Delaware State University receives a $7 million research grant from the National Institute of Health.
The seven-year grant will result in the establishment of a new interdisciplinary DSU Center for Research and Education in Multiscale Bioengineering, Bioimaging and Biosensing.
DSU’s College of Agriculture, Science and Technology will be the new center’s home and its dean Cherese Winstead explains the impact it’s expected to have on students.
"So research is really where it's at, so exposing undergraduate students, specifically those that are first generation and exposing them to research opportunities, early internships with corporate stakeholders, as well as the experiences of translation of technologies. More often than not many of our students they don't get the exposure to these areas of how you can utilize basic research and translate those technologies to commercializable products," said Winstead.
Winstead notes Delaware State University is one of only two HBCUs awarded grants of this magnitude by NIH. North Carolina A&T is the other one.
She adds that it will help DSU recruit bioengineering and biomedical engineering students.
Winstead says this grant will help DSU move forward.
"When you actually map the two HBCUs together, North Carolina A&T actually has existing ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accredited programs in engineering, which actually tells you the footprint that Delaware State University has in this space with bioengineering,” said Winstead. “We are on track to get an ABET accredited program, so we have applied for our readiness review."
DSU President Tony Allen also announced the new College of Agriculture, Science and Technology building will be the Agilent Technology Research Center at Delaware State University.
