The National Institutes of Health granted two University of Florida engineering professors with New Innovator Awards, securing research funding that could revolutionize invasive surgical implants and improve understanding for disease detection.
Part of the High-Risk, High-Reward research program, the NIH awards support creative early career investigators pursuing innovative, high-impact projects. This is the first time UF has won two New Innovator awards in one year, according to the NIH.
UF’s recipients are Xiao Fan, Ph.D., an assistant professor at UF’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Adam Khalifa, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Fan was awarded $1.5 million to explore DNA functionality using language models. The grant will cover the project for three years.
“The most innovative idea in this proposal is comparing DNA sequences to natural languages, like English,” Fan said. “Ultimately, we are trying to understand the causes of human genetic diseases.”
She plans to examine DNA sequences from different species and then build a model that can provide a larger picture of DNA sequences not just limited to humans. This research will use artificial intelligence – tapping into UF’s supercomputer HiPerGator – to create the language model, which will use vast datasets of DNA information to predict patterns.
“Inspired by recent advancements in natural language processing, we recognize significant prospects for employing a similar approach to study DNA sequences as a form of biological language,” Fan noted. “Our central concept revolves around developing an advanced DNA language model.”
She said the research combines linguistics with the way researchers study protein structures.
“Our model holds the potential to reinvigorate the research of DNA structure and functionality,” she noted.
Khalifa was awarded a $1.5 million grant to research minimally invasive, wireless medical devices to manage and prevent a myriad of diseases. This five-year project strives to make medical procedures more precise and less invasive with wireless microdevices that can be injected rather than requiring surgical implantation.
“Our research doesn’t necessarily create new applications for these implants. Instead, we focus on making existing technologies less invasive, so more people might consider them for nervous system therapies,” said Khalifa, who leads the Neural Interface Technology Lab.
“The ultimate goal is to develop devices that are battery-free, injectable microchips that can be deployed anywhere in the body,” Khalifa wrote in his project summary.
Implantable devices are often used to treat neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, where they help alleviate motor symptoms. In epilepsy, the implantable devices can ease or prevent seizures.
“The challenge with implants today is that they can be intimidating, especially if they involve the brain,” Khalifa said. “Even though they have shown to be remarkable and life-changing, people are still hesitant to use them because of concerns about brain intervention.”
“Though our approach is still invasive, we’re shifting from large, visible implants to micro-scale devices—nearly invisible to the eye but fully functional,” said Khalifa.
The project involves interdisciplinary collaboration with health care workers, innovations in integrated circuits, wireless power, materials science, and microfabrication, he noted.
The NIH Common Fund awarded 67 High-Risk, High-Reward Research Awards in 2024, totaling about $207 million over five years. Fan and Khalifa will be honored at the High-Risk, High-Reward Research Symposium in June 2025 in Bethesda, Maryland.
Fan has won the K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award and the Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize. She also received the Alberta Innovates Graduate Student Scholarship while completing her Ph.D. in bioinformatics at the University of Alberta. She received her bachelor’s degree in electronic information science and technology from the Ocean University of China.
Khalifa was named an NIH T32 Fellow in 2019 and a Ferdinand H. Fellow in 2018. He earned his Ph.D. in electronic and computer engineering at Johns Hopkins University and his master’s and undergraduate degrees from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.