Texas Tech assistant professor awarded $2.1 million for near-infrared research

The award comes from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences through its Maximizing Investigators' Research Award program, known as MIRA. That funding mechanism is designed to give researchers sustained support rather than project-by-project grants, which means Srivastava gets room to follow the science without constantly reapplying for money.

His work focuses on NIR-II imaging technologies, a field that uses near-infrared light in a wavelength range that penetrates tissue more deeply and with less interference than traditional imaging methods. For patients, that could eventually translate into clearer, earlier detection of disease without the radiation exposure that comes with some existing scans. Texas Tech's Health Sciences Center sits right here in Lubbock, so research like this isn't happening somewhere abstract on the coasts.

A $2.1 million single-investigator award signals that Tech is pulling in serious federal science dollars in a competitive funding environment where most applications don't make the cut.

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences funds research that builds the foundational knowledge base for all of medicine, not just one specific disease, which means Srivastava's imaging work could eventually touch treatments across dozens of conditions.