A Columbia University professor has received Director’s New Innovator Award for his work on developing new technologies for high-resolution mapping of brain function and structure.
National Institutes of Health named Raju Tomer, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, the winner of the $2.4 million award, which will support his innovative research for the next five years.
The award is part of NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program that lends support to biomedical research having the potential for great impact.
“This program supports exceptionally innovative researchers who have the potential to transform the biomedical field,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins. “I am confident this new cohort will revolutionize our approaches to biomedical research through their groundbreaking work.”
A student of the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, Tomer joined Columbia in 2016 and is currently working to develop new approaches for understanding structural and functional plasticity in the normal and diseased brains.
Earlier, he has developed various methods to unravel the deep evolutionary origins of cell-types in the brain.