Professor David Bortz Awarded the National Institutes of Health's Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award

Last month, Applied Mathematics’s own Professor David Bortz received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA), which includes $1.88 million of support. MIRA, according to NIH, was established to better distribute NIGMS funding by “providing investigators with greater stability and flexibility, thereby enhancing scientific productivity and the chances for important breakthroughs.”

With this funding, Professor Bortz will use data-driven discovery methods, which use data to discover overarching model equations via machine learning, to tackle two biomedical projects. One project is to understand how cells communicate collective motion during wound healing. The second project is to use disease data to hypothesize disease infection rates, which helps predict necessary localized hospitalization resource distribution.

This achievement is published in the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, which has more detail about the award itself and the projects Professor Bortz will use this award for.