UNYTE Translational Research Network

Features

UNYTE accomplishes its mission by assessing and accessing expertise, technologies, services, and curricula that might be shared between institutions, to foster collaborative research, reduce resource duplication, and to enhance bidirectional transfer of information between basic and clinical investigators. A number of UNYTE institutions primarily perform basic research, requiring collaboration in order to pursue the translation of their discoveries. Other UNYTE institutions have healthcare providers with clinical research programs, but may have limited access to the pipeline of basic science discoveries. UNYTE provides partners for both.

Benefits

Members of UNYTE assess and access expertise, technologies, services, and curricula that might be shared between institutions, to foster collaborative research, reduce resource duplication, and to enhance bidirectional transfer of information between basic and clinical investigators.

A number of UNYTE institutions primarily perform basic research, requiring collaboration in order to pursue the translation of their discoveries. Other UNYTE institutions have healthcare providers with clinical research programs, but may have limited access to the pipeline of basic science discoveries. UNYTE provides partners for both.

UNYTE has the potential to facilitate population-based studies. Through its member institutions, UNYTE has access to several populations which are understudied, including:

• Rural populations, research programs in rural health, and vertically integrated rural health programs
• Deaf and hard of hearing (D/HOH) populations through the National Center for Deaf Health Research

Get Started

• Email us to ask questions about UNYTE.
• Join our mailing list and check out our past newsletters.
• Propose new collaborative activity or document an intra-institutional activity of relevance to UNYTE.

Participating Institutions

• Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences & Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences – Pharmaceutical Research Institute (PRI)
• Albany Medical College
• Bassett Healthcare Network
• Binghamton University, SUNY
• Canandaigua Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC)/Rochester VA Outpatient Clinic
• The College at Brockport, SUNY
• Cornell University - Division of Nutritional Sciences
• The Guthrie Clinic
• Masonic Medical Research Institute 
• Northeast College of Health Sciences
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• Roswell Park Cancer Institute
• Syracuse University
• Trudeau Institute
• University at Albany, SUNY
• University at Buffalo, SUNY
• University of Rochester
• Upstate Medical University, SUNY
• Wadsworth Center, NYSDOH

Resources

UNYTE also offers a pipeline to pilot funding program and a pilot funding program open to investigators at research institutions across the Upstate region.

Contact

UNYTE Director
Gary Noronha, M.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine

General Inquiries
Karen Vitale, MSEd, Program Manager
Shelby Johnson, UNYTE Administrative Assistant

Past Projects

Virtual Scientific Session

The UNYTE Virtual Scientific Session - Advancing Translational Science in Rural Health Research was held on November 1, 2023 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. It brought together researchers from across New York State to explore innovative strategies for overcoming barriers to the participation of rural populations in health research.

Slides from select research presentations are linked below.

The event highlighted:

• Rural health research
• Digital health technologies and teleresearch
• Extending the reach of studies to engage rural populations

Agenda

9 a.m. | Welcome and Opening Remarks
Gary Noronha, MD of UNYTE and Martin Zand, MD, PhD of UR CTSI

9:10 | Keynote Speech and Q&A: Transformative Rural Health
Presented by Xinzhi Zhang, MD, PhD, FACE, Chief of Health Inequities and Global Health Branch at the Center for Translational Research and Implementation Science at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health

9:40 | Presentations followed by Q&A

• "How to Keep 'Rural' from Getting Lost in Translation" presented by Kristin Pullyblank, PhD, RN | Research Investigator at Bassett Research Institute, Bassett Healthcare Network
• "Smart T-Shirts Can Monitor Cardiac Function among Rural Volunteer Firefighters in New York" presented by Dillon Dzikowicz, PhD, RN, PCCN | Assistant Professor, Nursing, University of Rochester
• "Urban-Rural Disparities in Cancer Care Delivery" presented by Ekaterina (Katia) Noyes PhD, MPH | Associate Dean for Translational and Team Sciences, Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University at Buffalo 

10:25 | Breakout Rooms

• “Continuing the Conversation on Digital Research among UNYTE members” facilitated by Dillon Dzikowicz, PhD, RN, PCCN
• Overcoming Barriers to Rural Research
• "Finding a happy medium between 'investigator-initiated' and 'community-centered' research agenda" presented by Ekaterina (Katia) Noyes PhD, MPH

10:55 - Wrap Up and Closing Remarks by Gary Noronha, MD, UNYTE Director

Keynote Speaker: Xinzhi Zhang, MD, PhD, FACE

Xinzhi Zhang, MD, PhD, FACE, is the Chief of Health Inequities and Global Health Branch at the Center for Translation Research and Implementation Science at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also serves as the Scientific Program Director of Community Engagement Technical Assistance Center (CETAC) and Research Workstream Co-lead of NIH Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL) to provide trustworthy, science-based information through active community engagement and outreach to the people hardest-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 21 states and territories.

Dr. Zhang has broad research interests that include clinical epidemiology, health services research, data science, health informatics, and their applications to promote health equity nationally and globally. He is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, an elite group of public health leaders who respond to national health crises.

Before joining NHLBI, Dr. Zhang was a program director in the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Division of Clinical Innovation, where he managed a portfolio of Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), including overseeing the CTSA National Center for Data to Health (CD2H). During the COVID-19 pandemic, CD2H initiated National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), the first-ever nationally centralized electronic medical record data openly accessible for the clinical and research community to use for studying COVID-19 and for identifying potential treatments. Dr. Zhang was the NCATS lead on rural health and health equity and Co-Chaired the NIH Rural Health Interest Group. He was also the lead for the diversity and re-entry research supplements program.

Throughout his career, Dr. Zhang has received many honors and awards from NIH, CDC, AHRQ, American Public Health Association, and Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, including Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service, 4 NIH Director’s awards, 2 Presidential Unit Citations, and 3 Outstanding Service Medals. Dr. Zhang received his M.D. from Peking Union Medical College in 1998 and his Ph.D. in health services administration from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2003.

Recent Collaborations

Researchers	Project Title	Institutions
Kimberly O'Brien Eva Pressman	Transplacental Transfer of Vitamin D3 and 25(OH)D3 in Human Pregnancy	Cornell/UR
David Borkholder Karl Schwarz	Advanced Digital Stethoscope - Pilot Study of Acoustic Diagnostics for Left Ventricular Assist Devices	Rochester Institute of Technology/UR
Renee Mestad Brooke Levandowski	Measuring Postpartum Contraceptive Uptake and Interconception Periods in the Electronic Medical Record	SUNY Upstate/UR
Gabriel Diaz Krystel Huxlin	Developing a Virtual Reality Approach to Study and Rehabilitate Vision After Stroke	Rochester Institute of Technology/UR
Hyekyun Rhee	Peer-Led Asthma Self-Management for Adolescents (PLASMA): A Multi-site Study	UR/UNYNET at UB
Barbara Lohse	Diabetes ne/Frame	RIT/GR-PBRN at UR
Christopher Morley Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter Gary Noronha	Increasing Cancer Screening through Academic Detailing and Practice Facilitation	SALT-NET at Upstate Medical UNYNET at UB GR-PBRN at UR
Elizabeth Ruder	Cleaned.Cut.Snapped.	RIT/GR-PBRN at UR