Five years in, the innovative policy model has proven enormously effective at turning state funds into life-changing research.

For federal and state lawmakers who have an unending procession of meeting requests, committee hearings, markups, fundraisers, and other demands on their schedules, time is perhaps the most valuable finite resource.

As the Collaboratory marked its fifth anniversary in July 2021, this report provides an opportunity to summarize numerous examples of program success.

The NC Policy Collaboratory is excited to welcome Dr. Greer Arthur as the organization’s new Research Director. This position will play a significant leadership role in accomplishing the Collaboratory’s mission of utilizing university research to inform and assist state and local government decision-makers.

Convergent science is characterized by cross-disciplinary research teams created to tackle big problems and speed the application of new breakthroughs to commercialization. At UNC-Chapel Hill, the Institute for Convergent Science is at the forefront of this pioneering framework.

The first case of the Omicron COVID-19 variant in North Carolina was discovered by a member of the CORVASEQ program – a partnership between the NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Division of Health and the North Carolina Collaboratory.

Carolina researchers design rapid sensing COVID-19 test to meet the challenge of universal testing and tracking variants.

Frank Leibfarth, the main speaker at Carolina’s Winter Commencement, talks about growing up in a small town, being fearless in his college football career and plastics research, his dog Roscoe and Broseidon the goldfish.

When the COVID-19 vaccine became available for administration in December of 2020, organizations such as the NC Policy Collaboratory rushed to devise a plan to get vaccines into the arms of community members.

A lead investigator for the CORVASEQ (Coronavirus Variant Sequencing) Surveillance Network, a partnership between the North Carolina DHHS and the NC Policy Collaboratory, says that a lot is still unknown about the impact the omicron variant will have.