The competition was fierce. The pitches of the six research teams hoping to curry favor with the judges were polished. But, in the end, it was Monica Kraft, MD, and Julie Ledford, PhD, who came out on top in the Shark Day competition that served as the grand finale to Research Day 2019 at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson.
Dr. Kraft, professor and chair of the UA Department of Medicine, the Robert and Irene Flynn Endowed Chair in Medicine and deputy director of the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center at the UA Health Sciences, and her research partner, a UA assistant professor of immunobiology, medicine and cellular and molecular medicine, will use the $10,000 prize for work on mimetic compounds related to a therapy involving a peptide, surfactant protein A (SP-A), that they’re developing to reduce the severity and frequency of asthmatic attacks.
See a mini-photo gallery and links to a larger photo album and video from the event below.
Other competitors for the prize (and their topics) included: Louise Hecker, PhD — “Revolutionizing Therapeutics for Fibrotic Disease”; Michael Kuhn, PhD — “Targeting pathogenic T cells with 5-module chimeric antigen receptors (5M-CAR)”; Marvin Slepian, MD — “PlaKDx Technologies: Precision Point-of Care Platelet Function Technologies to Save Lives”; Eugene Chang, MD — “Practice Makes Perfect: Incorporating Mixed-Reality in Surgical Simulation”; and Nathaniel Hart, PhD — “Rapid Viability and Potency Assessment of Encapsulated Insulin-Producing Cells for Transplant and Treatment of Diabetes.”
The judges included Humberto Lopez, Ginny Clements, Andrew Messing, UA Anesthesiology Chair Randall Dull, MD, PhD, UA President Robert Robbins, MD, and UAHS Sr. Vice President Michael Dake, MD.
UA Interim Provost and College of Engineering Dean Jeffrey Goldberg, PhD, emceed the event. 
Congratulations Drs. Kraft and Ledford!
See the full agenda here for Research Day, including data blitzes and keynote speakers who delivered "TED Talk" style addresses — among them, Esther Sternberg, MD (“Measuring Health, Wellbeing and Performance Non-invasively: From Molecules to the Environment”); Roberta Diaz Brinton, PhD (“Innovations in Brain Science of the Future for Those Who Need a Cure Today”); and Nirav Merchant, PhD (“Working alongside Thinking Machines”). Held Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019, it was the inaugural event for the new Health Sciences Innovation Building at the UA Health Sciences campus in Tucson. For more about progress on the HSIB and other construction projects and investment (totaling about $1.25 billion in the past five years) at the UAHS campus, click here.
For all 235 images in the DOM Facebook photo album from the Shark Tank competition, click here or on the image at right. For a more limited selection of those, scroll on. An embedded video from the event is at the bottom of this webpage.
MINI-PHOTO GALLERY (click images to enlarge):
Photos courtesy David Mogollon, communications coordinator, UA Department of Medicine.
Thank you to Rick Kopstein, photographer, UAHS BioCommunications, for the photo of Drs. Kraft and Ledford (and the Shark Tank judges) with their winning trophy and the big check! Additional photos from Research Day 2019 that he shot can be found on the UA College of Medicine’s flickr webpage.
For video of the Shark Tank competition, click here or on the image below.
For other archived videos from Research Day 2019 and the UA College of Medicine – Tucson, visit this link.
Learn more: http://bit.ly/2SR8nl8
ALSO SEE:
“$10K ‘Shark Tank’ Prize Goes to Drs. Monica Kraft and Julie Ledford” | (Tech Launch Arizona) Posted Feb. 19, 2019
“Drs. Monica Kraft and Julie Ledford Win $10K ‘Shark Tank’ Prize” | (UA College of Medicine – Tucson) Posted Feb. 19, 2019
“Four DOM Faculty Among Six Teams Competing in Shark Tank Talks for Research Day 2019” | (UA Department of Medicine) Posted Feb. 12, 2019
“Researchers to Compete in ‘Shark Tank,’ Demo Technology, More at Research Day, Feb. 13” | (UA College of Medicine – Tucson) Posted Feb. 12, 2019
“Dr. Esther Sternberg to Deliver One of Three Keynotes at COM-T Research Day 2019” | Posted Jan. 29, 2019
“Register Now for UA College of Medicine – Tucson Research Retreat, Feb. 13” | Posted Dec. 19, 2018