The University of Nebraska at Omaha has received an $8 million award from the National Science Foundation to support a new Nebraska Center for 3D Innovation (NE3D). The grant is to help create a research ecosystem for 3D printing in healthcare in the state.

“The long-term goal is not simply to produce individual technologies,” said Jorge Zuniga, a professor in the Biomechanics Department at UNO, in a press release. “It is to build research capacity in Nebraska so that researchers, students, clinicians, educators and industry partners have the infrastructure … needed to develop the next generation of healthcare technologies.”

Zuniga created NE3D as an initiative in 2016 to explore how 3D-printed materials can benefit healthcare. The printing process can create better prosthetics, be used with antimicrobial materials for cleanliness and create AI-assisted models of specific patients to better plan surgeries.

All three use cases of 3D printing will be researched by the now-formally established center. NE3D is working with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Metropolitan Community College Prototype Design Lab among a host of other local partners.

The center will work with students from high school through graduate school on STEM education and developing the skills for 3D printing in healthcare. 

As the center develops, it “will foster inter-institutional research productivity and position Nebraska as a national leader in patient-specific, 3D-printed medical innovations,” said the NSF’s award abstract.

The award comes through NSF’s EPSCoR Research Incubators for STEM Excellence (E-RISE) program, which is meant to create research infrastructure for regional collaboration and workforce development in science, technology, engineering and math fields.