
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
TEP Utilization Grant
Bridge Grant Program
High-throughput Screening Support Grants
JumpStart Program
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.”
Kevin Chang
“Cancer is among the largest health concerns today and supporting cancer research helps scientists advance the prevention and treatment of it.”

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.”
Seed Grant Funding
2022 Seed Grant Projects
A Molecular Lego Kit for Kinase Inhibitors
Principal Investigator:
- Martin Burke, Professor, Chemistry
Research Team:
- Emad Tajkhorshid, Professor, Biochemistry
Targeting the bidirectional crosstalk between gut microbial metabolism and bile acids to alleviate intestinal and liver tumorigenesis
Principal Investigator:
- Christopher Gaulke, Assistant Professor, Pathobiology
Research Team:
- Sayeepriyadarshini Anakk, Associate Professor, Molecular & Integrative Physiology
- Collin Kieffer, Assistant Professor, Microbiology
- Bo Wang, Assistant Professor, Comparative Biosciences
Engineering Mechanical and Chemical Gradients to Control Cancer Cell Metastasis
Principal Investigator:
- Catherine Murphy, Professor, Chemistry
Research Team:
- Taher Saif, Professor, Mechanical Sciences and Engineering
Versatile redox detection of a-glycosylated proteins in blood, a potential universal biomarker for robust cancer detection
Principal Investigator:
- Joaquin Rodriguez Lopez, Associate Professor, Chemistry
Research Team:
- Brian Cunningham, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Zeynep Madak-Erdogan, Associate Professor, Food Science and Human Nutrition
Molecular Dynamics Modeling of Target Recycling Amplification for Ultrasensitive Detection of RNA-based Cancer Biomarkers
Principal Investigator:
- Emad Tajkhorshid, Professor, Biochemistry
Research Team:
- Brian Cunningham, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Optogenetic modulation of the tumor microenvironment to improve cancer immunotherapy
Principal Investigator:
- Kai Zhang, Associate Professor, Biochemistry
Research Team:
- Erik Nelson, Molecular and Integrative Physiology
2021 Seed Grant Projects
Delineating the Role of Orc6 in Genome Surveillance and Cancer Progression
Principal Investigator:
- Supriya Prasanth, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology
Research Team:
- Satish K. Nair, Department of Biochemistry
FORce Control of Cancer Tumor μEnvironment (FORCE)
Principal Investigator:
- M. Taher Saif, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering
Research Team:
- Kimberly Selting, Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine
- Kannanganattu V. Prasanth, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology
- Hyunjoon Kong, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
High-Resolution Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging for Adaptive Glioblastoma Multiforme Patient Treatment
Principal Investigator:
- Hua Li, Department of Bioengineering
Research Team:
- Fan Lam, Department of Bioengineering
- Zhi-Pei Liang, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Mark Anastasio, Department of Bioengineering
- Paul Arnold, Department of Neurosurgery (Carle Foundation Hospital)
- Daniel Barnett, Carle Cancer Institute
Lipid Droplet Packing: A New Target to Interfere with the Progress of Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Principal Investigator:
- Cecilia Leal, Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Research Team:
- Sayee Anakk, Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology
Multi-shape 3D Hanging Drop Array for Cancer Drug-screening
Principal Investigator:
- Rashid Bashir, Department of Bioengineering
Research Team:
- Panagiotis Z. Anastasiadis, Department of Cancer Biology (Mayo Clinic – Jacksonville, FL)
- George Vasmatzis, Department of Molecular Medicine (Mayo Clinic – Rochester, MN)
- Andrew Smith, Department of Bioengineering
- Joon Kong, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Jie Chen, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Quantitative Ultrasound for Detection of Lymph Node Metastasis from Oral Melanoma & to Document Tumor Response to Stereotactic Radiosurgery in Dogs as a Large Animal Model of Metastatic Cancer
Principal Investigator:
- Kimberly Selting, Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine
Research Team:
- Audrey Billhymer, Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine
- Michael Oelze, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Rita Miller, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stable Therapeutic Antibody Expression for Cancer Immunotherapy by Liver-directed Gene Editing
Principal Investigator:
- Shannon Sirk, Department of Bioengineering
Research Team:
- Thomas Gaj, Department of Bioengineering
- Zeynep Madak-Erdogan, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition
- Pablo Perez-Pinera, Department of Bioengineering
Workflows and Tools for Visualizing Tumor Phylogenies in Metastatic Breast Cancer
Principal Investigator:
- Mohammed El-Kebir, Department of Computer Science
Research Team:
- Zeynep Madak-Erdogan, Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition
- Charles Blatti, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- Colleen Bushell, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- Lisa Gatzke, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- Matthew Berry, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The Role of the Urinary Sterolbiome in Prostate Cancer Risk
Principal Investigator:
- Jason Ridlon, Department of Animal Sciences
Research Team:
- H. Rex Gaskins, Department of Animal Sciences
- Joseph Irudayaraj, Department of Bioengineering
- John Erdman, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition
2020 Seed Grant Projects
Using Anticancer Drug-Induced Immune Cell Activation to Target Ovarian Cancer for Eradication
Principal Investigator:
- David Shapiro, Professor, Biochemistry
Research Team:
- Erik Nelson, Assistant Professor, Molecular and Integrative Physiology
- Georgina Cheng, Clinical Assistant Professor, Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Elucidating the Role of Minor Cannabinoids on Immune Cell Activation Involved in Lung Cancer Metastatic Progression
Principal Investigator:
- David Sarlah, Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Research Team:
- Aditi Das, Associate Professor, Comparative Biosciences
- Timothy Fan, Professor, Veterinary Clinical Medicine
Establishment of a Spatially Resolved Noncoding RNA-mRNA Interactome Map for Breast Cancer Progression
Principal Investigator:
- Hee-Sun Han, Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Research Team:
- Saurabh Sinha, Professor, Computer Science
- Prasanth Kumar V. Kannanganattu, Associate Professor, Cell and Developmental Biology
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