The Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 Spring Common Deadline. All participating centers shared unified application requirements with an April deadline. Five centers participated in the Spring Common Deadline, and several applications were selected for funding. Congratulations to each recipient!
Center for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) Pilot Recipient
Karuna Rajkumar, MBBS, MD
Assistant Professor, Anesthesiology
“Predicting Post CPB Vasoplegia with Interpretable Machine Learning for Early Risk Targeted Management”
Center for Prevention Science in Child and Family Health (CPSCFH) Pilot Recipient
Morgan Walls, MD
Assistant Professor, Pediatrics
“Development and Validation of a Risk Scored for Delayed or Non-completion of Developmental Evaluation in Young Children”
Center for Vaccines at the Extremes of Aging (CVEA) Pilot Recipient
Jana Hirschtick, PhD
Associate Professor, Epidemiology and Prevention
“Developing a Parent-Centered Approach to Address Pediatric Vaccine Hesitancy”
Center for Lung Health (CLH) Pilot Recipient
Jeffrey Willey, PhD
Professor, Radiation Oncology
“AI-Based Prediction of Radiation-Induced Rib Fracture Risk Following Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy in Lung Cancer”
Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Translational Research Pilot Recipients
Jessica Palakshappa, MD, MS
Associate Professor, Internal Medicine
“Overcoming Translational Barriers to Emergency Intubation Best Practices Through Scalable Measurement and Determinant Identification”
*co-funded by the Critical Illness, Injury and Recovery Research Center
Brinkley Bellotti, DVM
Assistant Professor, Infectious Diseases
“Community-Engaged Modeling of West Nile Virus Risk to Guide Vector Control Decision-Making (T4)”
Zahra Bahrani-Mostafavi, PhD
Assistant Professor, OBGYN
“Comparative Urogenital Microbiome and Urinary Metabolomics Profiling in Women With and Without Endometriosis: Toward Diagnostic Biomarker Discovery”
Rita Cervera-Juanes, PhD
Associate Professor, Translational Neuroscience
“Leveraging Adaptive Long-Read Sequencing for the Rapid Diagnosis of Central Nervous System Tumors”
*co-funded by the Comprehensive Cancer Center