KCOS faculty quoted in Niner Times feature celebrating UNC Charlotte’s first year as R1 institution
Klein College of Science (KCOS) faculty members were recently featured in the Niner Times article, “UNC Charlotte marks 1 year as R1 institution with research growth and innovation.”
As of Feb. 13, UNC Charlotte has officially celebrated one year as a Research 1 (R1) institution. According to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, R1 universities must invest at least $50 million annually in research and award a minimum of 70 research doctorates. According to the Niner Times, UNC Charlotte far surpassed those benchmarks, spending approximately $92 million on research and awarding 160 doctoral degrees in 2023.
Adam Reitzel, Ph.D., professor of biology and associate dean of research and graduate education, served on the R1 commission that helped guide the University toward achieving this milestone.
“We spent about a year on this R1 commission, which is now called the top-tier research commission, which was looking at UNC Charlotte. We said we’re doing a lot of really good things here in research,” said Reitzel. “They pulled faculty from across the campus, as well as administrators, to start looking at what our strengths are as a university, and how we can make rapid progress in transitioning from an R2, which the University has been for a long time, to R1.”
With the momentum and support from the R1 designation, KCOS students and faculty are advancing their research in new and ambitious ways, particularly in technology and artificial intelligence.
One example highlighted by the Niner Times is the groundbreaking work in gene therapy that led to the development of AI‑Cell, a project more than a decade in the making.
“The predictive capacity of AI-Cell is just going to increase,” said Kirill Afonin, Ph.D., professor of chemistry. “It’s very, very promising, but there’s more work to do for sure. It’s also very exciting because our team will continue working on it. There are still a lot of questions to answer.”
Find out more about the research taking place in the Klein College of Science.