UCI Assistant Professor of Developmental & Cell Biology Ali Mortazavi will share $10 million in grant funding over four years with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to establish a mapping center to pinpoint where genes, and the regulatory elements that control them, lie within the entire genome.
It’s expected to be one of eight centers across the nation.
The grant is from the National Institutes of Health, which is expanding its effort to create a fundamental genomics resource for scientific use in studying human health and disease. The funding goes through UCI to Morazavi, according to a university spokesperson, who said it’s a “significant” award for an assistant professor.
The award will enable UCI-Caltech Precision Transcriptome Center to explore the structure of all known genes, using state-of-the-art technologies across a broader diversity of biological samples—including those from individuals with various diseases, as well as highly specialized cells, according to the university.
Mortazavi will get $5 million of the grant.
