Supporting Innovative Research Through Seed Funding

Keely Muscatell studies how psychological experiences influence what happens in the immune system, a field called psychoneuroimmunology. (photo and illustration by Alyssa LaFaro and Corina Cudebec, UNC Research)

In 2019, Ann Cowan ’75 and the Cowan Family Foundation established the Ann Rankin Cowan Excellence Fund for High-Impact Research to provide seed funding for faculty in the early stages of innovative research.

“I wanted to help get a project off the ground and then be able to ask, ‘What’s the next project?’ Five years from now, it could be something we’ve never heard of. To me, that’s what’s so exciting about this,” Cowan said.

Keely Muscatell, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, received Cowan funding in 2020 to pursue a pilot project to study how inflammatory responses to the flu vaccine influence social behavior.

“This funding was transformative for me in part because the data we collected was critical for a grant proposal I submitted to the National Science Foundation,” Muscatell said. As a result, Muscatell was awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant, the NSF’s most prestigious award for early-career faculty.

“In addition to the research projects I will pursue with this CAREER grant, I will also teach a new course to undergraduate students and provide stipends to undergraduate students to work in my lab. This grant, which would not have been possible without the Cowan
Fund, will contribute to both research and undergraduate education at Carolina.”

Cowan served on the Foundation’s Board of Directors for six years and remains active with the Former Directors Engagement Committee.