On Nov. 9, 2017, UNMC announced that Jingwei Xie, Ph.D, a biomedical engineer, had been awarded a four-year, $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the nanofiber-based local delivery of immunomodulating compounds for prevention of surgical site infections. The nanofiber sutures contain vitamin D, which is thought to be able to induce production of an infection-fighting peptide at the surgical site.