Cris Niell. (Courtesy photo)
Cris Niell, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon and a 1991 graduate of the Bromfield School, was announced as a recipient of a 2012 New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health at a ceremony last Thursday. The award includes a five-year grant totaling $1.5 million.
Niell, the only Oregon recipient of the award, was singled out as a promising early stage investigator whose highly innovative research has the potential for significant impact. He studies the function and development of neural circuits for visual processing and will use his New Innovator Award funding to study the development of the visual system to understand how neurons establish appropriate circuits that perform specific computations.
Niell, who joined the University of Oregon as an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Institute of Neuroscience in the fall of 2011, has helped pioneer methods to label synapses in the brain and manipulate individual neurons. In April 2012, he was named one of 15 Searle Scholars. The highly competitive award entitles him to $300,000 in support during the next three years. In 2012, he also received a $50,000 Sloan Research Fellowship, an award handed out to select early-career scientists and scholars.
