Georgia Tech Professor Wins NIH Research Award
Assistant Professor Abigail Lind will use five years of flexible NIH funding to study the gut protist Blastocystis.
Updated on Nov. 14, 2026 in Life Sciences
Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Abigail Lind received a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award from the National Institutes of Health. The award provides five years of flexible funding for her work on Blastocystis, a common gut protist.
Why it matters
Protists have been understudied because they were considered possible pathogens until recently, but studies have linked them to reduced inflammation and positive cardiovascular outcomes. The research aims to make Blastocystis a system researchers can understand, providing a foundation for studying other protists in Atlanta and beyond.
The MIRA program provides five years of flexible funding to investigators, and the award's dollar amount was not disclosed in the source. The team's ability to fully study Blastocystis genetically remains unresolved, as the genetic tools are still being developed.
The players
Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia Tech is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, known for its engineering and science programs.
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health is the primary federal agency for biomedical and public health research in the United States.
The details
Lind's team is investigating Blastocystis, which swells and bursts when exposed to oxygen and is killed by many techniques used to cultivate gut bacteria. Postdoctoral scholar Fredrick Leon tested nutrient combinations ranging from store-bought protein powders to boiled wheatgrass solutions, and the team developed new laboratory culturing techniques.
Timeline
The MIRA funding period runs for five years from the award.
Health Landscape
The MIRA program gives investigators five years of flexible funding, a structure that lets researchers pursue long-term, exploratory work. Lind's protist research extends that support into a field that was overlooked for decades while protists were treated as possible pathogens.
Advances in understanding gut protists could eventually inform new approaches to gut health and inflammation. The research is at an early laboratory stage, so no near-term treatments or consumer products are indicated in the source.
The takeaway
Research on overlooked microbes like Blastocystis can reshape how scientists understand the gut's role in health. Readers interested in the field can follow developments in microbiome research as new tools emerge.
Further reading
For related coverage, explore more Life Sciences reporting from Atlanta.
Source note: This article includes information reported by News-Medical.
