Recipients of NIH Director's Pioneer Award Named

The first nine recipients of the NIH Director's Pioneer Award were announced last week. The award, part of the NIH Roadmap for Biomedical Research, provides $500,000 a year for five years to each recipient and is designed to encourage talented individuals to pursue high-risk, potentially high-impact medical research (C&EN, March 15, page 33). The awardees are Laurence F. Abbott, professor of biology at Brandeis University; George Daley, associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School; Homme Hellinga, professor of biochemistry at Duke University Medical Center; Joseph McCune, senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Virology & Immunology; Steven McKnight, Sam G. Winstead & F. Andrew Bell Distinguished Chair in Biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Chad A. Mirkin, George B. Rathman Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University; Rob Phillips, professor of engineering and applied physics at California Institute of Technology; Stephen R. Quake, professor of bioengineering at Stanford University; and Sunney Xie, professor of chemistry at Harvard University.