Improving lives: UNC Chapel Hill finds solutions for industries, from big data management to cures for diseases.

• Position: RESEARCH NORTH CAROLINA: UNC CHAPEL HILL

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One of the nation's 10 top research universities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a trusted partner for industries seeking everything from breakthroughs in big data management to cures for the world's deadliest diseases. UNC tackles these challenges with multidisciplinary teams of top scientists whose diverse perspectives yield outside-of-the-box solutions. Funding from industry for research at UNC has grown in recent years, and topped $38 million in 2015.

> Personalized cancer treatment through big data and precision medicine

Not everyone diagnosed with cancer responds well to the standard course of treatment: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Novel approaches targeting cancer-causing genetic mutations are on the rise, but researchers need to know quickly and precisely which treatments will work for which patients. UNC's Lineberger Cancer Center is exploring ways doctors can use giant health datasets processed by the IBM super-computer Watson to customize care and treatment for patients.

The Lineberger team is training Watson to recommend treatment options for patients who respond poorly to traditional therapies. During its training, Watson will be learning which drug regimens have worked best for various types and stages of cancers when analyzed alongside patient genetic data. Harnessing the processing power of IBM's Watson can cut the time required to analyze genetic profiles and cross-check medical literature from weeks to minutes.

Once the team has completed Watson's training, doctors plan to put the super-computer to work with patients in a clinical trial. The end goal for UNC's medical and data scientists is an algorithm that can recommend--based on genetic DNA and RNA information unique to each patient--the precise personalized therapy that would be best.

> UNC scientists partner with Apple to unravel mysteries of postpartum depression

Postpartum depression affects at least one in every eight women after the birth of a child. Working with Cupertine, Calif.-based Apple Inc. and its ResearchKit software--an open-source product for developing iPhone apps--scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have designed a highly efficient mobile tool to gather data on-the-go from the iPhones of clinical trial participants, avoiding the need for costly and time consuming exam room visits. The tool is a part of a UNC study to identify genetic predispositions to post-partum depression. It is used to recruit...