image: This is Li Qian, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She has received a 2013 New Scholar in Aging Award from the Ellison Medical Foundation. view more
Credit: UNC School of Medicine
Li Qian, PhD, an assistant professor in the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, has received a 2013 New Scholar in Aging Award from the Ellison Medical Foundation.
Qian's research focuses on developing innovative approaches to regenerate or repair an injured heart. The goal of her lab is to understand the molecular specification and maturation of heart muscle cells to improve efficiency and clinical applicability of cellular reprogramming in heart disease.
Qian's lab plans to investigate the fundamental events underlying the progression of various cardiovascular diseases as well as to discover the basic mechanisms of cell reprogramming. Qian uses in vivo modeling of cardiac disease in the mouse, including myocardial infarction (MI), cardiac hypertrophy, chronic heart failure and congenital heart disease (CHD), taking advantage of traditional mouse genetics and newly developed reprogramming technologies.
The award provides funding of $100,000 per year for a four-year period.
Qian joined the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the McAllister Heart Institute in 2012.
The foundation's New Scholar awards provide support for newly independent investigators in the first three years after their postdoctoral training, when they are establishing their laboratories. These awards support bright young scientists during their early years, enabling them to staff their labs, collect preliminary data and organize research programs of sufficient momentum to obtain ongoing support from other sources.
The Ellison Medical Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports basic biomedical research on aging relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities. The foundation aims particularly to stimulate new, creative research that might not be funded by traditional sources or that is often underfunded in the U.S.
More information about the foundation's New Scholar award program and other funding activities is available at http://www.ellisonfoundation.org/index.jsp.