Illinois chemist Xiaotang Lu wins NIH Director's New Innovator Award
The award supports high-risk, high-reward research for up to five years.
URBANA - Xiaotang Lu, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has received the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award, the university announced Oct. 6.
The award comes from the NIH Common Fund's High-Risk, High-Reward Research program and provides support for up to five years, according to the university.
In the university's announcement, Lu said of the work: "It's much like adding missing station names to a subway map, so we can understand not only where the connections are, but also which cells are communicating."
Source: University of Illinois News Bureau, Oct. 6, 2026.