2024 Research Grant Awards
-
Chen Institute
https://neuroscience.caltech.edu/grants/research-grant-awards/2024-awards • 229 KB fetched
Open original page
2024 Research Grant Awards
-
Chen Institute
skip to main content
*
Join Our Mailing List
*
Find Us On Social Media
*
Facebook
*
X
*
YouTube
Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience
*
Home
*
About
Open About submenu
*
History of Caltech Neuroscience
*
Chen Neuroscience Research Building
*
Research Centers
Open Research Centers submenu
*
T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center
*
Caltech Brain Imaging Center
*
T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience
*
T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience
*
Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
*
T&C Chen Center for Neuroscience Education
*
Chen Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
*
People
*
News
*
Events
*
Research
Open Research submenu
*
Publications
*
Talks and Presentations
Open Talks and Presentations submenu
*
TED and TEDx Talks
*
Caltech Talks
*
Other Talks
*
Grants
Open Grants submenu
*
Research Grant Awards
Open Research Grant Awards submenu
*
2026 Research Grant Awards
*
2025 Research Grant Awards
*
2024 Research Grant Awards
*
2023 Research Grant Awards
*
2022 Research Grant Awards
*
2020 Research Grant Awards
*
2019 Research Grant Awards
*
2018 Research Grant Awards
*
Chen Innovator Grant Awards
Open Chen Innovator Grant Awards submenu
*
Chen Graduate Innovator Grant Awards
*
Chen Postdoctoral Scholar Innovator Grant Awards
*
Travel Grant Awards
*
Chen Distinguished Visitor Program
*
Programs
Open Programs submenu
*
Retreats
Open Retreats submenu
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2026
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2024
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2023
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2022
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2019
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2018
*
Workshops
Open Workshops submenu
*
Cross-Species Modalities of Cognition and Behavior
*
AI for Neuro: How modern AI technologies enable advances in Neuroscience
*
New Models and Methods in Invertebrate Neuroscience
*
Methods in Evolutionary Neuroscience
*
Measurement and Analysis of Behavior
*
Genomic Neuroscience
*
Decision Making and Free Will
*
Chemistry and the Brain
*
Computational Approaches to Neuroscience
*
Networking
*
Symposiums
Open Symposiums submenu
*
Chen Institute at Caltech and Cedars-Sinai Joint Neuroscience Symposium
*
Chen Institute 10th Anniversary
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2025
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2023
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2021
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2019
*
Seminars
Open Seminars submenu
*
Chen Institute for Neuroscience Director's Seminar Series
*
Chen Institute Virtual Seminar Series
*
T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience (SDN) Seminar Series
*
DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer Schools
Open DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer Schools submenu
*
2025 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School
*
2023 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School
*
2022 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School
*
Student and Postdoc Programming
*
Education
Open Education submenu
*
Neuroscience PhD Options
*
Student Scientific Storytelling
*
Science Journeys
*
Chen Institute BrainWAVE Fellowship Program
Open Chen Institute BrainWAVE Fellowship Program submenu
*
Sign-up to receive updates about the BrainWAVE program
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2026
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2025
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2024
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2023
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2022
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2021
*
SDN Shared Postdoctoral Fellow Awards
*
Search Search
Menu
Close
*
Home
*
About
Open About submenu
*
People
*
News
*
Events
*
Research
Open Research submenu
*
Grants
Open Grants submenu
*
Programs
Open Programs submenu
*
Education
Open Education submenu
*
Join Our Mailing List
*
*
Find Us On Social Media
*
Facebook
*
X
*
YouTube
About
Back
*
History of Caltech Neuroscience
*
Chen Neuroscience Research Building
*
Research Centers
*
T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center
*
Caltech Brain Imaging Center
*
T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience
*
T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience
*
Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
*
T&C Chen Center for Neuroscience Education
*
Chen Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
Research
Back
*
Publications
*
Talks and Presentations
*
TED and TEDx Talks
*
Caltech Talks
*
Other Talks
Grants
Back
*
Research Grant Awards
*
2026 Research Grant Awards
*
2025 Research Grant Awards
*
2024 Research Grant Awards
*
2023 Research Grant Awards
*
2022 Research Grant Awards
*
2020 Research Grant Awards
*
2019 Research Grant Awards
*
2018 Research Grant Awards
*
Chen Innovator Grant Awards
*
Chen Graduate Innovator Grant Awards
*
Chen Postdoctoral Scholar Innovator Grant Awards
*
Travel Grant Awards
*
Chen Distinguished Visitor Program
Programs
Back
*
Retreats
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2026
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2024
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2023
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2022
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2019
*
Chen Institute Retreat 2018
*
Workshops
*
Cross-Species Modalities of Cognition and Behavior
*
AI for Neuro: How modern AI technologies enable advances in Neuroscience
*
New Models and Methods in Invertebrate Neuroscience
*
Methods in Evolutionary Neuroscience
*
Measurement and Analysis of Behavior
*
Genomic Neuroscience
*
Decision Making and Free Will
*
Chemistry and the Brain
*
Computational Approaches to Neuroscience
*
Networking
*
Symposiums
*
Chen Institute at Caltech and Cedars-Sinai Joint Neuroscience Symposium
*
Chen Institute 10th Anniversary
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2025
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2023
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2021
*
Chen Institute Symposium 2019
*
Seminars
*
Chen Institute for Neuroscience Director's Seminar Series
*
Chen Institute Virtual Seminar Series
*
T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience (SDN) Seminar Series
*
DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer Schools
*
2025 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School
*
2023 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School
*
2022 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School
*
Student and Postdoc Programming
Education
Back
*
Neuroscience PhD Options
*
Student Scientific Storytelling
*
Science Journeys
*
Chen Institute BrainWAVE Fellowship Program
*
Sign-up to receive updates about the BrainWAVE program
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2026
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2025
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2024
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2023
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2022
*
BrainWAVE Fellows 2021
*
SDN Shared Postdoctoral Fellow Awards
Search Search
Chen Institute Homepage
/
Grants
/
Research Grant Awards
/
2024 Research Grant Awards
2024 Research Grant Awards
Related Pages
Close
Grants
*
Research Grant Awards
*
2026 Research Grant Awards
*
2025 Research Grant Awards
*
2024 Research Grant Awards
*
2023 Research Grant Awards
*
2022 Research Grant Awards
*
2020 Research Grant Awards
*
2019 Research Grant Awards
*
2018 Research Grant Awards
*
Chen Innovator Grant Awards
*
Chen Graduate Innovator Grant Awards
*
Chen Graduate Innovators 2024
*
Chen Graduate Innovators 2022
*
Chen Graduate Innovators 2019 - 2021
*
Chen Postdoctoral Scholar Innovator Grant Awards
*
Travel Grant Awards
*
Chen Distinguished Visitor Program
The Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience offers seed funding to allow Caltech faculty to develop new directions of neuroscience research, leveraging the Institute's interdisciplinary and collaborative environment. This funding allows faculty to pursue highly innovative projects that are often considered too 'risky' by more traditional funding sources. The funding of these projects allows researchers to produce preliminary data which is usually necessary to show that a project is feasible and what is likely to result, in order to receive larger-scale research funding. The Chen funds generate these "proof of concept" data and are imperative to keep pushing neuroscience research beyond the boundaries of 'business as usual' science. The Chen Institute has given over $3 million in seed grants since 2018 when the program began.
The recipients of the 2024 grant awards are shown below:
Director's Awards
T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience Awards
T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience Awards
T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center Awards
DIRECTOR'S AWARDS
Awarded to Research Professor Carlos Lois (BBE)
Are the observed genomic changes in individual neurons just random mistakes, or is there a pattern underlying physiological functions?
Over the last 15 years several works have reported different types of changes in the genomes of individual neurons. However, to date, there is no evidence that these genomic changes are relevant for any physiological function, and the general consensus is that they may be simply the result of random mistakes in DNA transactions. We hypothesize that we have not been able to unveil any meaningful pattern in these genomic changes because the techniques used until now lacked the necessary resolution. We propose to clone mature neurons from the adult mouse brain by nuclear transfer, and use new high-fidelity and long-read high-resolution sequencing technologies capable of detecting all types of genomic changes to explore whether there are discernible patterns behind these changes.
Awarded to Professor Scott Cushing (CCE) and Professor Elizabeth Hong (BBE)
Development of Entangled Photon Sources for Portable Single-Molecule Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging
Entangled photons enable compact, battery-powered, wavelength tunable excitation sources in a small physical footprint for low-cost, portable fluorescence lifetime microscopy and sensing. We propose to develop entangled photon sources optimized for fluorescence lifetime imaging (in terms of wavelength, form factor, and beam size) using a new microscope built jointly between the Cushing and Hong labs. Performance will be compared to classical laser sources in a realistic biological application — lifetime measurement of FRET-dependent fluorescence sensors of cyclic AMP and PKA activity in olfactory presynaptic terminals — to guide optimization of the entangled photon source for routine neuroscience applications.
T&C CHEN CENTER FOR SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE AWARDS
Awarded to Research Professor Tsui-Fen Chou (BBE) and Professor Yuki Oka (BBE)
Discovering new circulating factors underlying homeostatic behavior
Detection of circulating hormones and blood osmolality changes by the brain triggers robust homeostatic behaviors such as feeding and drinking. A handful of these circulating factors have been characterized in the past decades. Our results suggest the existence of uncharacterized blood circulating factors that controls thirst and drinking responses in mice. This project seeks to combine cell-type-specific activity monitoring and mass spectrometry to identify a novel factor underlying homeostatic behavior.
Awarded to Professor Thanos Siapas (BBE)
Spike sorting algorithms for high-density neural probes
Chronic electrophysiological recordings with high density probes are a powerful tool for systems neuroscience and brain-machine interfaces, but spike-sorting remains a significant challenge. We previously developed a generative model for spike sorting tetrode data using a mixture of drifting t-distributions. This model captures two key features of chronic extracellular recordings: cluster drift over time and heavy tails in the distribution of spike features. We propose to extend this spike sorting approach to high-density probes, such as Neuropixels, to enable automated spike sorting over long periods of time and reliable quantitative measures of single-unit isolation. This approach will also enable real-time spike sorting for closed-loop experiments with brain-machine interfaces.
Awarded to Professor Paul Sternberg (BBE)
Transcriptional changes in male mating behavior plasticity
We will exploit a newly discovered experience-dependent behavior in C. elegans to address how a sensory-motor processing system adapts to different environments and alters an ethologically-relevant behavior, male copulatory behavior.The proposed project takes my long-term interest in neural circuits underlying innate behavior into the realm of plasticity. We will use a newly developed protocol for multiplexed single molecule FISH of C. elegans to identify cells and genes potentially involved in the plasticity. We can then test the function of cells (and ultimately genes) by now-standard methods of cell inactivation and activation to obtain a mechanistic model of the plasticity.
T&C CHEN CENTER FOR SOCIAL AND DECISION NEUROSCIENCE AWARDS
Image Lightbox
Download Full Image
Awarded to Professor Ralph Adolphs (HSS), Professor Frederick Eberhardt (HSS) and Assistant Professor Matt Thomson (BBE)
Leveraging large language models to explore emotion
Transfomer-based models, such as GPT-4, exhibit interesting emergent properties and can be used flexibly across many application domains, yet also exhibit notable gaps when compared to biological systems. Here we focus on one such gap: emotion. Our goal is to articulate design principles and criteria for evaluating emotion in such models, so that the knowledge gleaned can help us better understand emotion in biological systems.
T&C CHEN BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACE CENTER AWARDS
Awarded to Professor Azita Emami (EAS)
Software-Hardware Co-Design for Robust Feature Engineering in Brain Machine
Convolutional neural networks offer a significantly more robust and information rich approach for extracting neural features from broad band neural data. This project aims to optimize algorithmic parameters and hardware architecture to implement a low power feature extractor capable of processing the large bandwidth of neural channels required in today's brain-machine interfaces. We will also develop strategies for dynamic selection of channels with highest level of information content.
Awarded to Professor Mikhail Shapiro (EAS)
Developing Volumetric Ultrasound for Human Brain-Machine Interfaces
Brain machine interfaces (BMIs) help patients with disabilities achieve greater independence by using their thoughts to control assistive devices but commonly require highly invasive open brain surgery for electrode implantation since conventional non-invasive imaging techniques like fMRI and EEG lack sufficient spatiotemporal resolution for real-time BMI use. We recently demonstrated that functional ultrasound (fUS), a novel neuroimaging technique, can image from outside the dura and be used to decode behavior in non-human primates and through a polymeric acoustic skull window in a human patient, enabling a minimally invasive BMI. However, the human brain's size and complexity as well as difficulties with registering 2D fUS planes across sessions and to MRI make decoding 2D fUS signal challenging. We propose developing 3D fUS in humans to improve decoding capabilities through increased signal density and, in turn, using 3D fUS to decode real-time motor and speech information, offering a new minimally invasive alternative to standard BMIs.
California Institute of Technology
1200 East California Boulevard
Pasadena, California 91125
Contact Us
|
Digital Accessibility
|
Privacy Notice
|
Site Content Copyright (c) 2026
|
Log In
Links found on this page
- skip to main content [direct]
- Join Our Mailing List [direct]
- Facebook [direct]
- X [direct]
- YouTube [direct]
- Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience [direct]
- About [direct]
- History of Caltech Neuroscience [direct]
- Chen Neuroscience Research Building [direct]
- T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center [direct]
- Caltech Brain Imaging Center [direct]
- T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience [direct]
- T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience [direct]
- Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience [direct]
- T&C Chen Center for Neuroscience Education [direct]
- Chen Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence [direct]
- People [direct]
- News [direct]
- Events [direct]
- Research [direct]
- Publications [direct]
- Talks and Presentations [direct]
- TED and TEDx Talks [direct]
- Caltech Talks [direct]
- Other Talks [direct]
- Grants [direct]
- Research Grant Awards [direct]
- 2025 Research Grant Awards [direct]
- 2023 Research Grant Awards [direct]
- 2022 Research Grant Awards [direct]
- 2020 Research Grant Awards [direct]
- 2019 Research Grant Awards [direct]
- 2018 Research Grant Awards [direct]
- Chen Innovator Grant Awards [direct]
- Chen Graduate Innovator Grant Awards [direct]
- Travel Grant Awards [direct]
- Chen Distinguished Visitor Program [direct]
- Programs [direct]
- Retreats [direct]
- Chen Institute Retreat 2024 [direct]
- Chen Institute Retreat 2023 [direct]
- Chen Institute Retreat 2022 [direct]
- Chen Institute Retreat 2019 [direct]
- Chen Institute Retreat 2018 [direct]
- Workshops [direct]
- Cross-Species Modalities of Cognition and Behavior [direct]
- AI for Neuro: How modern AI technologies enable advances in Neuroscience [direct]
- New Models and Methods in Invertebrate Neuroscience [direct]
- Methods in Evolutionary Neuroscience [direct]
- Measurement and Analysis of Behavior [direct]
- Genomic Neuroscience [direct]
- Decision Making and Free Will [direct]
- Chemistry and the Brain [direct]
- Computational Approaches to Neuroscience [direct]
- Networking [direct]
- Chen Institute at Caltech and Cedars-Sinai Joint Neuroscience Symposium [direct]
- Chen Institute Symposium 2025 [direct]
- Chen Institute Symposium 2023 [direct]
- Chen Institute Symposium 2021 [direct]
- Chen Institute Symposium 2019 [direct]
- Seminars [direct]
- Chen Institute for Neuroscience Director's Seminar Series [direct]
- Chen Institute Virtual Seminar Series [direct]
- T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience (SDN) Seminar Series [direct]
- DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer Schools [direct]
- 2025 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School [direct]
- 2023 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School [direct]
- 2022 DataSAI for Neuroscience Summer School [direct]
- Student and Postdoc Programming [direct]
- Neuroscience PhD Options [direct]
- Student Scientific Storytelling [direct]
- Science Journeys [direct]
- Chen Institute BrainWAVE Fellowship Program [direct]
- Sign-up to receive updates about the BrainWAVE program [direct]
- BrainWAVE Fellows 2025 [direct]
- BrainWAVE Fellows 2024 [direct]
- BrainWAVE Fellows 2023 [direct]
- BrainWAVE Fellows 2022 [direct]
- BrainWAVE Fellows 2021 [direct]
- SDN Shared Postdoctoral Fellow Awards [direct]
|
|