The institutional partnership of UNC-Chapel Hill and Queen’s University Belfast has expanded over the past several years, focusing on research excellence, student mobility and global impact. UNC Global Affairs and Queen’s created new opportunities for faculty collaboration through strategic visits, networking events and joint seed funding.

The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy is part of this growing partnership. In September 2024, Queen’s School of Pharmacy faculty visited Chapel Hill for a pharmacoengineering networking session to highlight complementary strengths and explore new collaborations. That momentum led to the start of three interdisciplinary Carolina-Queen’s joint projects, which were awarded seed funding in summer 2025.

Together, these projects contribute to the pharmacy school’s global impact and exemplify how strategic global partnerships can accelerate discovery, expand educational opportunities and lay the groundwork for transformative international research funding.

One funded project brings together Carolina pharmacy assistant professor Owen Fenton and Queen’s pharmacy lecturer Emma McErlean. Their work investigates next-generation nanomedicines designed to treat disease at the genetic level while providing international training opportunities for students through reciprocal lab exchanges.

“Our goal is to better understand specific nanomedicines that can treat disease at the genetic level while creating meaningful research experiences for our trainees,” Fenton said. “By integrating expertise across our labs and supporting student training, we are building both scientific synergy and the next generation of scientists.”

A second collaboration brings together three Carolina faculty members — George H. Cocolas Distinguished Professor Betsy Sleath and professor Kathleen Thomas of the pharmacy school and associate professor Dr. Laura Young of the UNC School of Medicine —with lecturer Aideen Gildea and professor Mark Lindon of the Queen’s School of Nursing and Midwifery. They are working on a project to build an international research partnership to support mental health communication in young people with Type 1 diabetes. Both institutions have established youth advisory boards to help co-design interventions that strengthen communication between adolescents and their healthcare providers.

“Our work is very important because we are working on strategies across countries to improve communication about well-being and the stress of living with Type 1 diabetes between youth and their health providers, which we hope can help youth lead healthier and happier lives,” Sleath said.

The third project, RADIANT: Radiation Augmentation with Directed Nanoparticle Technology, unites Carolina pharmacy professor William Zamboni with Queen’s professor Jonathan Coulter. The team is combining novel gold nanoparticles with advanced radiation approaches to enhance drug delivery and improve treatment for brain and solid tumors.

“The grant allows us to leverage unique resources for translational pharmacology and drug development at Carolina that are not readily available at Queen’s University Belfast,” said Zamboni. “This is what collaborative team and institutional science is meant to be. Without this funding we would have struggled to even start the project, let alone advance the project to the critical steps that we have already achieved and will achieve in the near future.”