UTSA Minority Basic Research Support Score Program awarded $9 million

Funding will support 10 different faculty research projects

UTSA Assistant Professor of Biology Yufeng Wang was awarded $1.2 million from NIH to use a computational biology approach to predict dynamics in systems of genes working in Malaria parasites.... Click here for more information.

The University of Texas at San Antonio Minority Basic Research Support for Continuous Research Excellence(MBRS/SCORE) program has been awarded a five-year, $9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funding will support 10 faculty research projects in a variety of disciplines.

MBRS/SCORE seeks to increase the participation of individuals from minority or underrepresented groups in scientific research. UTSA's involvement in the MBRS/SCORE program began in 1981 and has increased over the years as more faculty members pursue biomedical research projects.

"This grant will help serve as another building block in UTSA's efforts to achieve premier public research university status," said Robert Gracy, UTSA Vice President of Research. "It also reinforces UTSA's reputation as a national leader in educating underrepresented minorities in the sciences and in the recruitment and promotion of UTSA faculty researchers."

South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Disease researcher Janakiram Seshu and his doctoral student Mahula Maruskova were awarded $1.4 million from NIH to identify how Borrelia burgdorferis, the cause of... Click here for more information.

UTSA's MBRS/SCORE newly funded projects include researching how the brain understands and comprehends languages spoken by bilingual individuals, developing effective means to prevent the transmission of Lyme disease and using cutting-edge computational biology databases to predict genetic systems in malaria carrying parasites.