Alexander Marras, assistant professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, was awarded the R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
Marras will be awarded $1.9 million over five years for his proposal entitled “Expanding the design space of polyelectrolyte complex micelles”. The goal of this proposal, and for Marras’ group the Nanoassembly Lab, is to identify the key factors that control physical properties and performance of RNA PCMs, which are polymeric nanoparticles for RNA delivery.
Marras joined The University of Texas at Austin in 2022 and is also an affiliated faculty member with the Texas Materials Institute.