Showalter Trust adds 4 faculty honorees, funds 13 early career faculty

Purdue University has appointed four recipients as Showalter Faculty Scholars. The addition of Noll Campbell, Qing Deng, Dianne Little and Sandro Matosevic brings the number of currently funded Showalter scholars to 15 on the West Lafayette campus. The Showalter Trust also provided 13 early career faculty members with 2025 research grants.

The Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust annually provides funding to Purdue in support of scientific and medical research related to human health. In addition to selecting midcareer professionals as Showalter Faculty Scholars, in partnership with the University Faculty Scholars program and providing one-year funding for early career professionals, the trust also supports two Showalter Distinguished Professors at Purdue, Charles Bouman and Kinam Park.

2025 Showalter Faculty Scholars

Campbell, associate professor of pharmacy practice, is trained in clinical pharmacy and geriatrics and has established expertise in neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s dementia and related dementia/disorders. His research examines medication-based approaches to optimize brain health in older adults, which includes both prescribing and deprescribing of medications for disease prevention and treatment. Outcomes of interest include prevention and treatment of both dementia and delirium.

Deng, professor of biological sciences, focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating neutrophil migration and inflammation and their roles in cancer and tissue repair. Her laboratory integrates zebrafish, mouse and human cell models to uncover how cytoskeletal dynamics, mitochondria, membrane potential and microRNAs shape immune cell behavior with the goal of translating these findings into innovative therapeutic strategies. She also co-leads efforts to engineer CAR-neutrophils for cancer immunotherapy and to model tumor-immune interactions in biomimetic systems.

Little, associate professor of basic medical sciences, focuses on tendon tissue engineering, which has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. She built an interest in translational orthopedics, preclinical models, and understanding how extrinsic life and lifestyle factors impact osteoarthritis. She continues to develop her tendon tissue engineering work to expand understanding not only of the impact of extrinsic factors on the vast potential for stem cells in regenerative medicine, but also to understand how some of these extrinsic factors impact osteoarthritis and overall whole organism disease burden.

Matosevic, associate professor of industrial and molecular pharmaceutics, is focused on developing innovative cell-based immunotherapies for the treatment of solid tumors. He is interested in developing engineered natural killer cell-based immunotherapies that can enhance persistence and trafficking of these drugs into solid tumors. The motivation behind his independent research is to develop clinically viable immune cell therapies that can achieve durable patient responses. The research that Matosevic’s lab has been pursuing is highly translational and is rooted in the overall goal of advancing next-generation cancer therapies to patients.

2025 Showalter Early Career Awards

The Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust has supported Purdue researchers in priority research areas of environmental science; biochemistry and molecular biology; disease prevention, diagnosis, progression, treatment and control; new technologies for food production, preservation, distribution and safety; and medical and biophysical instrumentation, including the analysis of large datasets.

Grants for early career faculty members are the centerpiece of Showalter funding at Purdue. This year, these 13 faculty members each received funding for the projects listed:

Kyle Cottrell, assistant professor of biochemistry, “Evaluating the role of PACT in suppression of dsRNA sensing in breast cancer”

Luis Gomez,assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, “Accurate and high-resolution electrical conductivity measurements using magnetoacoustic tomography with magnetic induction (MAT-MI)”

Soojung Jo, assistant professor of nursing, “Development of an mHealth intervention for latent tuberculosis self-management in a Haitian migrant population in Daviess County, Indiana.”

Alexandria Johnson, assistant professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences, “Investigating environmental impacts of atmospheric microplastics: their role in cloud formation and pulmonary health”

Patrick Kerstein, assistant professor of health sciences, “Molecular mechanisms of retinal neuron survival and specification in the visual nervous system”

Kwang Seob Kim, assistant professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, “Movement-based biomarkers of stuttering”

Noori Kim, assistant professor of engineering technology, “Ear Monitoring System (EMS)”

Yini Li, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, “Epigenetic function of transposon RNA in sporadic cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD)”

Nathaniel Mabe, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, “Dissecting epigenetic determinants of GD2 expression in Ewing sarcoma”

Rahim Rahimi, associate professor of material engineering, “Smart wound patch with e-nose sensing and ozone therapy for infected wounds”

Ilya Slizovskiy, assistant professor of veterinary clinical sciences, “Quantifying the impact of fecal microbiota transplantation on antimicrobial resistance burden in high-risk patients with multidrug-resistant infections”

Shiliang Tian, assistant professor of chemistry, “Identification of novel human copper chaperones through proximity labeling”

David Warsinger, associate professor of mechanical engineering, “Electrocatalytic nanofiltration for rapid removal and destruction of PFAS to safeguard human health”

Projects were chosen by the external Showalter Trust Selection Committee after review by an internal Purdue committee. More information about the current competition for the Showalter Trust early career grants program is available online.

Media contact: Emily Stevenson, steve201@purdue.edu