UF’s Only NIH K Award Couple

Professor Ting-Yuan (David) Cheng, PhD, assistant professor in Epidemiology, and his wife Professor Yu-Jung (Jenny) Wei, PhD, an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy both have received prestigious NIH funded Career Development (K) awards. Currently Drs. Cheng and Wei are the only married couple within UF who have both received K awards. This extremely competitive award covers 75 percent of faculty members’ salary for five years, allowing them to devote time to research. Dr. Cheng’s research focuses on breast cancer tumor markers to study the relationship between obesity and developing breast cancer. Dr. Wei’s focus is on the improvement of pharmacotherapy in geriatric patients, especially those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Both Drs. Cheng and Wei supported each other throughout the application process and exchanged career advice along the way. We are so excited to see where Dr. Chen and Dr. Wei’s research takes them and their UF family.