Asst Prof Susmit Suvas is awarded $1.8M NIH grant

Assistant Professor Susmit Suvas, of the Department of Biological Sciences, has recently been awarded a 5-year, 1.8 million dollar grant (R01EY022417) from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Suvas’s funding is particularly impressive given the extrodinarily low NIH success rate. The award, which begins March 1, is titled “Corneal neuropeptides and herpetic stromal keratitis”. Herpetic Stromal Keratitis lesions are herpes simplex virus infections of the cornea of the eye. Neuropeptides (short chains of amino acids) regulate tissue damage in the cornea by acting on both stromal keratocytes and immune cells.