Honors College Fellow and UIC researcher wins McKnight Award for neuroscience innovations
Ruixuan Gao, Honors College fellow and UIC assistant professor of biological sciences and chemistry, is one of three researchers recently selected to receive funding from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, which is especially interested in work that takes new approaches to advance the ability to manipulate and analyze brain function.
Gao was selected for a two-year, $200,000 grant via the 2022 McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award. He will lead a project to chemically engineer a new type of hydrogel for use in a new practice of expansion microscopy, essentially expanding tissue samples and their component cells to many times their original size to make them easier to study.
Earlier this year, he became the second UIC scholar, and the first in 35 years, to receive an award through the Searle Scholars Program, which supports groundbreaking research in chemistry and the biomedical sciences.
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