Eighteen faculty members at Harvard and Harvard-affiliated
institutions are among 115 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative
work was recognized today with the announcement of three grant
programs by the National Institutes of Health
(NIH).
The grants, expected to total $348 million over five years
for recipients nationwide, finance high-risk, high-reward work through the new
NIH Director’s Transformative R01 Awards, recognize established researchers
through the Pioneer Awards, and they encourage young scientists through New
Innovator Awards. Harvard faculty members were recipients of Transformative and
New Innovator awards.
The programs are part of an effort to accelerate the pace of
discovery by encouraging highly innovative research, according to the NIH.
“The appeal of the … programs is that investigators are
encouraged to challenge the status quo with innovative ideas, while being given
the necessary resources to test them,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins.
In fiscal 2009, Transformative Awards will provide $30
million to investigators, while Pioneer Awards are expected to be funded at
$13.5 million and New Innovator Awards will total $131 million.
Harvard faculty receiving
Transformative Awards:
Frederick
Ausubel, professor of genetics at Harvard
Medical School and Massachusetts
General Hospital.
Sylvie
Breton, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and
Massachusetts General Hospital.
Gaudenz Danuser, professor of cell
biology at Harvard Medical School.
Ru-Rong
Ji, associate professor of anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Charles
Serhan, Simon Gelman Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and
Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Loren
Walensky, assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and
the Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute.
Xiaoliang
Sunney Xie, Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences at
Harvard University.
Harvard faculty receiving New Innovator Awards:
Mark Albers, instructor
in neurology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Fernando Camargo,
assistant professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University
and Children’s
Hospital.
Theodore Cohen,
assistant professor of epidemiology in the Harvard School of Public Health and
assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and
Women’s Hospital.
Gabriel
Kreiman, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and
Children’s Hospital.
Jorge
Rodrigo Mora, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and
Massachusetts General Hospital.
Sunitha
Nagrath, instructor in surgery at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts
General Hospital.
John
Pezaris, instructor in surgery at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts
General Hospital.
Patrick
Purdon, instructor in anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and
Massachusetts General Hospital.
John
Rinn, assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Broad
Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Pardis
Sabeti, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.
Magali Saint-Geniez,
instructor in ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Schepens
Eye Research Institute.
