OKLAHOMA — The University of Oklahoma received an $11.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health on June 12, 2026, to establish the Oklahoma Center of ImmunoEngineering. The center is led by principal investigators Wei Chen and Chongle Pan.

This five-year Phase I award is funded through the NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence program. The center is designed to build a statewide immunoengineering research network and establish two specialized research cores at the university. One core, the Immunomodulation Technology Core, will support experimental laboratory work.

The other core, an Omics Data Science Core, will provide computational tools for experiment design, large-scale data collection management, and results interpretation. Chongle Pan, Professor of Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering, will lead the data science division of the center. Pan said, "By bringing together data science, artificial intelligence, and predictive models, this core will help researchers across Oklahoma turn complex immune data into discoveries that can guide better treatments." Wei Chen, Professor and Director, said, "Immunology, immunotherapy, and data science are among the most exciting and transformative fields in modern biomedical research."

The center selected four early-career faculty members as research project leaders. Each project leader is paired with two mentors from the university's Norman and Health Sciences campuses. Among these leaders, Daniel Becker, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, will study immune response and coronavirus infection in migratory bats.

David Miller, an assistant professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, will develop neuroimaging-guided immunotherapy approaches for glioblastoma. Marmar Moussa, an assistant professor in Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering, will investigate T-cell receptor-antigen interactions in peptide-based cancer vaccines. Abdul Rafeh Naqash, an associate professor in the College of Medicine and Director of Immuno Oncology at the Stephenson Cancer Center, will study alveolar soft part sarcoma.

The center plans to offer monthly seminars, research roundtables, training workshops, and an annual symposium. It will also fund pilot and team-science projects aimed at connecting basic, translational, and clinical researchers. Oklahoma receives funding through the NIH Institutional Development Award program, which allocates funding to states that have historically received lower levels of federal research grants.

No independent assessment was available for this report.