The University of Michigan’s Presidential Biosciences Initiative has named the 2025 recipients of the Michigan Biosciences Faculty Award Recognition, honoring three outstanding mid-career faculty members for their research achievements, academic excellence, and potential to drive scientific breakthroughs.

This year’s awardees are:

• Tim Cernak, associate professor of medicinal chemistry, College of Pharmacy; and associate professor of chemistry, LSA.
• Cynthia Chestek, professor of biomedical engineering, College of Engineering and Medical School; professor of electrical engineering and computer Science, and of robotics, CoE; and professor of neurosurgery, Medical School.
• Wenjing Wang, Isabella Karle Collegiate Professor in the Life Sciences, William R. Roush Assistant Professor, research associate professor, Life Sciences Institute, and associate professor of chemistry, LSA.

Launched in 2018, MBioFAR was created to support “superstar” mid-career researchers at a pivotal point in their careers. By offering flexible, robust resources, the program enables bold, high-risk, high-reward research that might otherwise go unexplored and has been a cornerstone investment in the current faculty.

Each cycle, the awardees are selected through a rigorous review process led by a faculty director and a subcommittee of leading faculty from across U-M’s biosciences community. This year’s faculty director was Liz Speliotes, Keith S. Henley M.D. Collegiate Professor of Gastroenterology, professor of internal medicine, and of computational medicine and bioinformatics, Medical School.

“On behalf of the MBioFAR committee and BICC (Biosciences Initiative Coordinating Committee) I can say we loved reading about your work, and we hope you use the money to continue to innovate and lead your fields in new directions,” Speliotes said.

Each recipient will receive $500,000 in discretionary funding to support high-impact, innovative research; projects that may not fit traditional funding models.

Cernak is a drug hunter and conservationist applying the latest tools in AI and chemistry automation toward challenges such as the total synthesis of natural products, and the rapid development of medicines. The Cernak Lab also develops medicines to prevent disease in endangered species such as frogs, sea turtles, and Gila monster.

Chestek leads a lab focused on neural control systems for complex movement. Since 2012, her research has centered on implantable neural interfaces for motor prosthetics, aiming to control full hand motion with thousands of channels. Her team works with animal models, human subjects with upper limb amputations, and develops open-source implantable devices. Committed to advancing long-lasting neural prosthetics, she also mentors over 20 Ph.D. students, postdocs and neurosurgical residents.

Wang’s laboratory of applied protein engineering and synthetic biology to develop genetically encoded sensors and tools for probing neuromodulatory systems in the brain. Her team has generated an extensive suite of novel sensors for detecting diverse brain signaling molecules, and chemogenetic tools that precisely modulate endogenous G protein-coupled receptor activity. They are now advancing protein- and cell-based therapeutic strategies for targeting neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.