Join us in kickstarting the research careers of early-career medical school faculty who have chosen the arduous, but rewarding dual career of physician-scientist. The Taubman Emerging Scholars Program supports these outstanding individuals, helping them to establish laboratories and develop novel research programs that can lead to biomedical breakthroughs.
Your gift can propel these brilliant, dedicated, and innovative young investigators, whose caring for patients informs and drives their quests for new knowledge and treatments. Meet some of our newest Emerging Scholars, and learn what a difference your gift can make:
Allison Billi, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Dermatology
Dr. Billi provides medical dermatology diagnosis and treatment to patients of all ages. As a physician-scientist, she explores the basis of female bias in autoimmune disease. In her lab:
- $50 covers the cost to obtain one autoimmune disease skin sample for drug testing.
- $300 identifies proteins in one human skin sample that may be contributing to skin lupus.
- $1,000 tests an experimental drug in a skin biopsy from a patient with autoimmune skin disease.
Brian Emmer, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine
Dr. Emmer cares for patients as a Michigan Medicine hospitalist. His current project seeks to target the receptor in human cells that interacts with COVID-19’s spike protein. In his lab:
- $20 provides one hour of hands-on training and support for an undergraduate student with a long-term interest in life sciences research.
- $200 purchases reagents to engineer precise changes in the human genome and test their potential to treat heart disease.
- $400 tests whether a mutation in the LDLR gene causes early onset heart disease.
Joanna Mattis, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Neurology
Dr. Mattis is a neurologist who specializes in epilepsy. Her laboratory studies focus on neuronal circuitry, aiming to decipher how seizures get started in the brain. In her lab:
- $100 pays for supplies necessary to image protein expression in brain tissue.
- $250 purchases 10 electrodes to record brain activity during seizures.
- $300 pays for one specialized lens to record information from neurons located deep in the brain.
Simpa Salami, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor of Urology
Dr. Salami treats patients with cancer of the urologic system. He seeks to leverage novel imaging, next-generation sequencing, and other approaches to optimize early detection of prostate and kidney cancer and predict treatment response. In his lab:
- $500 covers the cost to process and analyze a kidney cancer tissue sample.
Yu “Ray” Zuo, M.D., MSCS
Assistant Professor of Rheumatology
Dr. Zuo cares for patients in the Rheumatology Division. As a researcher, he studies autoimmunity and currently focuses on how infections may lead to the development of autoimmune diseases by disrupting the body's natural defense mechanisms. In his lab:
- $50 advances the study of autoimmune-mediated thrombosis and pregnancy loss for one research subject.
- $100 covers the processing of research samples for one subject in the study of blood clots.
- $500 will pay for the screening of 10 antibodies in a COVID-19 survivor.
