UC San Diego Prof Wins NIH Director’s New Innovator Award

Bambah-Mukku’s award-winning project is “The Multisensory Ontogeny of Social Behavior” (grant no. DP2-HD118871) and will be funded with more than $2.2 million over five years.

Bambah-Mukku joined UC San Diego in 2021, following training at Mount Sinai, NYU and Harvard. His lab employs an interdisciplinary approach combining genetic, behavioral and systems neuroscience tools in rodents to uncover fundamental principles underlying natural social behaviors such as mating, aggression and parenting. The lab is also studying Naked Mole Rats to explore the neurobiology and evolution of diverse forms of social organization.

“Funding through the NIH New Innovator Award will allow us to develop cutting-edge genetic tools and novel behavioral paradigms to investigate the infant nervous system and explore the neurobiology of mother-infant attachment, and how early life stimuli shape behavioral development,” Bambah-Mukku said.

In announcing the award, Tara A. Schwetz, NIH deputy director for program coordination, planning, and strategic initiatives and director of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, which oversees the NIH Common Fund, said, “The HRHR program champions exceptionally bold and innovative science that pushes the boundaries of biomedical and behavioral research. The groundbreaking science pursued by these researchers is poised to have a broad impact on human health.”

Bambah-Mukku’s research has previously been supported by an NICHD K99/R00 award, a Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind Innovative Research Grant and a Whitehall Foundation Fellowship.

"Since joining UC San Diego, DJ has rapidly launched an ambitious research program focused on understanding the evolution of diverse forms of social organization,” said John Serences, chair of the Department of Psychology in  the UC San Diego School of Social Sciences. “This is a profoundly important question with widespread implications for understanding animal and eventually human social interactions. However, this question has long evaded explanation due to the complexity of neural elements involved in complex behaviors. DJ will use a suite of innovative tools, some of which he pioneered as a postdoc, to uncover fundamental principles underlying social behavior."