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CIPHER is a university-wide research center with constituents from the College of Computing and Informatics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Health and Human Services, and the College of Education. Our goals are to coalesce expertise in computer science, bioinformatics, software and information systems, biological sciences, math, geography, public health, data science, education, and communications.

Featured News

Rachel Alexander, Sophomore Levine Scholar and CIPHER researcher has received the George Barthalmus Undergraduate Research Award from Office of Undergraduate Research at NC State.

Avian Influenza (H5N1) has recently emerged in North America’s wildlife, chickens, cows, and farmworkers. Much of the existing literature centers around understanding the transmission of this virus by studying a single variable’s effect on transmission. Ms. Alexander posits that transmission is the result of multiple variables. Her research will integrate three distinct variables into a time-series and geospatial analysis to answer the question: how do environmental variables, like seasonal temperature, migratory bird timing, and precipitation patterns affect the geographic distribution and timing of H5N1 cross-species transmission?

UNC Charlotte researchers use AI to map out world’s largest cultivated bacteria-killing virus

Through cutting-edge methods and advanced artificial intelligence analysis, UNC Charlotte researchers leading a multidisciplinary team across four universities have successfully resolved the entire genome of “phage G,” the largest bacterial virus (aka bacteriophages or phages) ever cultivated in a physical lab environment.

Published Sept. 30 in leading journal Nature’s NPJ Viruses, the study was led by UNC Charlotte master’s students Andra Buchan and Stephanie Wiedman along with UNC Charlotte Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics and Genomics Richard Allen White III.

Read the full story

Luo Lab awarded a new grant from the National Science Foundation

Biological Sciences Professor and Researcher, Dr. Elaine Luo was awarded $699k from NSF for a project to study the “Viral impacts on microbial carbon cycling at deep-sea hydrothermal vents“. This project aims to identify the diversity, mechanisms, and rates of virus-induced carbon cycling in a deep-sea hydrothermal vent system (Axial Seamount). While chemoautotrophic microbes are known to contribute to these hotspots of primary productivity, the functional role and biogeochemical impacts of viruses that infect them remain critical gaps in our understanding of
the dark ocean’s carbon cycle. Read the full abstract here.

Reitzel Lab Awarded Collaborative 1.5M NSF Award

Congratulations to Adam Reitzel Ph.D on his new award from NSF/BIO-UKRI/BBSRC “The role of gene copy number variation in host-microbe interactions”. It is a 4-year grant ($1.5M total, $650K to UNC Charlotte) and is a collaborative project with a UK partner.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, the Reitzel lab will use a coastal sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) to study the impact of copy number variation of key immune genes in the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of this symbiosis.

Check out the CIPHER Podcast

“de-CIPHERing Infectious Disease”

explores the cutting-edge interdisciplinary research happening at UNC Charlotte’s CIPHER Research Center. Each episode features an in-depth interview with one of CIPHER’s researchers, allowing them to discuss their background, current projects, and the exciting team science approach they take to tackle complex issues at the intersection of health, environment, data science, genomics, infectious disease, and more.