The Department would like to congratulate Gang Li, PhD, for receiving a Junior Faculty Development Award from the University’s Committee on Faculty Research and Scholarly Leaves. For the full 12-month 2019 calendar year, Li is applying his $10K award toward a scholarly project proposed in his application to the Committee — “Computational Tools for Analysis of Early Brain Development of Macaques.”
Li’s award allows him to explore comparative characterization of the early postnatal brain development between humans and macaques. Such a comparative study is essential for better understanding the underlying mechanisms of normal brain development and evolution. His one-year project will address a major barrier in this area of research — the critical lack of computational tools for accurate processing and analysis of infant brain MRI data of macaques. At its December 2019 conclusion, this projects aims to create macaque infant-specific neuroimaging analysis tools to enable comparative analysis of early brain development between humans and macaques.
Li noted: “This award will allow expanding my current research on imaging analysis of human baby brain development, thus helping better understand the uniqueness and similarity of human and macaque early brain development.”