Bilal Sheikh is Allen Distinguished Investigator (ADI) awardee
The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Allen Institute, announced today the names of the 16 new Allen Distinguished Investigators for 2022. Bilal Sheikh from the Helmholtz Institute for Metabolic, Obesity and Vascular Research (HI-MAG) of Helmholtz Munich at the Leipzig University is one of the award winners.
The Allen Distinguished Investigator program supports early-stage researchers, conducting groundbreaking research in the field of biology and medicine. This year, The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group is supporting eight new projects with funding amounting of $10 million US dollars. The funded projects are all cutting-edge projects investigating the topics of protein lifespan and nutrient sensing. To choose research areas, the Frontiers Group looks for emerging fields where an investment could be catalytic to advance scientific progress – not just for awardees, but for all in that particular field.
Bilal Sheikh’s nominated research is part of the cohort “Nutrient sensing”. Researchers in this cohort are developing new technologies to measure and visualize nutrient levels within cells. The aim of the projects is to capture detailed information about metabolites, chemical compounds and other nutrients in individual cells. In his project, Bilal Sheikh together with Niculina Musat and Hryhoriy Stryhanyuk from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ Leipzig, aim to visualize the metabolism of individual cells and organelles to understand how our cells and organs work. The challenge: Metabolic reactions happen in milliseconds in areas 50 times thinner than a human hair. To solve this problem, the three researchers are developing a new technology dubbed Meta-SCOPE to visualize metabolism in single cells, shedding light on important but to-date invisible cellular processes.
