Rice Global India
Joint Faculty Research Award Winners
2026 JFRA Winners
- Developing Novel Gene Editing Therapy for Sickle Cell Disease in India
- Leveraging ANN Based Methods to Enhance the Scalability of LLMs
- Evolutionary and Conservation Genomics of Endangered Mammals in India
Developing Novel Gene Editing Therapy for Sickle Cell Disease in India
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is one of the most prevalent single-gene disorders, affecting millions worldwide, including those from Africa, Middle East, and India. It was estimated that in 2021, 1.2 million people in India were affected by SCD, with disease severity comparable to many other parts of the world. Of all the newborns with SCD, an estimated 14.5% are in India. In 2023, the Indian government launched the National Sickle Cell Anemia Elimination Mission to implement large-scale screen and develop new technologies and therapies for SCD. While Casgevy, the gene editing therapy for SCD, has been approved by the FDA, it costs ~$2.2M per patients in the U.S., and it is expected to have a high cost in India, although the specific price is not available. Therefore, there is an unmet need to significantly reduce the cost of gene editing therapy of SCD in India, by developing and applying new gene editing methods with high efficacy and safety for treating SCD.
Foyt Family Professor of Bioengineering |
Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science & NanoEngineering |
CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research
Rice University
Principal Scientist, Therapeutic Genome Editing
CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology
Leveraging ANN Based Methods to Enhance the Scalability of LLMs
We propose to leverage Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) methods to improve Key-Value (KV) caching for large language models (LLMs). While some prior works have explored LSH-based KV caching, techniques such as DiskANN, multi-vector retrieval, and inverted indexing—well-established in the domain of text retrieval—remain underexplored for this purpose. Our goal is to adapt and extend these methods to build more efficient and scalable KV caching strategies.
Professor, Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Statistics |
Member, Ken Kennedy Institute
Rice University
Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Evolutionary and Conservation Genomics of Endangered Mammals in India
We propose to build the first large-scale genomic resources for several endangered species in India. Our team will generate comprehensive genomic resources for following taxa: (1) gray wolves Canis lupus in India, (2) the Asiatic wild dog or dhole (Cuon alpinus), (3) the Indian wild ass (Equus hemionus khur), (4) honey badger (Mellivora capensis), and (5) fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus). Each of these species were selected based on our team’s expertise, availability in high-quality biological samples, and their potential to address critical questions in evolutionary and conservation biology fields. A second activity will involve undergraduate and graduate students at Rice University and Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in data analysis, writing, and publication during and after the project’s 1 year completion.
Assistant Professor of BioSciences, Wiess School of Natural Sciences
Rice University
Scientist, Department of Animal Ecology and Biology Conservation
Wildlife Institute of India