Three junior faculty members from UF’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering have earned prestigious NIH High-Risk, High-Reward awards for their groundbreaking research. These awards, which support innovative approaches in health and disease, will enable each researcher to make significant strides in their respective fields.

 

With an NIH Pioneer award, UF researcher targets common infection

Armed with a $2.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, University of Florida biomedical professor Ivana Parker, Ph.D., is targeting one of the most common – and dangerous – infections in women.

The prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for High Risk, High Reward provides a five-year grant that will allow Parker to study Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) and, ultimately, offer more effective personalized treatments.

NIH Offers High Reward for UF High Risk Health Innovations

Xiao Fan, Ph.D., an assistant professor at UF’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, received a $1.5 million NIH New Innovator Award to explore DNA functionality using language models. This grant, part of the High-Risk, High-Reward research program, will support his innovative work for three years. It marks UF’s first time winning two New Innovator awards in one year.

UF Biomedical Engineering Professor Receives NIH Award to Uncover Microbiome’s Role in Tissue Health

Ana Maria Porras, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida, has been awarded the NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) to advance her research into how the human microbiome interacts with and influences tissue health. This prestigious R35 award, totaling $1.8 million provides sustained funding for Porras to explore how beneficial microorganisms in the body impact the extracellular matrix (ECM), a structural network essential for tissue stability and function.