The SUNY Brain Institute is a statewide neuroscience research network led by the University at Buffalo and includes researchers from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, SUNY College of Optometry, and SUNY Upstate Medical University, in addition to Binghamton. Its mission is to accelerate work on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and related conditions by connecting leading researchers and advanced infrastructure across the state. The $10 million investment was made possible by capital support that SUNY received in the 2025-26 state budget, and it will create shared access to sophisticated equipment for more than 600 SUNY faculty researchers working in neuroscience.

At Binghamton, the grant will support Jungwook “Jay” Paek, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, who will work with colleagues to establish advanced imaging and electrophysiological analysis infrastructure for studying living brain tissue models inside small microfabricated devices known as human brain-on-a-chip platforms. These platforms integrate engineered human neurovascular tissue into chip-scale systems, allowing researchers to grow and observe living neural networks under tightly controlled conditions that are impossible to achieve in conventional laboratory settings.

The funding will enable the team to acquire a 3D imaging setup for visualizing and validating three-dimensional living neurovascular tissue models, along with electrode-based measurement systems for monitoring the electrical activity of neurons within those models. Together, these capabilities will allow researchers to characterize both the structural and functional properties of engineered human brain tissues. The team will also evaluate how faithfully the models mimic the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases, a critical step in determining whether the platforms can serve as reliable testbeds for understanding dementia.

Paek emphasized that the funding fills a crucial gap in how research is typically supported. “One of the most exciting aspects of this initiative is that the Brain Institute provides capital funding to establish research instrumentation infrastructure, which is often difficult to secure through general research funding,” he said. Standard research grants generally cover personnel and consumables but rarely finance the expensive permanent equipment that can anchor a laboratory’s experimental program for years, which is precisely what this state capital investment supplies.

Paek’s path to this work began long before he arrived at Binghamton’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science in 2023. As an undergraduate, he was fascinated by neurons, the brain cells that generate and transmit electrical signals through their networks and thereby form the biological basis of cognitive functions. “That early fascination pulled me out of conventional circuits and into a much longer journey through bioengineering and into neuroscience, chasing the idea of building biological electric circuits that work like the brain itself,” he said.

His interest in dementia grew naturally out of that engineering perspective. “If the brain is fundamentally an electrical network, then its failure in dementia is not just a biochemical event,” Paek said. “It may come with electrical dysfunction at a single neuron level and at a network level, developing dynamically over time. That shift in perspective is what drew me to this disease and shapes how I approach it.” Rather than relying solely on biochemical assays that capture only a static snapshot of pathology, his research aims to watch progressive neurodegeneration as it unfolds in real time, focusing on the electrical activity of living neurovascular tissues. “That is what biological electric circuits are designed to do in my research, and that possibility is what keeps me in this work,” he said.

State officials framed the investment in broad public-health terms. “New York state is investing in transformative research that dives into issues affecting communities throughout the state,” Hochul said. “By connecting leading researchers and advanced infrastructures across New York, the SUNY Brain Institute will accelerate work on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and other age-related brain disorders to find cures so families in every community have the quality time together that they deserve.” The multi-campus structure is intended to ensure that expertise and instrumentation are not siloed at a single institution but distributed across the statewide network.

“SUNY is leading innovative research to support and advance the public good for all New Yorkers,” SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. said. “The SUNY Brain Institute’s work embodies SUNY’s commitment to using higher education and research to dive into critical issues affecting communities across the state.” With dementia cases projected to rise as populations age, the institute’s combination of shared capital infrastructure and collaborative expertise offers a model for how public university systems can organize large-scale responses to complex, chronic diseases.

For Paek and his team, the immediate payoff will be the instrumentation needed to visualize living brain-like tissue in three dimensions while simultaneously recording the electrical conversations occurring among its neurons. By merging imaging with electrophysiology on brain-on-a-chip platforms, the Binghamton laboratory hopes to reveal the dynamic electrical signatures of neurodegeneration as they emerge, potentially identifying earlier markers of disease and new avenues for intervention in conditions that currently have few effective treatments.

Subject of Research: Human brain-on-a-chip platforms and instrumentation for studying electrical dysfunction in dementia and neurodegenerative disease

Article Title: SUNY Brain Institute awards $500K grant to Binghamton University, State University of New York for advanced dementia research

Article References: SUNY Brain Institute awards $500K grant to Binghamton University, State University of New York for advanced dementia research. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: dementia, neurodegenerative disease, brain-on-a-chip, SUNY Brain Institute, Binghamton University, electrophysiology, 3D imaging, neurons, Alzheimer's disease, neurovascular tissue models, New York state funding, neuroscience infrastructure