The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) announced recently the winners of its annual Innovation Awards.

One winner, a cross-disciplinary team comprised of Ahmed Mahmoud, Timothy Camp and Youngsook Lee, is looking to restore cardiac structure and function in human heart failure patients using a protein called LRRC10.

The other, a chemistry team comprised of Samuel Gellman, Kyle Brown and Rylie Morris, is developing a synthetic peptide that uses a more simplified design to target the same mechanisms of the drugs currently on the market for obesity and type 2 diabetes.

“Every year, our Innovation Awards cast a spotlight on exciting early-stage discoveries on campus,” WARF CEO Erik Iverson said in a statement. “We’re pleased to celebrate the nominees and all UW-Madison innovators working to discover and translate research with the power to impact lives.”

Each team, which was selected from several hundred submissions, received $10,000.