Samantha Lewis, Ph.D., UC Berkeley assistant professor in cell biology, development, and physiology, has been honored with a $500,000 grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) for her project “Synchronous Capture of Organelle Dynamics and Analyte Concentration in vivo.”
The Measuring Metabolism Across Scales program, a flagship initiative of the CZI, seeks to help advance innovative discoveries in metabolism and metabolic physiology in health and disease. The transformative grant, to be disbursed over 24 months, will support the Lewis laboratory’s collaborative research to develop and implement specialized nanomaterials to spatially map organelle respiration in live cells and tissue.
Lewis expressed her enthusiasm for the grant, stating, “This funding will support a collaboration between myself and Assistant Professor Abdoulaye Ndao at UC San Diego, a pioneer in the development of advanced materials for optical microscopy, and a 2023 Beckman Young Investigator. I'm absolutely thrilled with this award and the opportunity for our team to join the CZI community to accelerate metabolism research."
The CZI Measuring Metabolism Across Scales program is highly competitive, with this grant cycle receiving hundreds of applications from researchers around the world. Among the pool of exceptional applicants, only 18 projects, including Dr. Lewis’, were awarded grants. According to the CZI website, “The ability to characterize temporally and spatially the broad molecular profiles, heterogeneity, and phenotypic diversity of organelles and cells and how they interact within and as systems are key to measuring human biology, understanding disease mechanisms, and finding treatments and cures.” This grant is a testament to the extraordinary vision of Dr. Lewis and the promising future of collaborative biological research.
Learn more about the CZI program grantees here