Ambika Bhagi-Damodaran receives MIRA grant

Professor Ambika Bhagi-Damodaran has received a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) General Medicine that brings in $1.9 million for five years to fund her research on decoding and rewiring enzymatic redox signal transduction pathways. 

Similar to electrical circuits, cells possess enzymatic circuits that sense, signal and respond to the presence of redox-active stimuli in their microenvironment. With this grant, Professor Bhagi-Damodaran and her research group will design molecular strategies to rewire enzymatic redox circuitry that will enable cells to overcome excess or deficiency of critical redox reagents. These strategies will inform future methodologies for prevention and treatment of several redox-related diseases including cancer, cardiovascular and neurological disorders.  

Professor Bhagi-Damodaran's principal research interests are at the interface of chemical biology and inorganic chemistry and encompass combining inorganic techniques of metalloenzyme characterization along with cutting-edge chemical biology methods to identify, explore and target “druggable” redox-active metalloenzymes. Her research group elucidates structure-function relations in redox-active metalloenzymes and applies this knowledge toward the development of novel drug lead compounds. Researchers also utilize the insights gathered from these studies to design new biocatalysts with high efficiency and broad substrate scope. 

Professor Bhagi-Damodaran joined the Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor in the fall of 2018. A native of India, she was born and raised in Uttar Pradesh. She received her bachelor’s in chemistry from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi, and a master's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. She earned her doctorate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.