Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
Texas Woman’s University received a $10 million gift from alumna and philanthropist Dawn S. Chaney to support the construction of a new athletics complex at the university. Expected to break ground in 2027, the approximately $30 million, 30,000-square-foot facility will feature an auxillary practice gym, locker rooms, an expanded weight room, a sports medicine clinic, a student-athlete lounge and study hall, indoor batting cages, dedicated spaces for wrestling and stunt teams, and coaches’ offices and meeting rooms.
Weill Cornell Medicine, the medical system of Cornell University, received a three-year $2.5 million grant from the Department of Defense to advance therapies with fewer side effects for triple-negative breast cancer. Scientists at the university will develop first-in-class drugs targeting UBR5, a protein that is frequently overproduced in aggressive breast cancers and several other difficult-to-treat malignancies. The team will then evaluate how well the drugs work against breast cancer in laboratory models that closely mimic human cancers.
A team led by researchers at Columbia University was awarded a $5 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to develop HARMONI — an AI-powered wearable monitoring system designed to provide clinicians with continuous, objective insight into the health of mother and baby during labor. The technology combines a wireless abdominal smart belt with a companion ear-worn sensor. Together, they continuously monitor fetal cardiovascular activity, uterine contractions, fetal movement, maternal electrocardiogram, oxygen saturation, respiration, temperature, and other physiological signals.