CCIL Grant Programs

Underhill lab tech testing samples

The Cancer Center at Illinois supports the most innovative and exciting ideas from faculty at the University of Illinois. CCIL grant programs spark and support transdisciplinary collaborations that develop projects from early ideas to a competitive external funding proposal.

These grant funding opportunities are designed to foster new collaborations that reach across the engineering and biology continuum and leverage research team results for submitting external multi-PI grants in the cancer area.

Each application is reviewed and discussed by a panel of reviewers, following a process similar to that used by NIH.

Seed Grant Program

The CCIL Seed Grant program solicits interdisciplinary team research proposals to initiate new collaborations and enhance existing collaborations among CCIL members and Illinois faculty. 

TEP Utilization Grant

The CCIL TEP Utilization Grant supports Illinois researchers in advancing cancer research by providing up to $5,000 of support for the use of the Tumor Engineering and Phenotyping (TEP) Shared Resource.

Bridge Grant Program

The CCIL Bridge Grant Program provides assistance to cancer-focused research grant proposals that are at the R01 or multi-project level mechanisms.

High-throughput Screening Support Grants

The CCIL partners with the High-throughput Screening Facility (HTSF) within the School of Chemical Sciences to provide funding support to researchers interested in using the facility to advance cancer research.

JumpStart Program

The CCIL JumpStart program is for established investigators (at the level of Associate Professor or above), who are not yet CCIL members, to engage in collaborative research with existing members to accelerate progress against cancer.

Where Cancer Research Meets Collaboration

Diwakar Shukla

“Cancer research needs multidisciplinary approaches and the Cancer Center at Illinois has developed a unique research program focused on the interface between data science, measurement technology, and cancer research.

Diwakar Shukla Portrait

Kevin Chang

“Cancer is among the largest health concerns today and supporting cancer research helps scientists advance the prevention and treatment of it.”

kevinchang

Prasanth Kumar V. Kannanganattu

“The CCIL helps to bridge biologists, engineers and medical professionals in the campus to explore new avenues towards understanding the biology of cancer, ultimately paving the way to novel therapeutic strategies.”

Prasanth Portrait

Planning Grant Funding

2019 - 2022 Planning Grant Projects

2020 Recipients

Identifying Pathways for Therapeutic Design to Stop Liver Cancer

Principal Investigator:

  • Sayeepriyadarshini Anakk, Associate Professor, Molecular and Integrative Physiology

Research Team:

  • Auinash Kalsotra, Associate Professor, Biochemistry
  • Stephen Boppart, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Enhancing GBM Immunotherapy Through Peripheral Viral Infection and Inhibition of Immune Suppression in the Tumor Microenvironment

Principal Investigator:

  • H. Rex Gaskins, Professor, Animal Sciences

Research Team:

  • Andrew Steelman, Assistant Professor, Animal Sciences
  • Ed Roy, Professor Emeritus, Pathology and Molecular and Integrative Physiology
  • Stephen Boppart, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • Brendan Harley, Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Effect of Dietary Modulation of RAGE/AGE Axis on Prostatic Neuroendocrine Differentiation and the Efficacy of Anticancer Therapies

Principal Investigator:

  • Wawrzyniec Dobrucki, Associate Professor, Bioengineering

Research Team:

  • Erik Nelson, Assistant Professor, Molecular and Integrative Physiology
  • Gregory Underhill, Associate Professor, Bioengineering

2019 Recipients

A 3-D In Vitro Biomimetic Tumor Microenvironment Integrated with a Micro Sensor Platform

Principal Investigator:

  • M. Taher A. Saif, Professor, Mechanical Science and Engineering

Research Team:

  • Kimberly Selting, Associate Professor, Veterinary Medicine
  • Mohammed El-Kebir, Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Diet-modified Efficacy of RAGE-targeted Prostate Cancer Treatments

Principal Investigator:

  • Wawrzyniec Dobrucki, Associate Professor, Bioengineering

Research Team:

  • Erik Nelson, Assistant Professor, Molecular and Integrative Physiology
  • John W. Erdman, Professor Emeritus, Food Science and Human Nutrition

Elucidating Mechanisms by which Environmental Toxicants Induce Liver Cancer

Principal Investigator:

  • Auinash Kalsotra, Associate Professor, Biochemistry

Research Team:

  • Joseph Irudayaraj, Professor, Bioengineering
  • Jodi Flaws, Professor, Comparative Biosciences

Elucidating Premetastatic Niche-Induced Therapy Resistance Mechanisms in ER(+) Metastatic Breast Cancers

Principal Investigator:

  • Zeynep Madak-Erdogan, Assistant Professor, Food Science and Human Nutrition

Research Team:

  • Roy Dar, Assistant Professor, Bioengineering
  • Erik Nelson, Assistant Professor, Molecular and Integrative Physiology

Eradication of H.Pylori with PH-sensitive Antimicrobial Polypeptides to Reduce Gastric Cancer

Principal Investigator:

  • Jianjun Cheng, Professor, Bioengineering

Research Team:

  • Lin-Feng Chen, Professor, Biochemistry

Integrated Computational and CRISPR-CAS9 Imaging Platforms for Studying Non-Coding Pathogenic Germline Variants and Somatic Mutations in Breast Cancer

Principal Investigator:

  • Pablo Perez-Pinera, Assistant Professor, Bioengineering

Research Team:

  • Jun Song, Professor of Physics
  • Thomas Kuhlman, Assistant Professor, Physics

Listening Online and Listening Face-to-Face: Innovative Mixed-Method Approaches for Studying Cancer Communication in the New Media Environment

Principal Investigator:

  • Kevin Chang, Professor, Computer Science

Research Team:

  • Cabral Bigman-Galimore, Assistant Professor, Communication
  • Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, Associate Professor, Kinesiology and Community Health

Predicting Response to Cancer Immunotherapy Using a Subclone-Integrated Machine Learning Model of Neoantigen Processing, Presentation, and Recognition

Principal Investigator:

  • Jian Peng, Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Research Team:

  • Mohammed El-Kebir, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
  • Hong Jin, Assistant Professor, Biochemistry