Dr. Ai-Ling Lin is the Vice Chair for Research of the Department of Radiology, Professor of Radiology, Biological Sciences, and Institute for Data Science & Informatics, and a Principal Investigator at the NextGen Precision Health Institute at the University of Missouri- Columbia. Originally from Taiwan, Dr. Lin completed her PhD and Postdoctoral training as a medical physicist from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, TX. In 2014, she began her independent research career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky and promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2019. She joined University of Missouri-Columbia as a Full Professor with tenure in August 2021. Dr. Lin is a well-known expert on translational neuroimaging of brain vascular and metabolic function in aging, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI). She developed and applied magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, and positron emission tomography to test nutritional and pharmacologic approaches for protecting the brain from aging, TBI and AD. She is also an expert on artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-omics (such as metabolomics, transcriptomics, and gut microbiome). She has applied AI to identify markers that are highly predictable for AD development and progression, and applied gut microbiome analyses to study gut-brain interaction underlying brain aging, stroke, TBI, and AD.
Dr. Lin was a Finalist for the prestigious Niels Lassen Award at BRAIN & BRAIN PET meeting in 2013, chosen to serve on NIH study section as an Early Career Reviewer in 2015, and recognized as a Top 15 Early Career Investigator at the Charleston Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease (CCAD) and a Fellow of American College of Nutrition in 2016. She was also an awardee of the New Vision Investigator Award by CCAD in 2016. She currently serves on the CCAD Advisory Board (2022-2025) and a guest mentor for CCAD 2023. Her works are well received and recognized by the research community. Her senior-authored publication was selected as a Top 100 article by Scientific Reports in 2018 and she was recognized as a Top 10% most cited author by PLOS ONE in 2021. She has been successful in securing NIH funding, including KL2, K01, R01s, and administration supplement awards, and several Foundation grant awards. Dr. Lin has served on many grant review panels, including being a standing member on the NIH Clinical Translational Imaging Science (CTIS) study section, NIA-charted AGCD-4 study section, as well as on panels for NASA, Department of Defense (DoD) and several private foundations. Her reputation has been recognized internationally by being frequently invited to be a speaker, to organize international conferences and chair symposia related to neuroimaging, aging, AD and gut microbiome.
In addition to Research and Service, Dr. Lin has excelled in the training of students and has mentored high school, undergraduate, graduate and professional students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. Under her mentorship, her trainees received a KL2 award, multiple T32 training grants, scholar awards and oral presentations in international conferences. High School students were selected to participate in and received grand awards from the INTEL international Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) and accepted into prestigious universities, including Harvard, Yale, UPenn, UC Berkley, Duke, Emory and Williams College. She is committed to teaching and mentoring the next generation of scholars and will lead them with the vision aligned with the NextGen Precision Health Initiative for AD prevention.
Dr. Lin is awarded from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to study a drug’s potential to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. She has another award from NIA to study potential effectiveness of prebiotic inulin diet to reduce risk of AD in an APOE4 mouse model.
Dr. Lin has many peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and poster awards to her credit, and directs or co-directs grants from the NIA and the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Federation for Aging Research and New Vision Research.