Inaugural 2026 Health Research Challenge Award Winners
Past Winners
MUC1-Targeted Multimodal Enzyme–Prodrug Therapy for Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: PEG10-SEND–Mediated Co-Delivery of PH20 and NTR 2.0 for Stromal Remodeling and Localized Triple-Prodrug Activation
Team members: Lei Zheng, MD, PhD (Mays Cancer Center), John CG Zhao, PhD (College of Sciences), Ya-Guang Liu, PhD (Long School of Medicine)
Funding Amount: $50,000
Developing and evaluating novel treatments for PTSD using preclinical model systems
Team members: Matt Wanat, PhD (Brain Health Consortium), Flavia Carreno, PhD (Long School of Medicine), Dan Lodge, PhD (Long School of Medicine), David Morilak, PhD (Long School of Medicine)
Funding Amount: $50,000
Patient-Derived Engineered Tissues as Platforms for Therapies for Obesity and Metabolic Disease
Team members: Francisca Acosta, PhD (Long School of Medicine), Eric Brey, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design), Carolina Solis-Herrera, MD (Long School of Medicine), Christopher Rathbone, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design)
Funding Amount: $50,000
AIDE: Alzheimer’s and related dementias Intelligent Data Ecosystem
Team members: Agustín Ruiz Laza, MD, PhD (Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases), Amina Qutub, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design), Mario Flores, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design), Yuxuan Du, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design), Claudia L. Satizabal Barrera, PhD (Long School of Medicine)
Funding Amount: $50,000
Pan-Cancer Biomarker Discovery Using Integrated Generative, Explainable, and Counterfactual AI Across Multi-Omics Data
Team members: Debaditya Chakraborty, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering & Integrated Design), Yidong Bai, PhD (Long School of Medicine), Faqian Li, MD, PhD (Long School of Medicine)
Funding Amount: $50,000
Toward Developing a Novel Therapy for Alzheimer Disease
Team members: Xiannlin Han, PhD (Long School of Medicine), Stanton McHardy, PhD (College of Sciences), Yaxia Yuan, PhD (College of Sciences), Sean Thompson, PhD (College of Sciences)
Funding Amount: $50,000
Spatial Metabolomics-Guided Development of Kidney-Targeted ACLY Inhibitors for Diabetic Kidney Disease
Team members: Soumya Maity, PhD (Center for Precision Medicine), Nicholas Clanton, PhD (Long School of Medicine), Yaxia Yuan, PhD (College of Sciences)
Funding Amount: $50,000
Conversion of optical images of coronary atherosclerosis to histology using Artificial Intelligence
Team members: Marc Feldman, MD (Klesse College of Engineering & Integrated Design), Robert Chilton, DO (Long School of Medicine), Paul Rad, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering & Integrated Design), Aleksandra Gruslova, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering & Integrated Design)
Funding Amount: $49,775
GENOMIC-ARC: Chromatin Architecture and Neurovascular Repair After Cerebrovascular Injury. A mechanism-to-population framework
Team members: Murali Sargurupremraj, PhD (Long School of Medicine), Juan B. Gutiérrez, PhD (College of Sciences)
Funding Amount: $40,000
Mapping Organ-Level Lactate Dynamics as an Early Functional Biomarker of Diabetic Complications
Team members: Jing Yong Ye, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering & Integrated Design), Kumar Sharma, MD (Long School of Medicine)
Funding Amount: $39,619
Establishing the Bexar County Health Panel Study: A Community-Engaged, Longitudinal Assessment of Local Health Attitudes
Team members: Bryan Gervais, PhD (College of Liberal and Fine Arts), Erika Thompson, PhD (School of Public Health)
Funding Amount: $30,000
Neuro-Immune Resilience and the Biology of Chronic Pain
Team members: Chia Hsu, PhD (College for Health, Community and Policy), Kenneth Hargreaves, DDS, PhD (School of Dentistry), Jenny Hsieh, PhD (Brain Health Consortium), Christopher Rathbone, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design), Nameer Kirma, PhD (Long School of Medicine)
Funding Amount: $30,000
Advancing Brain Health with Novel Biomarkers for Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in Emergency Care
Team members: Marzieh Memar, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering & Integrated Design), Ralph Riviello, MD (Long School of Medicine)
Funding Amount: $30,000
LLM-Powered Personalized Type 2 Diabetes Management with Wearable Sensor Data
Team members: Yun Shi, PhD (Long School of Medicine), Yuanxiong Guo, PhD (Klesse College of Engineering & Integrated Design)
