The National Institutes of Health recognized Nikolai Slavov, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, with its New Innovator Award. On winning the award, Slavov said, “There is this momentum and enthusiasm for taking smart risks among both the faculty and students at Northeastern—asking big questions and doing whatever is required to contribute to their resolution.”
Direct evidence. It’s the holy grail in scientific discovery.
Nikolai Slavov, assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering, found that grail in the least likely of places: deep inside ribosomes, the molecular machines in cells that assemble all the proteins that keep living things—from budding yeast to us—functioning.
This month, the National Institutes of Health recognized Slavov’s groundbreaking research with its Director’s New Innovator Award. The five-year, $2.35 million award is part of the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, which supports highly creative early-career researchers taking out-of-the-box approaches to major challenges in biomedical research.
Slavov’s work flew in the face of scientists’ decades-long assumption that all ribosomes were the same. Some speculated that their composition, and hence their function, might vary, but no one had been able to provide experimental or observational proof of the claim. –Thea Singer for News@Northeastern
Click here to read the full article: http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2016/10/professor-receives-nih-new-innovator-award-for-pioneering-biomedical-research/
Read the Project abstract here: https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=9167004&icde=31336575
