therapies, and outreach. The Clinical Research Program stimulates the translation of scientific research to clinical use by promoting multidisciplinary research and care teams that combine excellence in scientific research with expertise in clinical trials, clinical care, and the population sciences. The Clinical Research Program brings together clinicians, clinical researchers, and oncologist/scientists who focus on developing and evaluating new therapies in Phase I/II trials; as well as participating in interinstitutional/ cooperative group research. Clinical scientists provide patient care through multidisciplinary programs.
Population Science
The two Population Sciences programs are Cancer Prevention and Control and Cancer Epidemiology. The Cancer Prevention and Control Program focuses on community-directed behavioral change interventions with emphasis on cancer screening, diet, and tobacco control. Many of the studies focus on vulnerable populations, including older, rural, African-American women and men, as well as children and adolescents. The Cancer Epidemiology Program utilizes molecular and traditional epidemiologic approaches, particularly in population-based studies, to investigate cancer etiology and to identify groups at high risk for cancer. Studies have been conducted in colon, breast, prostate, head and neck cancers, and melanoma. The North Carolina Central Cancer Registry, one of the best non-SEER state registries in the country, is an important partner for both cancer epidemiology and cancer prevention studies, particularly for the development of NCI-funded, population-based, case-control molecular epidemiology studies with an emphasis on investigating underlying causes of racial differences in cancer incidence and mortality.
Lineberger Building and NC Cancer Hospital
The UNC Lineberger facilities are located primarily on the Health Affairs Campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The approximately 80,000 net square foot (nsf) Lineberger Cancer Research Building (opened in November, 1997) houses laboratories, administrative headquarters, non-laboratory research space for cancer control epidemiology, multiple small conference rooms, one large meeting room, and a library. All elements flow into a striking three-story atrium surrounded on each floor by comfortable seating for informal groups. The building is centrally located and easily accessed by faculty housed in adjoining departments, including Biochemistry & Biophysics, Cell Biology and Anatomy, Laboratory Animal Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Pharmacology. The new NC Cancer Hospital and Physician’s Office Building are located one block east of the Lineberger Building. The Schools of Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, and other School of Medicine departments are within easy walking distance from the Cancer Center, as is the UNC Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences.
Clinical Facilities, Patients, and Resources
The UNC Lineberger clinical operation is part of the UNC Health Care System, whose Chief Executive Officer is Dr. William Roper, Dean of the School of Medicine. Both Dr. Roper and Gary Park, President of UNC Hospitals, have identified oncology as a flagship clinical program and created UNC Cancer Care with Dr. Sharpless as Director and Dr. Lisa Carey as Physician-in-Chief of the NC Cancer Hospital. UNC Hospitals is the main inpatient facility for the UNC Health Care System.
Memorial, Neurosciences, Children’s, Women’s, and Cancer Hospitals. The NC Cancer Hospital opened in 2009 and was paid for through an $180 million authorization of funds from the NC General Assembly. It is the state’s only public cancer hospital, and patients come from virtually all 100 North Carolina counties. The 320,000 nsf hospital includes multidisciplinary outpatient clinics, in-patient beds for medical oncology, a state-of-the-art infusion suite, radiation oncology, integrated space for support services, patient and family support, and video conferencing facilities for outreach – all in a healing environment emphasizing natural light, indoor courtyards, gardens, and public art. The Physician’s Office Building, placing medical, surgical, and other oncology physician offices in close proximity, is directly across from the new NC Cancer Hospital.
Education and Training Programs
The Cancer Center promotes research training and education through several well-established mechanisms, including funded training programs, an annual basic science symposium, a weekly seminar series, and other educational activities. UNC faculty have been awarded more than 50 grants for training programs from the NIH, and the Lineberger Center and its members direct 17 education and training programs in the basic, clinical, and population sciences, including eight NCI-funded programs.
Core Facilities
UNC Lineberger offers a wide range of shared resources and services to the research community, including leading-edge technologies, high end instrumentation, technical support, and education. The following facilities are available to UNC researchers: Animal Histopathology, Models and Studies; Biosafety; Tissue Procurement and BioSpecimen Processing (BSP); Biostatistics and Data Management; DNA Sequencing; High Throughput Sequencing; Electron Microscopy; Flow Cytometry; Mammalian Genotyping, Translational Genomics and Vironomics; Bioinformatics; Macromolecular X-ray Crystallography; RNAi High Throughput Screening; Proteomics; Small Animal Imaging; Tissue Culture; Translational Pathology; Nanoparticle Drug Development; and Digital Imaging.
The Tissue Procurement Core Facility (TPCF) has as its major objective to support and enhance cancer-related translational, clinical, population and basic science research by providing LCCC members with a centralized, coordinated, quality-controlled, quality-assured facility for procurement, processing, storage and distribution of normal and malignant human specimens. The Core supports investigator procurement of fresh normal or malignant tissue from consenting adult patients. The Core undertakes quality assurance and histopathologic review. The Core prepares quality control sections from each specimen which undergoes evaluation by the facility Pathologist to ensure that appropriate and representative diagnostic tissue is procured. Confirmation of morphology of all tissues banked, prior to distribution to any researcher, is performed to ensure that representative tissue is used in research. The facility Pathologist, who is also co-director of the Translational Core, serves to coordinate investigator needs for pathology-related support between the TPCF and Translational Cores (i.e. scoring and design of immunohistochemistry, FISH, TUNEL assays, laser capture microdissection, tissue microarrays and other needs for detailed histopathologic review). Specimens are distributed with a unique identification number generated by the laboratory. No patient identifying information is distributed with any sample.
The UNC High Throughput Sequencing Facility (HTSF) has 2500 sq. ft. of dedicated wet lab space housed in a new 9000 sq. ft. facility along with the UNC gene expression and Sanger sequencing cores. Established in 2008 in part by funds from the LCCC, the HTSF uses highly advanced next generation sequencing instruments to extract genetic and genomic data from a broad spectrum of biological materials. The UNC HTSF has 1 NovaSeq 6000, 2 HiSeq 4000 and 2 HiSeq 2500 (Illumina), 4 MiSeq, GridION Oxford Nanopore System, as well as associated equipment necessary for efficient operation, including cBot cluster generators (Illumina), a capillary electrophoresis systems – 2 LabChipGX (Perkin Elmer), 2 Tape Stations (Agilent), 2 Bioanalyzes (Agilent); DNA shearing devices Covaris LE220, S2, and a host of other equipment including a Chromium system (10x Genomics) for single cell analysis and Saphyr (BionanoGenomics) for optical mapping of the genome. Library preparation is performed using TECAN Freedom EVO and Caliper SciClone robotic systems. All sequencers are associated with on-board computers for real-time data processing, with three servers dedicated for data analysis and distribution. Twenty-two full-time personnel, in addition to the Managing Director, Dr. Piotr Mieczkowski, staff the HTSF, while the UNC Center for Bioinformatics staff are responsible for data processing, data management, initial analysis and distribution of all data generated at UNC HTSF.
Updated: 1/11/21
The Newborn Critical Care Center (NCCC) on the fourth floor of the North Carolina Children’s Hospital, is a state-of-the-art 17,280 square feet facility with 58 intensive care and intermediate care beds, including four isolation beds with the capacity for ventilatory isolation (negative pressure). The NCCC is served by 11 board-certified attending neonatologists, 18 nurse practitioners, and more than 150 neonatal specialists. A larger, multidisciplinary team of clinicians from N.C. Children’s Hospital, which includes social workers, pediatric pharmacists, respiratory care practitioners, dietitians, and physical and occupational therapists, complements the care provided by this core team. Our health care practitioners diagnose and treat about 750 newborns from more than 50 counties throughout North Carolina each year. More than two-thirds of the 750 newborns admitted to the NCCC annually are born at North Carolina Women’s Hospital, just a corridor away from the NCCC. The Pediatric Transport Team, part of Carolina Air Care, transports the remainder of infants to our hospital.
The NCCC is comprised of six pods with six-twelve beds/pod. There are three family sleep rooms that are used for parents of newly born critically ill infants, parents to stay with convalescing infants close to discharge, or for mothers to breastfeed infants close to discharge. The NCCC is connected to the labor and delivery suite on the fourth floor of the UNC Women’s Hospital providing easy movement between sites of delivery of newborns and the NCCC.
All pods contain areas for bedside charting and computers to access laboratory information. All bed spaces are equipped with a full capacity bedside monitor, with the system linked throughout the facility via local area network. This network is interfaced through a server with the hospital’s Information Systems Department and is web-enabled. Information that can be digitized either from direct patient monitoring or through remote devices such as pulse oximeters, mechanical ventilators, etc. then can be accessed through the processor at individual monitoring stations or the central server.
On the far north side of the NCCC, just outside the patient care pods, there is a radiology reading room with full digital capabilities and monitors for viewing digitized radiographs. On the northeast side of the NCCC is a treatment room with sufficient space and equipment for major surgical procedures. At the southwest corner is a suite of offices for the nurse managers, nurse educators, the unit secretary and other support personnel; this suite also contains on-call space for faculty and a large conference room in this central area is equipped with the full range of audiovisual devices including a slide projector, digital projection system, DVD and monitor, and telecommunication lines for videoconferencing. The NCCC central area also includes a clean utility room and a soiled utility room. The central support area includes both a Respiratory Therapy storage room and a second equipment storage room. Patient support equipment for the NCCC includes a full line of mechanical ventilators and machines capable of ventilation, as well as a nitric oxide delivery and monitoring system. There is also a parent resource center, which includes a traditional library, audiovisual material with a DVD, and a dedicated computer for parents to access the Internet while researching information on their infant.
The NCCC is equipped with 25 Drager Babylog 8000 Infant Ventilators (one with graphics), 2 VIP Bird Infant Ventilators, 3 Sensormedics 3100 A High Frequency Oscillatory Ventilators, 2 Bunnel High Frequency Jet Ventilators, 20 Bubble Flow NCPAP devices, 3 INOVent Nitric Oxide delivery systems with the capability to have as many as needed, 4 Novametrix Vent-check’s, 1 Spacelab end-tidal CO2 monitor, and 4 Radiometer trans-cutaneous CO2 monitoring systems. In addition, nitrogen tanks with regulators and carbon dioxide tanks with regulators are available for reduction of FiO2 as needed. For larger and/or mature infants, we have the ability to use one of 40 Maquet Servo I Ventilators from the Pediatric Critical Care/Adult Critical Care services. NCCC respiratory therapists use 2 Fujitsu notebook laptops with wireless capability to document services via a Mediserve Information System linked into Web CIS 2.0 for Medical Information Management.
The NCCC is also equipped with 49 Spacelabs 1700 monitors and 4 Spacelabs 1050 monitors that are networked together, allowing for remote access so that, for example, an infant can be monitored while in one of the three sleep rooms. The NCCC has 49 Masimo pulse oximeters and 60 Fisher & Paykel Cosycot Infant Warmers, each equipped with a battery, bilirubin light module, scale, gas block (O2 & air), and a built-in Fisher & Paykel Neopuff machine. In addition, the NCCC has 30 freestanding Neopuff machines for infants in an open crib. Thus, every baby in NCCC and labor and delivery has immediate access to a Neopuff. Pediatric audiologists perform hearing screening via distortion product of otoacoustic emissions with a Grayson-Stadler Instruments 70 machine. Further testing, if needed, can be performed using a Grayson-Stadler Instruments TYMP STAR with an imittance bridge to perform tympanography and acoustic reflexes as needed or a Natus ALGO biologic ABAER system to perform automated brain auditory evoked responses.
The Division of Pediatric Cardiology performs echocardiograms with one of 4 Philips 5500 machines. The Extracorporeal Life Support (ECLS) program uses the most up-to-date system available with 2 complete Stockert III Systems including Transonic Flow meter HT110, oxygenators, tubing packs, cannulas, heat exchangers, and ACT tubes. We are using the CDI 500 continuous blood gas monitoring system and a paperless database charting system that integrates all information from the bedside patient monitor and ECLS circuit to a lap top computer automatically.
Updated: 4/16/19
The UNC Obstetric Ultrasound Unit is directed by Dr. David Stamilio and staffed by eight registered diagnostic medical sonographers under the onsite supervision of board certified maternal fetal medicine specialists. All eight are certified in fetal echocardiography and nuchal translucency. Our unit maintains American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine certification. Both sonographers and clinicians have expertise in obstetric ultrasound and are skilled in diagnosis and management of fetal anomalies. Our referral base is broad, encompassing much of central and eastern North Carolina, resulting in a broad range of anomalies in higher numbers than seen in most ultrasound units. In 2018 the UNC obstetric ultrasound unit staff performed 19,153 obstetrical ultrasounds.
UNC also has an ultrasound unit in Raleigh located on the Rex Hospital campus in the UNC Specialty Women’s Center, directed by Dr. William Goodnight. The Rex unit receives referrals from many of the Rex private practices as well as western North Carolina, the AHEC and private practices delivering at WakeMed. This unit is held to the same standards as our UNC unit and is staffed by three registered diagnostic medical sonographers certified in fetal echocardiography and nuchal translucency. Annually, >6000 obstetric ultrasounds are performed at Rex.
Current equipment at the UNC Obstetric Ultrasound Unit includes six GE Voluson ultrasound machines with color Doppler, pulsed Doppler, and 3D ultrasound; and one GE Voluson 730 with 4D capability. Two portable machines are also available to clinics. A GE Voluson s8 ultrasound, a GE Logiq P5 and a Sonosite portable ultrasound are located on Labor and Delivery, for vaginal or abdominal ultrasounds. These machines allow superior imaging for detailed anatomy assessment and fetal procedures and are available for triage assessments, biophysical profiles, amniotic fluid assessment, amniocentesis, intervention procedures including amnioreduction, fetal shunt placements, laser therapy, percutaneous umbilical blood sampling, and in utero fetal therapy.
The Rex unit has three Voluson e8 ultrasound machines. A computerized reporting and digital storage system integrated into our main electronic medical record allows standardized report generation and real-time or archived access to ultrasound images for documentation and study inclusion, as well as accurate retrieval of ultrasound findings for comparison and data retrieval. Merging records based on patient hospital identification number achieves linkage of the ultrasound database with the UNC Perinatal Database of clinical outcomes. Information from both facilities is available online to the physicians at UNC.
The Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology does not rely on the Department of Radiology for inpatient or outpatient obstetric or pelvic ultrasounds. Radiology residents receive training in obstetric and pelvic ultrasound from MFM and gynecology faculty. Likewise at WakeMed, our faculty and residents are not dependent on radiology services, though WakeMed provides ultrasound services that absorb the burden of routine dating scans. High-risk patients and those who require comprehensive ultrasound from the Wake and Rex clinics are referred to the Obstetric Ultrasound Unit at UNC or Rex.
Updated: 4/16/19
The Women’s Hospital opened in the fall of 2000, bringing into a single structure nearly all resources dedicated to the provision of health care services for women. The facility includes Women’s Outpatient Services, Assisted Reproductive Technology Services, Gynecology Oncology Outpatient Services, Labor & Delivery/Birthing Center with four LDRPs and 10 LDRs, an Obstetric Inpatient Unit, a Newborn Nursery with 28 beds and 14 bassinets, a Women’s Resource Center, a Gynecology/Gynecologic Oncology Inpatient Unit with 22 beds, and a 20,000 square foot Labor and Delivery Suite.
University of North Carolina Women’s Clinic provides both routine and high-risk obstetrical care to more than 1,700 unduplicated women annually. The ObGyn Department has 2 modules with more than 20,000 square feet of floor space. There are 32 exam rooms, 16 consultation rooms, and 4 treatment rooms. UNC faculty members also provide obstetrical care at Chapel Hill North, UNC Student Health, and other off-campus clinic sites. In 2018, there were 15,689 high-risk obstetric clinic visits and 22,749 low-risk obstetric clinic visits.
Updated: 4/16/19
The SICC clinical services at the NC children’s Hospital use five exam rooms and support areas of the Pediatric Outpatient Clinics in the NC Children’s Hospital. The Pediatric Outpatient Clinics occupies the entire first and ground floors of the facility (more than 20,000 square feet). The Clinic facility has a large central waiting area. There is a separate patient education and financial counseling area with its own small waiting room, consultation area, and administrative offices that occupy the southwest corner; three rooms are designated for patient education. The southeast corner has a suite of administrative offices. The north side of the Clinic area has separate ophthalmologic, ENT, audiology, and orthopedic examination and treatment rooms including a small recovery area for outpatient procedures. The interior of the first floor Pediatric Outpatient Clinics has three functional patient examination units. Each unit has its own area to obtain vital signs and weights, two physician work rooms, private toilet facilities, and access to one of two equipment storage areas. Located centrally in each unit there are a nursing station, a clean utility room, and a dirty utility room. The smallest of these units has eight patient exam rooms with two equipped for plastic surgery consultations and follow-up and one consultant work area. The mid-size unit has eleven examination rooms and one consultant area. The largest unit has 15 separate examination rooms and two consultant work areas. Each general-purpose examination room has a built-in sink, charting area, patient examination table, and standard physical examination equipment including diagnostic sets. While each of these units has its own, separate patient entry access, they are contiguous for staff via a set of internal hallways and to the rest of the NC Children’s Hospital floors via service elevators on the north side of the building.
The UNC SICC, under the direction of Dr. Diane Warner, provides developmental evaluation for infants at risk of neuro-developmental delay and identifies and makes referrals to services for infants with special needs. SICC is held 4 Thursdays per month in the Pediatric Specialty Clinic located on the first floor of The North Carolina Children’s Hospital. The clinic is equipped with 1” colored wooden blocks, small bags of fresh “O” shaped cereal, a 3” bright red ball, reflex hammer, floppy disk, bell, Sesame character finger puppets, examining table, stethoscope, otoscope, ophthalmoscope, pulse oximeters, blood pressure sphygmometer, disposable tape measures, scale, and a Bayley III developmental kit.
Infants are scheduled to be seen in the SICC for any of the conditions listed in the table above. Evaluations performed at the SICC involve an evaluation by a pediatric speech pathologist, developmental testing with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-III, and examination by a neonatologist or developmental pediatrician. Selected cases are examined by a pediatric physical therapist and/or occupational therapist. The highest risk infants are first seen at three months adjusted age or sooner. All other infants are first evaluated at six months adjusted age, and every three to six months thereafter through 24 months adjusted age. Infants enrolled in research studies that require long-term developmental evaluation are seen per individual protocol. Annually the clinic performs over 275-300 evaluations. The rate of compliance for scheduled patients is 93% at six months, 90% at 12 months, and 85% at 18 months. The UNC SICC follows a rigorous process to ensure patients get scheduled and patients missing appointments are contacted in multiple ways. Services in the clinic and appointments are coordinated by one of two pediatric nurse practitioners, a neonatal nurse care coordinator and an administrative assistant with the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. These individuals are also involved discharge planning in the NCCC and case management during the transition of care for infants with complex needs from the NCCC to local pediatric resources.
A Developmental Pediatrician (Dr. Holly Martin) attends in the SICC at UNC. All pediatric subspecialists listed above, including pediatric neurologists and pediatric surgical subspecialists, are available on a consultative basis. Ophthalmologic examination and treatment and can be scheduled in a separate clinic.
For infants at risk of or with hearing deficits, the SICC utilizes the W. Paul Biggers Carolina Children’s Communicative Disorders Program (CCCDP) which provides communication devices as well as UNC physician, audiological, and speech services for qualifying children with hearing and other communication disorders and is funded through the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health, and is based at the Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery at UNC Hospitals. Infants are referred from all counties in North Carolina for testing and, if necessary, fitting of custom-made (by using ear impressions) hearing aids with adjustment to the desired sensation level by modifying the gain and output. Infants and toddlers seen at the SICC frequently have hearing tested in a sound treated audiometry booth via visual reinforcement audiometry or play audiometry. The CCCDP also houses the cochlear implant program.
Infants who have multiple system problems are followed in a multi-disciplinary clinic. For example, children with neural tube defects and children older than two years with cerebral palsy, genetic abnormalities, and other developmental delays are followed by the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Pediatric Rehabilitation Clinic, under the direction of Dr. Josh Alexander, where services include Rehabilitation Medicine, Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Urology, and Physical Therapy. Infants with cleft lip/palate are followed in the UNC Craniofacial Center, under the direction of Dr. Amelia Drake, where services include General Dentistry, Audiology, Genetics, Neurosurgery, Otolaryngology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Orthodontics, Ophthalmology, Pediatrics, Pediatric Dentistry, Plastic Surgery, Prosthodontics, Psychology, Social Work, Speech-Language Pathology, and Speech Pressure-Flow Assessments.
The SICC at The North Carolina Children’s Outpatient Specialty Clinic has an attending neonatologist and attending developmental pediatrician, as well as subspecialty residents (fellows) from Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and the Center for Development and Learning. Other staff in the SICC include: Developmental Psychologist, Pediatric Physical and Occupational Therapists, Speech Pathologist, Pediatric Dietician, Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, and Social Workers.
Each visit to the SICC generates a clinic note that is entered into Epic, the UNC Hospital medical information system. The SICC has an extraordinary record of collecting follow-up information and provides the critical follow-up component to several studies as shown below. Individuals who are involved in research studies are followed up as indicated per protocol.
The SICC is involved in several ongoing NICHD NRN studies with follow-up. The largest of the follow-up studies is the Generic Database Follow-up Study of High-Risk infants. Of the 124 infants whose follow-up windows have closed, only 3 have been lost to follow-up, resulting in a follow- up rate of 98%. The NEST study is still ongoing and has a current enrollment of 22 with 100% follow-up rate. The Special Infant Care Clinics integrate their clinic notes into the standard electronic medical record at UNC, which is Epic.
Updated: 10/5/16
UNC Fertility occupies a state-of-the-art, free-standing facility in Raleigh, NC built in January 2013. The 7,345 square foot facility features a HEPA air filtration system, four fully equipped treatment rooms, two ultrasound machines and an on-site laboratory, allowing us to leverage the most recent science and directly benefit our patients. The facility has of space and features the andrology lab, two collection rooms with a separate waiting room, the embryology lab, a fully equipped IVF procedure room and two recovery rooms, four exam rooms, an intake room, phlebotomy area, five consultation rooms, a conference room, reception and waiting room, and ample storage rooms, office space for research staff, and other work areas. Each of the four exam rooms is equipped with a Logiq P5 ultrasound imaging system. Follicular, gynecologic, early obstetrical ultrasound, and saline infusion sonograms are performed on-site by the UNC Fertility clinicians. An exam room is dedicated to hysterosalpingography (HSG).
Updated: 10/5/16
The UNC Health Care System is a not-for-profit integrated health care system, owned by the State of North Carolina and based in Chapel Hill. It exists to further the teaching mission of the UNC and provide state-of-the-art patient care. A distinguishing characteristic of UNC Health Care is its association with the UNC School of Medicine, a nationally eminent research institution. This relationship gives UNC Health Care a powerful pathway for moving the results of biomedical research from medical school laboratories to the patient care settings. UNC Health Care has been granted broad powers by the North Carolina General Assembly to assure its management flexibility and competitiveness in a rapidly changing health care business environment. The enterprise is governed by a board of directors appointed by the University of North Carolina. As North Carolina’s only state-owned acute care facility, UNC Hospitals has trained nearly a quarter of the state’s practicing physicians and continues to serve as the primary referral center for all 100 counties in the state.
The UNC Hospitals are the flagship home for clinical care and translational and clinical research activities at UNC-CH. The three inter-related missions of the UNC Health Care System– education, research, and patient care–aim to improve public health, advance medical knowledge, and provide care for individuals with diseases or disabilities. UNC Health Care currently comprises UNC Hospitals and its provider network, the clinical programs of the UNC School of Medicine, and eleven affiliate hospitals and hospital systems across the state. On-campus components of the UNC Health Care System include: NC Memorial Hospital (first opened in 1952); a Neuroscience Hospital (opened in 1996); the UNC Women’s Hospital and the UNC Children’s Hospital (both opened in 2002); an Ambulatory Care Center (opened in 1995); UNC Student Health Services; a stand-alone NC Cancer Hospital (opened in 2009); and a Burn Center. A two-story, glass-enclosed pedestrian concourse connects the front entrances and lobbies of the NC Memorial Hospital, the NC Neurosciences Hospital, the NC Women’s Hospital, and the NC Children’s Hospital, with more than 950 beds available in these four hospitals. The N.C. Memorial Hospital is the only state-owned teaching hospital and focuses on adult medical-surgical care. The Women’s Hospital is a 450,000 square foot facility that brings into a single structure nearly all the resources dedicated to the provision of women’s health care services located immediately adjacent to the emergency room. The Children’s Hospital is a major referral center for children with complex conditions, and every year provides specialty care for more than 70,000 children. The nine-floor Neuroscience Hospital offers inpatient and outpatient clinics for Neurology, Neurosurgery, ENT, and Psychiatry; as well as a roof-top helipad. The Ambulatory Care Center houses three floors of outpatient clinics as well as outpatient surgical facilities. The NC Cancer Hospital, the state’s only public cancer hospital is comprised of a 315,000 square foot facility that was paid for through an $180 million authorization of funds from the N.C. General Assembly that tripled the amount of space available for treating cancer patients. More than 135,000 patient visits per year are made to the NC Cancer Hospital. A Hillsborough Campus of the UNC Health Care system houses an additional 86 beds for emergency care, outpatient surgery, and a range of inpatient services. In late 2018, ground was broken for a new 330,000 square foot surgical tower at the UNC Medical Center that is set to open in 2022 with modernized operating rooms, top notch technology, and improved accommodations for recovering guests. Other recent expansion efforts include a new 50-bed hospital in Holly Springs, NC, and the new Eastowne Medical Office Building in Chapel Hill, both scheduled to open in 2021. In 2020, the UNC Health Care System was responsible for 3.5 million clinical visits. Clinical care in the UNC Health Care System is provided by more than 1700 faculty physicians plus a house staff comprised of more than 700 residents and postdoctoral fellows.
Updated: 1/29/21
UNC Hillsborough Hospital, built in 2015, is an 86-bed acute-care hospital in Hillsborough, NC, about a 20-minute drive from UNC main campus. The hospital is located on the UNC Health Care Hillsborough Campus, which is an extension of the UNC Medical Center focusing on many of our elective surgical programs, including Benigh Gynecology. The facility offers an emergency department, outpatient surgery and a range of inpatient services. The hospital is the site for 95% of the benign gynecological surgery performed by the UNC Ob-Gyn department. Three attending physicians performs surgery at Hillsborough, filling a room for the day, 5 days a week. Thus, patients have quick access to high-volume, high-skill surgeons and the patient volume is more than sufficient to fulfill recruitment goals.
Updated: 1/28/21
In 2000 Rex Healthcare and the 394-bed Rex Hospital in Raleigh became a wholly-owned subsidiary of UNC Health Care. Rex Healthcare provides a wide range of healthcare services to the Triangle region of North Carolina. Rex is one of a select few accredited cancer centers in the state and is one of less than ten hospitals in North Carolina to offer the highly advanced diagnostic capabilities of a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner. PET is particularly useful in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, as well as for the diagnosis of heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
The main Rex campus is a 62-acre site located in west Raleigh and includes a 140-bed Rex Rehabilitation and Nursing Care Center. Rex Cancer Center offers comprehensive inpatient and outpatient services for cancer patients. Rex expanded its programs and services for women with the opening of a new Women’s Center in the summer of 2005. Additionally, Rex Wellness Center, Rex Emergency Department (which currently sees over 50,000 patients per year), and Rex Heart and Vascular Center are located on the main campus. Rex Wellness Centers in three cities offer cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programs.
Rex Women’s Center
The Rex Women’s Center delivers more than 5600 babies annually, and includes the Rex Family Birth Center, a 40-bed maternity center. In addition to the 40 rooms, there is a fully equipped operating room for C-sections. The Birth Center is family-centered with specially trained staff, offering a comforting birth environment that is home-like, private and safe. Their 40 private rooms have been recently refurbished and have amenities such as a convertible sleep chair for the mother’s partner, a rocking chair, a private bath with shower, television with VCR and a private telephone. Each family decides how long the new baby will stay in mom’s room and when it will return to the nursery. Twenty-four hour rooming-in is available for parents who choose that option. The Center offers a myriad of classes on a variety of topics including breastfeeding, exercise, and preparing for childbirth, and each first-time breastfeeding mom receives a visit from a lactation consultant before going home. Car seat safety is especially important for newborns, and the Center has certified trained safety technicians who will evaluate car seats and teach new parents how to correctly install the seat.
Special Care Nursery
Rex has an 18-bed, Level III-A nursery with ability to care for babies down to 29-30 weeks’ gestation. The nursery is staffed 24/7 by a team of four neonatologists, multiple nurses, and other developmental specialists. Currently they offer CPAP and conventional ventilation with ho high frequency vents, nitric oxide, or ECMO. Also available are skilled neonatal respiratory therapists and pediatric subspecialists as needed. Infants with more extensive medical care needs can be immediately transferred to either the WakeMed NICU or the UNC NICU, depending on individual conditions.
UNC Maternal Fetal Medicine at Rex
MFM at Rex offers obstetrical care for women with pregnancies complicated by maternal disease such as diabetes or hypertension, or any problem with the fetus such as congenital abnormalities. The service provides specialists in diagnostic techniques and complicated surgeries for both the mother and the fetus. Services include:
- Maternal-fetal medicine faculty physician for maternal-fetal consultation, high risk pregnancy prenatal care for patients delivering at UNC who live Wake County and eastward, prenatal diagnosis (ultrasound, fetal echo, CVS, amniocentesis), Rex inpatient consultation
- Nurse practitioner for maternal-fetal consultation, diabetes complicating pregnancy co-management, initial diet consultation, self-testing instruction and glycemic control follow up
- Genetic counselors for preconception counseling for genetic disorders, AMA, prior fetal anomalies, aneuploidy screening, and testing including NIPT
- UNC Perinatal Mood Disorder Clinic with UNC Department of Psychiatry, currently seeing patients 3 days per week, to increase to 5 days per week
Staffing includes three full-time sonographers, a maternal-fetal faculty physician, a nurse practitioner, and a genetic counselor. The Director of this service is Dr. William Goodnight.
Laboratory
Rex Healthcare Laboratory is a full-service diagnostic laboratory located within Rex Hospital. The Laboratory is accredited by the Joint Commissions Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the College of American Pathologists (CAP). There are many areas of specialty within the laboratory, including: anatomic pathology, cytology, transfusion services, chemistry, microbiology, hematology and coagulation. They have the capability to conduct genetic and antepartum testing options such as CVS, amnio, NSTs and BPPs.
In 2000 Rex Healthcare and the 394-bed Rex Hospital in Raleigh became a wholly-owned subsidiary of UNC Health Care. Rex Healthcare provides a wide range of healthcare services to the Triangle region of North Carolina. Rex is one of a select few accredited cancer centers in the state and is one of less than ten hospitals in North Carolina to offer the highly advanced diagnostic capabilities of a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner. PET is particularly useful in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, as well as for the diagnosis of heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
The main Rex campus is a 62-acre site located in west Raleigh and includes a 140-bed Rex Rehabilitation and Nursing Care Center. Rex Cancer Center offers comprehensive inpatient and outpatient services for cancer patients. Rex expanded its programs and services for women with the opening of a new Women’s Center in the summer of 2005. Additionally, Rex Wellness Center, Rex Emergency Department (which currently sees over 50,000 patients per year), and Rex Heart and Vascular Center are located on the main campus. Rex Wellness Centers in three cities offer cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programs.
Rex Women’s Center
The Rex Women’s Center delivers more than 5600 babies annually, and includes the Rex Family Birth Center, a 40-bed maternity center. In addition to the 40 rooms, there is a fully equipped operating room for C-sections. The Birth Center is family-centered with specially trained staff, offering a comforting birth environment that is home-like, private and safe. Their 40 private rooms have been recently refurbished and have amenities such as a convertible sleep chair for the mother’s partner, a rocking chair, a private bath with shower, television with VCR and a private telephone. Each family decides how long the new baby will stay in mom’s room and when it will return to the nursery. Twenty-four hour rooming-in is available for parents who choose that option. The Center offers a myriad of classes on a variety of topics including breastfeeding, exercise, and preparing for childbirth, and each first-time breastfeeding mom receives a visit from a lactation consultant before going home. Car seat safety is especially important for newborns, and the Center has certified trained safety technicians who will evaluate car seats and teach new parents how to correctly install the seat.
Special Care Nursery
Rex has an 18-bed, Level III-A nursery with ability to care for babies down to 29-30 weeks’ gestation. The nursery is staffed 24/7 by a team of four neonatologists, multiple nurses, and other developmental specialists. Currently they offer CPAP and conventional ventilation with ho high frequency vents, nitric oxide, or ECMO. Also available are skilled neonatal respiratory therapists and pediatric subspecialists as needed. Infants with more extensive medical care needs can be immediately transferred to either the WakeMed NICU or the UNC NICU, depending on individual conditions.
UNC Maternal Fetal Medicine at Rex
MFM at Rex offers obstetrical care for women with pregnancies complicated by maternal disease such as diabetes or hypertension, or any problem with the fetus such as congenital abnormalities. The service provides specialists in diagnostic techniques and complicated surgeries for both the mother and the fetus. Services include:
- Maternal-fetal medicine faculty physician for maternal-fetal consultation, high risk pregnancy prenatal care for patients delivering at UNC who live Wake County and eastward, prenatal diagnosis (ultrasound, fetal echo, CVS, amniocentesis), Rex inpatient consultation
- Nurse practitioner for maternal-fetal consultation, diabetes complicating pregnancy co-management, initial diet consultation, self-testing instruction and glycemic control follow up
- Genetic counselors for preconception counseling for genetic disorders, AMA, prior fetal anomalies, aneuploidy screening, and testing including NIPT
- UNC Perinatal Mood Disorder Clinic with UNC Department of Psychiatry, currently seeing patients 3 days per week, to increase to 5 days per week
Staffing includes three full-time sonographers, a maternal-fetal faculty physician, a nurse practitioner, and a genetic counselor. The Director of this service is Dr. William Goodnight.
Laboratory
Rex Healthcare Laboratory is a full-service diagnostic laboratory located within Rex Hospital. The Laboratory is accredited by the Joint Commissions Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the College of American Pathologists (CAP). There are many areas of specialty within the laboratory, including: anatomic pathology, cytology, transfusion services, chemistry, microbiology, hematology and coagulation. They have the capability to conduct genetic and antepartum testing options such as CVS, amnio, NSTs and BPPs.
Other Services at Rex
Other services on the main Rex campus include a sleep disorders center, a pain management center and an inpatient Hospice unit. Rex has its own blood bank, Rex Blood Services which offers a fixed site as well as two bloodmobiles. Rex Breast Care Center performs over 1,400 mammograms per month and offers IMRT, stereotactic breast biopsies, core needle biopsies with a highly personalized level of care. Rex Mobile Mammography, founded in 2001, is the only Triangle-based mobile unit visiting sites within a 50-mile radius making it easier for uninsured/underinsured women to receive a mammogram.
More than 975 physicians and surgeons are on the Rex Medical Staff. Rex’s Information and Resource Center, HealthNet, provides more than 3,000 physician referrals a year to the community, in addition to scheduling numerous classes and community programs.
Rex Healthcare of Cary consists of a 27,000 square foot Rex Wellness Center, plus Rex Pediatrics and Rex Urgent Care. Full radiology services including CT, Dexa bone density scans and screening mammograms are available as are Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) diagnostic services. Additional services include the Rex Diabetes Education Center, Heart & Vascular Diagnostics, Sleep Disorders, Laboratory and Outpatient Rehabilitation Services, Rex Pediatrics of Cary, Rex Urgent Care of Cary, and the Rex Surgery Center of Cary, a four-bed state-of-the-art outpatient surgery center.
Updated: 12/16/20
This clinic is housed in the UNC Women’s Hospital. The UNC Women’s Hospital opened in 2001 and houses ambulatory care clinics; inpatient gynecologic facilities (22 private beds); eight operating rooms for women’s and children’s surgery; clinical diagnostic facilities, laboratories, and pharmacy services. The Women’s Hospital has added approximately 450,000 square feet in a single structure, with nearly all resources dedicated to the provision of health care services for women. It also provides a health care environment that is safer, more efficient, and geared to delivering innovative services that improve women’s health outcomes. UNC Women’s Hospital houses a portion of UNC’s outpatient clinics, including the specialty gynecology clinics, ultrasound unit, and obstetrics clinics. The clinical care unit has four modules (A, B, C, and D), which in total include 18 consult rooms, 36 exam rooms, and 5 reception areas. The clinic has dedicated one examination room (with consult area and computer) for conducting research. This room is equipped with the Ultrasound and Aloka SSD-1700 Dynaview.
Updated: 10/6/16
The UNC Women’s Hospital opened in the fall of 2000 with approximately 450,000 square feet of new space and increased capacity for the neonatal intensive care, neonatal intermediate care, and pediatric intermediate care units. The replacement facility has allowed the UNC Health Care System to bring into a single structure nearly all resources dedicated to the provision of health care services for women and infants. It also provides a health care environment that is safer, more efficient, and geared to delivering innovative services that improve women’s health outcomes. For example, all of the rooms in the new hospital are single-bedded. Such private rooms are important for women, not only for clinical reasons, but also to meet psychosocial needs such as allowing family members to stay in the room with the postpartum patient.
The UNC Women’s Hospital has nearly all resources dedicated to the provision of health care services for women. It houses ambulatory care clinics; a 22-bed gynecologic/ gynecology oncology unit; a Labor and Delivery unit (a Level III referral center) with 24/7 anesthesia coverage, 15 L&D rooms, 5 triage rooms, 3 operating rooms, and a 2-bed recovery room; a 28-bed all-private-room maternity care center; a 13-bed ante-partum unit; clinical diagnostic facilities, laboratories, pharmacy services, and lactation services. Approximately 3,600 babies are born each year at UNC Women’s Hospital.
Updated: 6/7/19
WakeMed Health and Hospitals is a 919-bed private, not-for-profit health care system based in Raleigh, North Carolina. This health care system includes three hospitals—WakeMed Raleigh, WakeMed Cary, and WakeMed North; four healthplexes in the surrounding communities of North Raleigh, Apex, Brier Creek, and Garner; two facilities providing skilled nursing care and outpatient services; and three facilities providing outpatient rehab services. The WakeMed North, which was opened in May 2015, is collocated with the North Raleigh Healthplex and specialized in women’s care.
The WakeMed system is accredited by The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Facilities (JCAHO). For the past five years, WakeMed has achieved an outstanding patient satisfaction rating of 95% or higher for inpatient customer satisfaction. Unique services include:
- North Carolina’s first freestanding Children’s Emergency Department; this is a national model and serves thousands of children each year.
- The WakeMed Heart Center ranks in volume among the top North Carolina hospitals providing cardiac care and is also one of the highest volume heart centers in the United States.
- Mobile critical care services offer ground and air transport for adults and children.
- One of only 23 mother’s milk banks in the United States is housed at the WakeMed Raleigh facility.
- WakeMed has two nationally accredited, award-winning Chest Pain Centers, and two nationally accredited, award-winning Stroke Centers.
WakeMed Health and Hospitals is the largest off-site teaching program for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and many WakeMed physicians hold faculty positions at the UNC School of Medicine.
Updated: 1/28/21
Labs & Medical Processing
The BioSpecimen Processing Facility (BSP) is a University-wide core laboratory facility, that assists medical and public health researchers pursuing investigations ranging in scale from small clinical studies to large-scale projects. It is centrally located on the Epidemiology floor in room 3213 of the School of Public Health’s new Michael Hooker Research Center, located at the corner of Manning Dr and Pittsboro Rd. There are 1,070 square feet of laboratory space geared for high-throughput processing of human biospecimens. All operations are managed by a Manual of Operation and QA/QC policy documents.
The BSP’s current DNA production is more than 45,000 biospecimens per year. The facility has a freezer capacity to temporarily store over 350,000 -80oC samples and over 50,000 samples at 4°C for immediate use. DNA samples are standardly quantified in multi-spectral optical density spectrophotometers (Nanodrop and Spectra-Max Plus). The BSP facility is equipped with a high throughput DNA extraction robot (Gentra’s Autopure LS), which can isolate DNA from large volume samples. This enables the BSP to process over 90 large volume samples each day. The BSP also has a Multiprobe II (Perkin Elmer) which is typically used for aliquoting, normalization, creating 96 well plates, and automated small volume protocols. The freezer and refrigeration system are fully monitored with a 24/7 alarm system and have back-up generator power that is tested weekly. Additionally, all movement to and from and within the freezer system is tracked by the BSP LIMS. The BSP LIMS utilizes a state-of-the-art Oracle based specimen tracking system designed specifically to meet the immediate, inventory-style tracking needs of multiple health research projects. The user interface is implemented as a Java thick-client. The thick-client tracks creation, storage, movement, and discarding of containers (vials and plates) and the specifics of container contents (material type, volume, concentration, technician comments, etc.). It is maintained by the School of Public Health with security and daily backup.
The major objectives of the BSP are two-fold. The first is to provide laboratory support for individual investigator initiated large-scale clinical research as well as epidemiologic studies designed to help unravel the underlying relationships between genetics, the environment, behavior, and disease. The second is to maintain and manage a biospecimen (and data) repository as a shared resource for clinical and epidemiology research. The UNC BSP Facility is a centralized, quality controlled and quality assured facility for the processing of human biospecimens. In addition to laboratory services, the facility provides a scientific resource for investigators seeking advice on study design including specimen collection and storage methods, human subject issues, and the use of gene, SNP and haplotype databases. The BSP has received IRB approval for its own uses and maintains a HIPPA secure facility at all times. The BioSpecimen Processing Facility has experience isolating high molecular weight genomic DNA that can be reliably PCR amplified and genotyped. DNA is purified from a variety of study collected starting specimens other than blood, such as buccal swabs/rinses (Scope or saline) and Oragene saliva. DNA is isolated by a salt precipitation method using Gentra’s Puregene chemistries. The BSP’s current DNA production is more than 45,000 biospecimens per year. The BSP LIMS utilizes a state-of-the-art Oracle based specimen tracking system designed specifically to meet the immediate, inventory-style tracking needs of multiple health research projects.
Updated: 10/9/16
The UNC CFAR Immunology Core Laboratory is housed in the Brinkhous-Bullitt building on UNC’s School of Medicine’s campus and offers a variety of immunologic testing services in support of basic, translational and clinical research at UNC. Services provided include:
- Sample processing (serum, plasma, PBMCs, urine, CSF), cell purifications (MACS) and storage (-20°,-70° and liquid nitrogen, specimen tracking using the LDMS)
- Management of the CFAR plasma and whole blood pellet repositories and the CNICS viable PBMC repository
- Assessment of soluble markers (e.g. antibodies, cytokines) using ELISA and Multiplex (Luminex) platforms
- HLA typing (low and high resolution Class I and II)
- Phenotypic (8-color flow cytometry), and functional (proliferation, ELISPOT, intracellular cytokines) assessment of cellular immune parameters
- Molecular diagnostic testing for STIs (Chlamydia and GC using the Gen Probe Panther system).
The Core is CLIA/CAP Accredited for clinical CD4 testing. The Core also facilitates access to state-of-the-art technologies, via collaborations with other Cores, including multi-parameter flow cytometry in the UNC Microbiology Flow Core. The Immunology Core also provides training in immunologic techniques to affiliated investigators.
Updated: 10/9/16
An important feature of the research environment at UNC is that many state-of-the-art core laboratory facilities are available on the UNC campus. These core facilities are sponsored by a variety of units, with a major role being played by the Program in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, a state-funded program that has particular emphasis on shared-use equipment and facilities. The philosophy behind all of the core facilities at UNC is that each facility has its own expert, permanent staff whose job it is to facilitate the use of new technologies by all investigators. Thus the core facilities are particularly effective at introducing investigators to technologies with which they might be unfamiliar. The following is a representative sample of UNC-CH core facilities:
- Animal Model Cores – Animal Clinical Chemistry & Gene Expression, Animal Histopathology, Animal Models Core, Animal Studies Facility, CGBID Gnotobiotic Core, Histology Research Core Facility, Animal Surgery Core, Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Center, Mouse Behavioral Phenotyping Core, NORC Animal Metabolism Phenotyping Core, UNC Systems Genetics Core, Zebrafish Aquaculture Core Facility
- Biochemistry Cores – Antibody Core Facility, Biomarker Mass Spectrometry Facility, Biomolecular NMR Lab, Cellular Metabolism and Transport Core, CFAR Virology, Immunology & Microbiology Core, CGBID Advanced Analytics, CGBID Histology Core, Chemistry Dept Mass Spectrometry Facility, High Throughput Peptide, Synthesis and Array Facility, Macromolecular X-Ray Crystallography Facility, Macromolecular Interactions Facility, MH Proteomics Center, Nanomedicines Characterization Core Facility, Pharmacy NMR Facility, R. L. Juliano Structural BioInformatics Core, UNC Metabolomics Laboratory
- Clinical Cores – Biobehavioral Laboratory, Biospecimen Processing Facility, Body Composition Lab (DEXA),Center for Human Movement Science, Clinical & Translational Research Center, Cytokine Analysis Facility, Human Research Core, Organ Injury Biomarker Core, Research Participant Registry Core,NORC Diet and Physical Activity Core, NORC Metabolic Molecular Phenotyping Core, NORC Metabolic & Nutrition Research Core, Pharmacometrics Core, Tissue Procurement Facility, Translational Pathology Laboratory, UNC CFAR Clinical Pharmacology & Analytical Chemistry
- Genomics Cores – Functional Genomics Core, High Throughput Genomic Sequencing Facility, Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Core, Lenti-shRNA Core Facility, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Genomics Core, Mammalian Genotyping Core, RNAi Screening Facility, UNC Microbiome Core Facility, Vector Core, Vironomics Core
- Imaging Cores – Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) /Imaging Center, Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) Image Storage & Analysis, Hooker Imaging Core, CH Analytical and Nanofabrication Lab (CHANL), Confocal and Multiphoton Imaging Facility, Flow Cytometry, Microscopy Services Laboratory, Developmental Neuroimaging Lab
- Other Cores – Center for BioInformatics, Communication for Health Applications and Intervention, NORC Clinical Research Services, ESE Research Design Center, Chemistry Dept Electronics Facility, Chemistry Department NMR Facility, Chemistry Dept X-Ray Crystallography Facility, and the Tissue Culture Facility
Updated: 10/10/16
The Fetal Fibronectin and ROM testing is performed in the University of North Carolina (UNC) Hospitals McLendon Clinical Laboratory with results available within one hour of receipt of specimen, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. In the last fiscal year, approximately 150 specimens were tested for either fetal fibronectin or ROM on both inpatients and outpatients. Fetal fibronectin accounted for 33% of total specimens and ROM for 67% of total specimens.
Updated: 12/18/16
The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health (GSGPH) facilities include approximately 61,000 square feet of assignable wet laboratory space, including two biological safety level three laboratories (BSL-3) overseen by UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of Environment, Health and Safety. Of this space, approximately 40,000 assignable square feet are in state of the art laboratories completed in 2005 with the Michael Hooker Research Center. Another approximately 8,000 assignable square-feet in Rosenau Hall, including the Mass-Spectrometer/Gas Chromatograph Laboratory, were renovated in 2008. The remaining approximately 18,000 assignable square feet were built in 1991 in McGavran-Greenberg Hall and Baity Labs. In addition, the school built and maintains an approximately 1,700 cubic foot roof-top smog chamber used to mix diesel engine exhaust emissions with sunlight and analyze its effects on lung tissue. The school is also unique in that it maintains its own approximately 2,200 square foot shop that fabricates custom and provides specialized research tools to support experimental and field research, as well as a smog chamber in Pittsboro, NC (approximately ten miles from Chapel Hill).
Michael Hooker Research Center
The Michael Hooker Research Center (MHRC) is a 124,000 gross-square foot wet laboratory building that was completed and occupied in April of 2005. The 38 million dollar building project provides teaching, research, meeting and event space. The building includes four floors of modern laboratories totaling 40,000 assignable square feet. Departments occupying laboratory space at MHRC include Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Nutrition and Epidemiology. The laboratory and event space provided at MHRC represents a major advance in the facilities available to GSGPH researchers. Assignable laboratory modules are located along the exterior walls of the building to maximize natural lighting. Rooms housing instruments and common equipment that are shared among multiple investigators such as environmental control chambers, tissue culture rooms, freezer morgues, autoclave and glass wash facilities are located in the center of the building with access from surrounding laboratories. The typical laboratory module is 1,100 square-feet and includes four bays of bench space, an alcove for ducted chemical fume hoods and/or biological safety cabinets, and an internal office. Non load-bearing metal partitions divide the laboratory modules and allow for programming flexibility. Epoxy resin bench tops and metal casework hang from a central spine system supporting interchangeable cabinetry and shelving units that can be reconfigured to meet an investigator’s specific needs. Metal panels in the walls at laboratory bench tops can be removed with suction cups to reveal utility lines and allow changes in the location of air, gas or vacuum services without demolition and repair of sheetrock walls. The building is among the first at UNC-Chapel Hill to include a building-wide reverse osmosis and de-ionized (RO/DI) water system. The RO/DI system is constantly re-circulating to provide 16-18 Meg Ohm water on demand at point of use locations in each lab module.
The Michael Hooker Research Center includes a three-story glass and steel atrium. The atrium connects the laboratory wings to the rest of the GSGPH and provides internal connections between the three major buildings. The atrium acts as the school’s “living room” and provides a gathering space capable of facilitating both formal event and informal interaction among the schools nine separate academic, service and administrative units. In addition to food service and open seating, the atrium provides access to seven separate centrally scheduled conference, break out and meeting rooms ranging from 12 to 25 seats. The GSGPH has 14 of these conference rooms furnished with drop-down projectors and internet connections, which are available to all GSGPH departments. Also available is the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation Auditorium, the largest meeting space at the GSGPH. This auditorium has drop-down projectors and 104 built-in desks equipped with power and Internet connections. Five built-in cameras add video-conferencing capabilities for the School’s flourishing distance education and outreach programs. Any student, staff or faculty at the school can schedule these rooms.
Rosenau Hall
Rosenau Hall is a 122,000 gross-square foot building housing laboratory, research, academic and service space for the Departments of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Health Behavior and Health Education, Health Policy and Management, Maternal and Child Health, and Nutrition. The building also houses the Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility, the Program on Ethnicity Culture and Health Outcomes, the Office of Global Health and support units including Instruction and Information Systems and the school’s own laboratory instrument fabrication shop.The building includes approximately 8,000 assignable square feet of laboratory space, including a 1,100 square-foot Mass Spectrometry and Gas Chromatograph laboratory with dedicated air handling and generator back-up power supply, as well as the 2,500 square foot instrument fabrication and design shop. The design shop provides researchers across of broad range of disciplines with engineering and scientific design and fabrication services. Rosenau Hall underwent a 16-million dollar building-wide renovation in 2008 which included replacement of laboratory bench tops and utilities, and replacement of all mechanical systems. Specifically, the project replaced the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, exterior windows, domestic and laboratory plumbing, life safety systems including sprinkler protection, electric systems including wiring, devices, main switch gear and connection to standby power generator, and added high speed network cabling and wireless access throughout the building. The renovation project also centralized instruction space locating classrooms and instructional support functions in proximity to existing teaching spaces in adjacent buildings and to other student oriented spaces housed in Rosenau Hall such as the Office of Student Affairs, Student Government and Minority Student Caucus. Teaching facilities provided by the project include two new 56-seat classrooms, a renovated 258-seat auditorium, a 30-seat teaching kitchen for the Department of Nutrition, and a reconfigured 30-seat teleconference facility with a control room that can remotely operate a 100-seat teleconference facility in the adjoining Michael Hooker Research Center. The project provided some new amenities open to all building occupants. These include individual and group study rooms, a lactation room and shower facilities to promote active living and alternative transportation to campus.
McGavran-Greenberg Hall
McGavran-Greenberg Hall is a 124,000 gross square-foot building that was completed and occupied by the School in 1991. It houses the Departments of Health Policy and Management, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics as well as the Public Health Leadership Program and wet laboratory space for the Departments of Nutrition and Environmental Sciences and Engineering. McGavran-Greenberg Hall includes over 40,000 assignable square feet of academic office, meeting and study space, approximately 14,000 assignable square feet of wet laboratory space, and more than 7,000 assignable square feet of instruction space including 10 classrooms and a 100-seat auditorium.
Wet laboratory space at McGavran-Greenberg Hall includes two biological safety-level three (BSL3) laboratory (overseen by the University’s Department of Environment, Health, and Safety), laboratory animal research facilities, and a roof-top smog chamber fabricated by the school’s own instrument and design shop in 2005. The 1,700 cubic foot roof-top smog chamber is used to analyze the effects of sunlight on hydrocarbon exhaust emissions.
The Herman G. Baity Environmental Engineering Laboratory (Baity Labs)
Baity Labs, although a separate building, was a part of the McGavran-Greenberg Hall project completed in 1991. This approximately 6,400 gross-square foot building provides specialized high-bay wet research space to facilitate water and air quality research. The building includes high-bay space, assignable lab modules and support space. Both the water and air laboratories are occupied by the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering. Exhaust fans and ducting used for air quality research were replaced in 2005.
Updated: 10/16/16
The High Throughput Genomic Sequencing Facility (HTSF) in the Integrated Genomics Cores is a full-service sequencing facility in the School of Medicine. It supports multiple sequencing platforms and state-of-the-art techniques to assist UNC investigators with genetic and genomic research. This facility has 2,500 sq. ft. of dedicated wet bench lab space housed in a new 9,000 sq. ft. facility along with the UNC gene expression core.
The HTSF has 1 NovaSeq 6000, 2 HiSeq 4000 and 2 HiSeq 2500 (Illumina), 4 MiSeq, GridION Oxford Nanopore System, as well as associated equipment necessary for efficient operation, including cBot cluster generators (Illumina), a capillary electrophoresis systems – 2 LabChipGX (Perkin Elmer), 2 Tape Stations (Agilent), 2 Bioanalyzes (Agilent); DNA shearing devices Covaris LE220, S2, and a host of other equipment including a Chromium system (10x Genomics) for single cell analysis and Saphyr (BionanoGenomics) for optical mapping of the genome. All sequencers are associated with on-board computers for real-time data processing, with one server dedicated for data analysis.
To increase efficiency and reproducibility of library preparation and pooling the facility is utilizing six robotic systems supporting unique and overlapping applications—two Genesis systems 150 and 200 (TECAN), one Biomek (Beckman Coulter), one Bravo (Agilent), one Sciclone G3 (Perkin Elmer) and Mantis (Formulatrix). Library preparation process for RNAseq application can be performed on more than one system to assure redundancy in our workflow.
Twenty-two full-time personnel, in addition to the Managing Director, Dr. Piotr Mieczkowski, staff the HTSF. Sequencing data processing, management, initial analysis and distribution of all data generated at the HTSF are handled by the UNC Center for Bioinformatics, are responsible for data processing, data management, initial analysis and distribution of all data generated at UNC HTSF. They have worked with a number of open-source software tools (including but not limited to SAMTOOLS, Bowtie, TOPHAT, BWA, SOAP2, MAQ etc.) that are used for analysis of deep-sequencing data. Hardware support for the facility includes four Dell Poweredge 2950 servers running Redhat enterprise Linux (EL4) (each with 2 x 2.66 GHz Quad core Xeon CPU’s, 32 GB RAM, 6 TB of disk storage) available for management/analysis of data from the next-gen sequencers within the Center, and a 30TB iSCSI SAN for next-gen sequence data analysis and storage. A small Linux cluster (20 node) was recently installed shortly to help facilitate large-scale analysis of sequence data. In addition to open source software programs meant for analysis of next-gen sequence data (maq, ChIP-seq, mosaik, phred/phrap/consed) there are two network licenses for CLC Genomics Workbench. Dr. Tristan De Buysscher, a senior bioinformatics scientist in the Center, provides dedicated programming support for informatics for high throughput sequencing projects.
**Please see the longer version supplied from the HTSF below**
Next Generation Sequencing
- UNC-Chapel Hill maintains several core facilities focused on genome sciences. Part of UNC’s success in maintaining an exciting research atmosphere is its open-door policy for core research facilities. Most importantly for this project, our lab has extensive positive collaborations with the UNC High-Throughput Sequencing Facility (HTSF, http://www.unc.edu/htsf/), which is supported by the School of Medicine and the Cancer Center. They operate state-of-the-art next generation sequencing instruments. The HTSF has 1 NovaSeq 6000, 2 HiSeq 4000 and 2 HiSeq 2500 (Illumina), 4 MiSeq, GridION Oxford Nanopore System, as well as associated equipment necessary for efficient operation, including cBot cluster generators (Illumina), a capillary electrophoresis systems – 2 LabChipGX (Perkin Elmer), 2 Tape Stations (Agilent), 2 Bioanalyzes (Agilent); DNA shearing devices Covaris LE220, S2, and a host of other equipment including a Chromium system (10x Genomics) for single cell analysis and Saphyr (BionanoGenomics) for optical mapping of the genome.
- HiSeq2500 system is a gold standard in RNAseq sequencing since it was used as a main data production system for The Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA). This system is using 4 color chemistry (each of the nucleotides has assigned one color) and random cluster generation flowcells. In our production facility this system is able to produce 32 lanes of sequencing per week with capacity around 230 million clusters per lane. Although it is older Illumina technology it still very popular among investigators interested in replication of TCGA RNAseq workflow for non-bias data comparison.
- HiSeq4000 system is currently workhorse for many sequencing applications including RNAseq. This system leverages innovative patterned flow cell technology to provide rapid, high-performance sequencing using 4 color chemistry. Perform production-scale, high-throughput exome or transcriptome sequencing projects quickly and economically. It can deliver 48 lanes of sequencing in 9 days and each lane can produce sequencing data from around 320 million clusters.
- NovaSeq 6000 is the state-of-the-art sequencing system from Illumina. It combines patterned large scale flowcells with new 2 color chemistry (combination of colors for each of 4 nucleotides). It can provide maximum sequencing output of the 20 billion clusters in 4 days. Output depends on a type of the flowcell and can be used for both medium and large-scale sequencing projects. Our tests indicate no technology bias for RNAseq comparing to the HiSeq4000 system. Therefore, we can predict that this technology soon become dominant for counting applications as well as resequencing of the genomes.
- MiSeq system is small scale sequencing system useful for amplicon sequencing and QC sequencing for large pool of RNAseq libraries form difficult material (FFPE). It can produce variety of reads length and scale dependent on type of used flowcell. It uses random clustering technology and 4 color chemistry therefore it is resistant for low complexity and low-quality sequencing libraries.
- GridIon from Oxford Nanopore system is state-of-the-art single molecule sequencing technology. It is using nanopores as an electric current detector for sequencing single stranded DNA or cDNA. It is used in our laboratory for Whole Genome Sequencing of small and medium size of genomes since can produce around 10Gb of large sequencing reads (more than 100Kb). Recently we started experiments with low and high input RNAseq on samples prepared from high quality RNA (fresh/frozen RIN >8). Using nanopore technology we are able to produce sequencing data from around 5 million full length transcripts which opens new opportunity in reproducible analysis of transcription level with detection of real splicing variants present in the sample. This application can be extended to single cell level and expanded by transition to PromethION larger scale production system.
- Chromium system from 10x Genomics is the most popular system for single cell applications. It rapidly and efficiently combines large partition numbers with a massively diverse barcode library to generate >100,000 barcode containing partitions in a matter of minutes. Therefore, system is capable to perform reproducibly single cell barcoding for many samples per day. We are using it for genome fazing, single cell ATACseq, V(D)J and 3’ end expression profiling.
- Saphyr system from BionanoGenomics is state-of-the-art optical mapping system for detection structural variation in the genomes. It can also assist in genome assembly for de novo projects. Currently we are not using this system for any type of RNAseq applications, but it can be used for verification gene fusions and other abnormalities detected in RNAseq experiments.
All sequencers are associated with on-board computers for real-time data processing, with one server dedicated for data analysis.
- To increase efficiency and reproducibility of library preparation and pooling we are utilizing six robotic systems supporting unique and overlapping applications—two Genesis systems 150 and 200 (TECAN), one Biomek (Becman Coulter), one Bravo (Agilent), one Sciclone G3 (Perkin Elmer) and Mantis (Formulatrix). Library preparation process for RNAseq application can be performed on more than one system to assure redundancy in our workflow. Additionally, we have dedicated PhD level employee extensively trained by both Tecan and Perkin Elmer to install new protocols, test them, prepare new scripts or adjust existing scripts according to current needs. We are collaborating with Tecan on development scripts for library preparation protocols on their Genesis NGS Workstation series. Our scripts for TruSeq RNA applications are released and distributed by Tecan. Here is short description of our automation systems:
- Genesis 150 (8 tip) and 200 (8 tip and 96 head) air displacement systems which are dedicated for everyday liquid handling solutions. We prepared scripts for loading 96 well plates, handling dilutions, Pico Green DNA assay and all other custom applications. Additionally, if needed, our Genesis systems are capable for TruSeq (mRNA, total RNA and RNA exome – Illumina) and NEBNext Ultra II (NEB) Stranded mRNA and total RNA library preparation up to 48 samples per batch. New library preparation protocols can be easily automated on these systems.
- Bravo from Agilent is our dedicated system only for TruSeq mRNA and TruSeq total RNA seq library preparation. We already used it for more than 15000 samples including TCGA and other large RNAseq projects. This system is capable of preparation around 384 libraries per month in full production scale. If necessary, as a redundancy for workflow, we can support production of TruSeq RNAseq libraries using both Tecan and Beckman Coulter liquid handling systems.
- Biomek (Beckman Coulter) is supporting system for our TruSeq RNAseq production on Bravo instrument. It is capable for customized liquid handling functions necessary for large production. This system is also able to prepare KAPA Stranded mRNAseq and total RNAseq libraries per our customers request.
- Siclone G3 from Parkin Elmer is high capacity 96 head system design for large volume library preparation. It is our main system for NEXT flex Small RNA library production (miRNA). We are also utilizing this system for KAPA DNA/RNA and Lexogen RNA library preparation. We can produce around 800 libraries per month in our standard production capacity. Since this system has only 96 head it is dedicated only for project over 48 samples per batch. It is also our redundancy system for TruSeq library preparation if Bravo and Beckman system are during the service.
- Mantis is miniature system dedicated for small volume liquid handling. It allows us reproducibly handle volume 0.5ul up to 20ul for selected number of processed samples at 96 plate and high speed of pipetting. Therefore, we are able to construct KAPA Hyper DNA and KAPA Hyper mRNA (during validation) libraries using portions of the reagents what reduce cost of our operation. Our R&D is planning to use this system for single cell, amplicon and RNAseq applications.
Twenty-two full-time personnel, in addition to the Managing Director, Dr. Piotr Mieczkowski, staff the HTSF. UNC Center for Bioinformatics (see below) staff is responsible for data processing, data management, initial analysis and distribution of all data generated at UNC HTSF. We have accumulated considerable experience with analysis of data from Illumina sequencers since 2007. Through collaborations with the UNC labs, RAM-Lab core and G-PATH core, we also have access to a Rhapsody (BD), additional robotics, and two NextSeq 500s.
Computer Resources
Information Technology Services (ITS) is the campus provider of leading-edge information technology service and support. The ITS division of Research Computing develops and maintains computing infrastructure for research support, while also directly engaging researchers to develop and deploy the needed tools and capabilities. Among the computing resources available for researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill are a 64-processor SGI Origin 3800 server; a 24-processor statistical computing domain in a Sun Fire 15K; a 352-processor Beowulf Linux cluster; a 32-processor SGI Origin 2400 server; and a 32-processor IBM Regatta P690 server. ITS operates several other large-scale computer systems, which are available for data management, statistical computing, and communications. An extensive library of centrally provided and managed software applications are available for use. More than two hundred software packages and utilities are offered for use on the central systems. By relying on ITS to maintain the hardware, security environment and software builds of computing systems, researchers are free to devote their time to science and research rather than to system administration. The faculty director of the HTSF, has secured the purchase an additional 64, 8 processor nodes and ~900 Tbyte of hard disk space to be dedicated to the processing and analysis of NextGen sequence data.
The UNC Center for Bioinformatics has provided Information technology and bioinformatics analysis support for the UNC-HTSF since its inception. Center for Bioinformatics staff are responsible for data processing, data management, initial analysis and distribution of all data generated at UNC HTSF. They have worked with a number of open-source software tools (including but not limited to SAMTOOLS, Bowtie, TOPHAT, BWA, SOAP2, MAQ etc.) that are used for analysis of deep-sequencing data. Hardware support for the facility includes four Dell Poweredge 2950 servers running Redhat enterprise Linux (EL4) (each with 2 x 2.66 GHz Quad core Xeon CPU’s, 32 GB RAM, 6 TB of disk storage) available for management/analysis of data from the next-gen sequencers within the Center, and a 30TB iSCSI SAN for next-gen sequence data analysis and storage. A small Linux cluster (20 node) was recently installed shortly to help facilitate large-scale analysis of sequence data. In addition to open source software programs meant for analysis of next-gen sequence data (maq, ChIP-seq, mosaik, phred/phrap/consed) there are two network licenses for CLC Genomics Workbench. Dr. Tristan De Buysscher, a senior bioinformatics scientist in the Center, provides dedicated programming support for informatics for high throughput sequencing projects.
Updated: 4/24/2019
The Investigational Drug Services (IDS) is a pharmacy unit that provides comprehensive investigational drug product (IP) storage, dispensing, and labeling services for clinical trials. The number and complexity of protocols supported by the IDS is growing rapidly because of its reputation for providing quality services. The IDS fulfills the following aspects of UNC’s research IP management: ordering, receipt, storage, temperature monitoring dispensing and/or formulation, and accountability (including accountability for IP returns). In addition, they often assist in or are responsible for randomization, blinding, and the development of protocols that involve drug administration. The manager of UNC IDS is Andrew Thorne, PharmD, MS and the current staffing of the IDS includes 9.6 full time equivalent (FTE) staff pharmacists, 9.0 FTE pharmacy technicians, and 1.0 FTE reimbursement analyst. An IDS pharmacist is assigned to each clinical research project that involves testing of pharmaceutical products.
There are currently three IDS locations. Studies involving IV preparations that are not chemotherapy or cancer-related are dispensed from the 3 West IDS, located on the third floor connector link in the Memorial Hospital; dosage forms that do not require more than minimal manipulation by IDS and are not chemotherapy or cancer-related are dispensed from Neurosciences IDS, located on the ground floor or the Neurosciences Hospital; and chemotherapy and cancer-related dispenses (oral and IV) are prepared out of the IDS embedded within the North Carolina Cancer Hospital Infusion Pharmacy (CHIP). UNC IDS uses Vestigo, a web-based accountability and IP management software, to manage all inventories, and has an onsite destruction policy for both hazardous and non-hazardous IP.
Updated: 4/16/2019
The Maternal Serum Screening Lab and Prenatal Diagnosis Center provides comprehensive prenatal screening, genetic counseling, diagnostic procedures, including chorionic villus sampling (CVS), amniocentesis, fetal blood sampling, comprehensive ultrasound, and educational outreach and services to community providers and their patients across the state. The Prenatal Diagnosis Center provides primary core laboratory services for quad screen testing for three of North Carolina’s six perinatal care regions. The lab processes more than 5,000 quad screen samples annually. This number includes virtually all women receiving prenatal care at community health centers and health departments in the eastern half of the state. The population screened is 39.2% Hispanic, 32.0% African-American, 23.5% Caucasian, 1.2% American Indian, 2.7% Southeast Asian, and the remaining 1.4% are either unknown or from another background. Of the quad screens performed, approximately 5.3% screened positive for Down syndrome and 2.4% screened positive for open neural tube defects on initial screen. Many more women with pregnancies complicated by fetal anomalies receive care at UNC as part of a high-risk, tertiary care prenatal referral system and through identification in routine ultrasound services. The Prenatal Diagnosis Center has two locations—one at the Women’s Hospital on the UNC main campus and one at the Rex Women’s Specialty Center—with five Board Certified Genetic Counselors and one Board Certified Clinical Geneticist who provide approximately 3,000 pre-conceptual or prenatal counseling visits annually.
Updated: 12/18/16
The McLendon Clinical Laboratories, under the direction of Herbert C. Whinna, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, is a full service clinical laboratory and is accredited by the College of American Pathologists (#13992-01 for Hospital Labs, 13992-02 Family Practice Lab, and #13992-15 for Point of Care Testing) and Health Care Finance Administration (CLIA Certification #34D0655124 for hospital labs and #34D0708545 for point of care testing). In addition, the Transfusion Medicine Service and the Histocompatibility/Tissue Typing (HLA) Laboratory are accredited by the American Association of Blood Banks and the HLA Laboratory is accredited by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics. The Laboratory is capable of providing chemistry, blood gases, hematology, microbiology, toxicology, blood bank and molecular testing on blood and other body fluids on a STAT and routine basis. Much of the testing is available 24/7 in support of inpatients, outpatients and the emergency department at UNC Hospitals.
This project also uses clinical laboratory space located in the UNC Reproductive Endocrinology Research Laboratory in the MacNider Building (Room 223) which is located adjacent to UNC Hospitals. The laboratory’s relevant major equipment includes two -80°C freezers, a high speed tabletop centrifuge, multiple general purpose centrifuges and microcentrifuges, power supplies, gel boxes, Brady labeling system (including bar coding) and a bar-code reader.
Updated: 10/11/16
Schools
The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest unit on campus; its mission is to create new knowledge and discover innovative solutions to the world’s greatest challenges, to educate outstanding undergraduate and graduate students, and to encourage faculty and students to contribute meaningfully to North Carolina, the nation and the world.
College faculty members have been recognized for their outstanding research, teaching and engagement in the fine arts and humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics. The College is home to more than 16,000 undergraduate students, including all of the University’s first-year and second-year students, and more than 75 percent of junior and senior majors. About 2,500 graduate students study and teach in the College, the largest group of graduate students on campus. The College includes more than 40 academic departments and interdisciplinary curricula, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as more than 30 centers, institutes, and other programs.
Updated: 10/11/16
The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, founded in March 1897, is the only public school of pharmacy in the state of North Carolina and is one of the oldest in the nation. The School is an internationally recognized leader in pharmacy practice and education and has built a reputation for its rigorous education and training programs, cutting-edge multidisciplinary research, progressive pharmacy practices, and outstanding faculty, staff, and students. UNC’s Pharmacy School was ranked #1 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report magazine’s 2016 edition of America’s Best Graduate Schools. The School also ranked #2 among schools and colleges of pharmacy in both NIH funding and total research funding, with $38 million in research grants in 2018.
The School conducts a wide range of advanced research that aligns with five phases of the drug discovery, development and delivery cycle, each represented by a division within the School: Stage 1, Discovery: Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry; Stage 2, Delivery: Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics; Stage 3, Optimization: Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics; Stage 4: Practice: Practice Advancement and Clinical Education; and Stage 5: Assessment: Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy. The School’s unique environment has also inspired a number of collaborative centers that provide faculty and students with access to sophisticated equipment and numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary research.
The School has experienced unprecedented growth and transformation over the past fifteen years, with 63% increase in faculty, 92% increase in facility square footage, and 206% increase in external funding. Annually, the School educates approximately 600 professional students and more than 100 graduate students, postdocs, residents, and fellows. School graduates work in many dynamic fields, including academia, pharmaceutical sales, drug development and research, community and health-system pharmacy, and long-term and managed-care pharmacy.
In 2014, the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy received a $100 million gift from Fred Eshelman, the largest from an individual in the history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the largest ever made to a pharmacy school in the United States. The gift established the Eshelman Institute for Innovation, which aims to inspire a culture of innovation where imagination and creative solutions accelerate change in education, research and health care. The institute provides a mechanism for faculty, staff and students to seek funding for bold ideas, and strives to foster collaboration, creativity and innovation and stimulate commercialization of intellectual property and entrepreneurial development.
Updated: 3/13/19
The Gillings School of Global Public Health (GSGPH) was established in 1940 as the fourth school of public health in the US and the first at a state university. The GSGPH is one of the largest public health schools in the country with 231 full-time faculty, 355 staff members and 1,788 students. Its mission is to improve the health and well-being of the population through research. The School is consistently ranked among the best schools of public health in the nation and is presently the top School of Public Health in a public university by U.S. News & World Report, and 2nd amongst all public health schools (2020 edition). GSGPH is one of 67 schools and 132 programs of public health accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health. The School’s faculty are nationally and internationally recognized for their research, publications and public health service. The research activities of the GSGPH are multidisciplinary by nature, as faculty members collaborate with colleagues from throughout the University, especially on the Health Affairs campus and its interdisciplinary research Centers. The School is recognized nationally as a potent force renowned for its scholarly contributions to the health sciences, its rigorous educational programs, and its public service activities aimed at improving population health. We are the number one public school of public health for NIH funding, with $213.2 million awarded in research grants and contracts in FY 2020. The School includes Departments in Biostatistics, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Epidemiology, Health Behavior, Health Policy and Management, Maternal and Child Health, Nutrition, and the Public Health Leadership Program.
The School sponsors more than 20 specialized centers and institutes focused on critical areas of public health. Faculty at the Gillings School conduct research in all 100 counties in North Carolina, across the United States, and in more than 60 countries spanning 6 continents on topics including clean drinking water and sanitation; air quality and toxicity; infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis; chronic disease prevention including cancers, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke; nutrition and physical activity; minority health and health disparities; health systems and services; injury and violence prevention; and public health practice and leadership. Global health is local health, and so our broad research portfolio generates discoveries that help North Carolinians as well as people around the world.
Updated: 1/11/21
The UNC School of Dentistry has nine academic departments, three clinics providing direct patient care, and a very active research program. The School has an academic program for every specialty recognized by the American Dental Association. The nine departments are Dental Ecology, Diagnostic Sciences, Endodontics, Operative Dentistry, Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, Orthodontics, Pediatric Dentistry, Periodontology, and Prosthodontics. The School has 96 full-time faculty, and 540 students enrolled annually including 24 in Dental Assisting, 72 in Dental Hygiene, 324 in DDS, and 120 in Advanced Education.
Because UNC is a state-supported institution committed to providing medical and dental care to the citizens of North Carolina, the Dental School has three patient care clinics to provide direct care, often at a reduced cost to the patient: student, graduate student, and faculty practice clinics. In the Student Clinic, preventive and other dental care is delivered by students who are enrolled in the doctorate in dental surgery program (DDS) and allied dental education programs (dental hygiene students and dental assisting). Dental treatment is provided in all areas of dental care, with faculty supervision at all times. In the Graduate School Clinic, advanced dental care is provided by practitioners who are seeking advanced education as general dentists or are becoming specialists. Dental Faculty Practice (DFP) dentists are faculty members of the UNC School of Dentistry serve as the exclusive treatment providers for their patients on a fee for service basis; the DFP takes a team approach to providing dental care, working across all specialties to provide the best care for each patient. In total, the three clinics provide care at more than 115,000 patient visits annually.
The School’s faculty members conduct research that includes basic science studies, clinical and translational research studies, health services research, behavioral studies, and population studies. The goal of their research is to improve oral health and overall health. Dental School faculty, students, research fellows, and visiting scholars generate new knowledge in the basic, applied, and clinical sciences, and in the areas of health services, health policy, and health education. The overarching emphasis is on the promotion of oral health and function. Discoveries in these areas not only offer the potential to improve oral health but also overall health. New knowledge is shared through presentations at scientific forums and publications in the scholarly literature. School of Dentistry scientists interact and collaborate with investigators on the UNC-CH campus and with leading scientists and institutions elsewhere in the United States and abroad. In 2015, faculty in the School of Dentistry received more than $10.4 million in research funding, and are ranked 5th in the nation in NIH/NIDCR funding.
The School of Dentistry has created three Research Centers and Institutes that allow investigators with common interests to work together to study specific research questions. The centers typically involve scientists from multiple disciplines to work on common problems in a unified manner. The Centers are the North Carolina Oral Health Institute, The Center for Pain Research and Innovation, and the TraCS Institute General and Oral Health Clinic.
Updated: 10/11/16
UNC School of Law was founded in 1845 and is part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first state-supported university. The school has been approved by the American Bar Association since 1928. Their 71 faculty members are widely published, and their work and teachings bear on contemporary legal concerns. Many have additional interests in history, philosophy, media, environment, biomedicine and international relations. UNC School of Law offers a J.D., plus a number of dual-degree programs collaboratively offered through the law school and other schools and departments at the University of North Carolina and Duke University. UNC School of Law also offers an LL.M. Program in United States Law for foreign lawyers. Approximately 675 students are enrolled in the School of Law programs.
Carolina Law prepares outstanding lawyers and leaders to serve the people and institutions of North Carolina, the nation, and the world. Home to numerous centers and initiatives, the school offers strong expertise in civil rights, banking, environmental law, intellectual property, entrepreneurial and securities law, critical studies, bankruptcy, and constitutional inquiry. The School has ten Centers and Initiatives to support each of these areas.
Updated: 10/11/16
In the 2020 annual rankings of “America’s Best Graduate Schools”, U.S. News & World Report ranked UNC School of Medicine 1st in primary care, 23rd in research, 3rd in family medicine, and 12th in obstetrics and gynecology. The UNC School of Medicine was formally established in 1879, but there is evidence that medical instruction was given in Chapel Hill prior to the Civil War. At the time, there were three faculty members and a total of 37 individuals who had attended this early school of medicine. Today the School of Medicine is home to 1,761 full-time and 199 part-time faculty members in 29 departments and more than 40 centers/programs with 192 entering MD students each year and a total enrollment of 752. UNC currently has an integrated health care system that includes both the School of Medicine and UNC Health Care; both organizations are committed to service in education, research and patient care to serve the people of North Carolina and beyond.
The last two decades have seen tremendous growth for the UNC School of Medicine. In 2000 Rex Healthcare in Raleigh became a wholly-owned subsidiary of UNC Health Care and in November of that year, the State’s voters approved a bond issue for higher education and the School launched new construction and renovation plans for one million square feet of existing medical school space, including the Neuroscience Research Building, the Bioinformatics Building, the Biomolecular Research Building and, at UNC Hospitals, the North Carolina Women’s and Children’s Hospitals. In succeeding years, the School of Medicine established two new academic departments and five new centers: Department of Genetics, Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, UNC Center for Infectious Disease, Neurodevelopmental Disorders Research Center, Center for Maternal and Infant Health, the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences, and the Carolina Cardiovascular Biology Center. The Department of Genetics and the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences have fostered faculty collaborations from the entire university.
In August 2009, the first patients began receiving care at the NC Cancer Hospital, a 50-bed, 7-story hospital that serves as the clinical home of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and in 2011 the UNC Health Care System completed construction on the new Imaging Research Building which houses the Biomedical Research Imaging Center and serves as a state resource for handling the acquisition, processing, analysis, storage, and retrieval of scientific images. The building also provides research space for scientists across campus specializing in imaging and cancer treatment.
Research at the UNC School of Medicine Research has steadily increased over the last several years. In calendar year 2019, the total School of Medicine Research funding was $510 million, an increase of more than $48 million more than in FY2018. The numbers reflect the breadth of the School of Medicine’s research enterprise, with 17 Departments, Centers, and Institutes receiving at least $10 million in funding, and 31 receiving at least $4 million in FY2019. UNC School of Medicine ranked 17th in the nation in NIH funding (6th among public schools) in 2019. All six basic science departments ranked in the top 10, and twelve clinical departments ranked in the top 30 for NIH funding.
Updated: 9/17/20
The School of Nursing (the SON) was established in 1950 and was the first school in North Carolina to offer a 4-year baccalaureate degree. The school opened in 1951 and graduated its first BSN class in 1955, the same year in which the undergraduate program received its initial accreditation. The master’s program, established in 1955, was first accredited in 1961. Both programs have been continuously accredited since the initial approvals. Today the SON has education programs in the following areas: Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), RN-MSN, Post – MSN Certificate, Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing Science (PhD), and both Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships. Current faculty includes 41 tenured/tenure track members, 88 fixed- term members, 3 fixed-term researchers, and 160 adjunct faculty. In 2015-2016, the SON awarded 103 BSN degrees, 55 ABSNs, 22 RN-MSN Certificates, 90 MSNs, 10 P-MSNs, 7 DNPs, and 7 PhDs.
The SON has high-quality innovative research programs concentrated in five areas: preventing and managing chronic illness and major health threats, reducing health disparities, improving healthcare quality and patient outcomes, understanding biobehavioral and genetic bases of health and illness, and developing innovative ways to enhance science and its clinical translation. In 2015, School of Nursing faculty received $4.2 million in research funding. have The Biobehavioral Laboratory (BBL) was initiated in 1989 and its mission is to enhance knowledge and skills in biobehavioral science, physiological measurement and instrumentation. The BBL houses instruments for the monitoring of physiologic parameters such as electrical brain activity, cardiac output, oxygenation, body composition, and heart rate responses. The BBL has expanded to include a brand-new nutritional research and a behavioral observation suite which houses a room equipped with 6 in-wall cameras and a monitoring room with the latest video recording and editing software.
The school occupies two buildings on the UNC campus (Carrington East and Carrington West) with a combined square footage of 141,790; both buildings are located in close proximity to the other Health Affairs schools, the UNC Hospitals, and the Health Sciences Library (HSL). Administrative offices, faculty offices, conference rooms, computer labs, and classrooms are located throughout both buildings. All full-time faculty have private offices, and all part-time faculty have private work spaces within shared offices (generally two part-time faculty per shared office). Faculty have computers, printers, and phones in their workspaces. Staff have private or shared offices with computers, phones, and other appropriate office equipment. Research offices and project spaces are located on the 2nd and 3rd Floors of Carrington East and 2nd and Ground Floors of Carrington West. Classes and seminars are scheduled in well-equipped classrooms and/or conference rooms throughout the two buildings.
Updated: 10/11/16
Support Services
The Carolina Survey Research Laboratory (CRSL) was founded in 1990 and is part of the Biostatistics Department at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. The CSRL strives to support and improve the quality of population-based research by applying state-of-the-art principles of design and data collection to all collaborative studies in which the CSRL participates; training students to apply these principles to practice; and conducting research aimed at improving the design, data collection, and analysis phases of types of studies done in conjunction with the CSRL.
The CSRL provides expertise in the areas of survey and questionnaire design and data collection to the research community. Working under grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements, the CSRL has conducted hundreds of collaborative studies at the national, state, regional, and local levels across a broad spectrum of issues. The CSLR offers services in Sampling, Questionnaire development,Data Collection (by telephone, internet, and/or mail), Survey data preparation, Sample weighting, Statistical analysis, and Report writing. These services may be delivered separately as part of consultation agreements or together as part of data collection efforts. Moreover, each computer file produced from our data collection efforts is thoroughly documented for subsequent use by analysts.
Updated: 10/11/16
Founded in 2000, Communication for Health Applications and Interventions (CHAI) Core is UNC’s one-stop shop for researchers looking to add value to their research studies in the areas of technology, user inquiry, and graphic design. They use state-of-the-art technologies to facilitate the translation of traditional evidence-based behavioral interventions into effective web- and mobile-based interventions in fields such as obesity and cancer prevention. CHAI personnel includes three programmers, a graphic designer, a project manager, and a qualitative research team that includes a masters-trained anthropologist and a PhD in Health Behavior. Our staff has extensive experience designing logos (more than 100 projects), print and website graphics, and creating and programming websites. The CHAI Core works in collaboration with the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center (LCCC), the Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC), The Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), NC Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS), and the Center for Diabetes Translational Research (CDTR). CHAI is supported by the NIH, and the infrastructure and personnel are funded through the Gillings School of Global Public Health Nutrition Obesity Research Center and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Updated: 10/11/16
Community Academic Resources for Engaged Scholarship (CARES) is one of the core programs within NC TRaCS. It is designed to engage communities, faculty, and health care providers as partners in clinical and translational research. The goal is to ultimately transform the way academic investigators and community members work together while boosting public trust in research. CARES, led by Giselle Corbie-Smith, MD, MSc leverages UNC-CH’s extensive experience serving North Carolina communities through multiple community-based research efforts to create a unique program with interdisciplinary leadership and a focus on the following priorities:
- creating an easy-to-access connection portal and interactive web map to support two-way communications between NCTraCS researchers and North Carolina communities
- providing tailored educational offerings to increase the capacity of investigators, community members, and community providers to understand all considerations of community-based research
- providing technical assistance to investigative teams
- supporting NC TraCS Campuses in Greensboro and Wake County
- supporting individuals looking for funding, researchers, clinical trials, or a calendar of community learning opportunities about research
- working with investigators and communities to select, implement, and evaluate evidence-based interventions for locally-identified public health and health care priorities. CARES also provides resources and training in support of Community Advisory Boards (CAB)
Updated: 10/11/16
The Consortium for Implementation Science is a joint endeavor of RTI International and the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health that facilitates collaborations to advance implementation science. Implementation Science is the study of methods used to promote the use of research findings in healthcare, community and policy contexts. Implementation science is the study of methods used to promote the use of research findings in healthcare, community and policy contexts. As a multidisciplinary field, it examines how these findings are disseminated, implemented and sustained by targeted audiences. Implementation science seeks to close the knowing-doing gap by systematically generating evidence about how to effectively implement evidence-based programs, practices or policies in clinical or community settings. This evidence or knowledge about how to implement effectively can then be used by individuals, organizations and policy-makers to improve the quality of care and optimize population health. The consortium provides resources to build knowledge and skills in implementation research, foster new collaborations with methodological and content experts, and inform the design and evaluation of new study interventions.
Updated: 10/13/16
In 2013, UNC-supported activities in the Division of AIDS HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks were combined under the umbrella of a single global unit, the UNC Global Clinical Trials Unit (CTU). The CTU is housed in the UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases. In 2014, UNC received 7 years of funding and more than $40 million from NIH for global clinical trials unit to treat and prevent HIV. With active clinical research sites in North Carolina, South Africa, Vietnam, Zambia, and Malawi, this unit is now among the most successful in world, with open protocols from five networks: the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Group (IMPAACT), the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN), and the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN). UNC faculty members serve in numerous leadership roles in these networks, including as network co-PI and scientific committee chairs. The unit provides opportunities for young investigators to participate and join network committees and study teams and has a sophisticated infrastructure to support research that is often made available to mentees (sharing of standard operating procedures, case report forms, recruitment material development, etc.).
Updated: 10/13/16