Purdue honors 2026 Showalter Scholars, expands early career research awards

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University is recognizing Xiaoping Bao and Jacqueline Linnes as 2026 Showalter Faculty Scholars and supporting 12 early career faculty members whose innovative projects address pressing challenges in human health. With the addition of Bao and Linnes, 15 Showalter Faculty Scholars are currently supported on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus.

Through its annual investment in Purdue research, the Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust help faculty pursue discoveries with the potential to improve human health. The trust supports researchers at multiple career stages through the Showalter Faculty Scholars program, early career investigator awards, and two distinguished professorships held by Charles Bouman and Kinam Park.

2026 Showalter Faculty Scholars

• Xiaoping Bao, associate professor of chemical engineering, leads a research program at Purdue focused on stem cell bioengineering, immunoengineering, genome editing and drug delivery. His work develops innovative cell and gene therapies to treat currently incurable diseases, including brain cancers and disorders. An innovative contribution from the Bao Laboratory is the development of CAR-neutrophil immunotherapy. By exploiting the intrinsic migratory capacity of neutrophils, the most abundant circulating immune cells, his approach addresses the longstanding issue of poor tumor infiltration.
• Jacqueline Linnes, professor of biomedical engineering, conducts research at the intersection of disease diagnosis and medical instrumentation, with a focus on translating laboratory biosensor technologies into accessible, real-world diagnostic tools. Her innovations in microfluidics, biosensor design and human-centered engineering have produced exquisitely sensitive, low-cost point-of-care diagnostics capable of detecting disease with easy-to-interpret results, making advanced disease detection accessible globally.

2026 Showalter Early Career Awards

The 2026 early career awards reflect the breadth of the Showalter Trust’s commitment to research with implications for human health. This year’s selected projects span environmental science, biochemistry and molecular biology, disease prevention and treatment, food safety and production technologies, and medical and biophysical instrumentation—including approaches that draw on large-scale data analysis.

As a cornerstone of Showalter funding at Purdue, the program gives early career faculty the resources to test ambitious ideas and build momentum for future discoveries.

The 12 recipients and their funded projects are:

• Pradip Bajgain, assistant professor of basic medical sciences, “Exploiting B7-H3 to fuel CAR T cell therapy for neuroblastoma”
• Pianpian Cao, assistant professor of public health, “Building a national ZIP code-level environmental exposure database for lung cancer risk modeling”
• Wesley Cochrane, assistant professor of biochemistry, “Mapping RNA-ligand interactions for precision therapeutics”
• Qi Dong, assistant professor of chemistry, “Removing and upcycling per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water systems via in-water pulsed joule heating”
• Hanzhe Liu, assistant professor of chemistry, “Real-time measurements of ‘fly-casting’ binding-folding mechanisms in intrinsically disordered proteins using picosecond terahertz vibrational spectroscopy”
• Huachao Mao, associate professor of engineering technology, “Capillary-scale biomanufacturing for functional human organoids”
• Malinda McPherson-McNato, assistant professor of speech, language and hearing sciences, “Rapid and robust screening for hidden hearing loss”
• Taimoor Hasan Qazi, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, “An immunomodulatory hydrogel to promote muscle regeneration”
• Li Qu, research assistant professorof industrial and molecular pharmaceutics, “Advanced bacteriophage therapies for life-threatening lung infections caused by pan-drug-resistant bacteria”
• Michael Vermeuel, assistant professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, “Linking urban VOC emissions to ozone formation and health risks along the Lake Michigan shoreline”
• Li Zhan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, “Decentralizing cancer immunotherapy with automated biomanufacturing of ‘living drugs’ at point-of-care”
• Weiruo Zhang, assistant professor of biological sciences and computer science, “Decoding spatial metabolic-immune niches as predictive biomarkers of immunotherapy response in non-small cell lung cancer”

The next Showalter Early Career Awards competition offers individual awards of up to $100,000, an increase from $75,000, giving Purdue early career faculty additional support to pursue bold, high-impact research. Projects are selected by the external Showalter Trust Selection Committee following review by an internal Purdue committee. Eligibility information, application instructions and competition details are available online for applications due Oct. 26.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a research institution ranked among the top 10 public universities in the United States. More than 111,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, including more than 57,000 at our main campus locations in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. As a land-grant university committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 14 years in a row, enabling more students than ever to graduate debt-free.