UCR scientists receive additional federal funding to boost research on brain injury Earlier this year, Viji Santhakumar, an associate professor of molecular, cell and systems biology at the University of California, Riverside, received funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disaster and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, to further pursue research on moderate concussive brain injury. Now three scientists in her lab have received federal funding -- no small achievement for a university research group. Department of Defense award Deepak Subramanian, a postdoctoral researcher, has received a three-year Department of Defense Idea Development Award of $466,000 to examine the "molecular and immune axis of neurological deficits in posttraumatic epilepsy." The project starts July 15.