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Biological Chemistry

NIH Announces 2006 Pioneer Award Recipients

Five-year, $2.5 million grants support highly innovative research

October 2, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 40

On Sept. 19, Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, named 13 recipients of the 2006 NIH Director's Pioneer Award. Now in its third year, this award program supports exceptionally creative scientists who take highly innovative approaches to major challenges in biomedical research. The 2006 Pioneer Award recipients are a "group of forward-thinking scientists whose work could transform medical research," Zerhouni said. "The awards will give them the intellectual freedom to pursue exciting new research directions."

Each of the 2006 awardees will receive $2.5 million in direct costs over five years.

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Boahen
Boahen

Kwabena A. Boahen, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, uses silicon-integrated circuits to emulate the way neurons compute. His research links the seemingly disparate fields of electronics and computer science with neurobiology and medicine. His "neuromorphic" chips, which include a silicon retina that someday could be used to give sight to the blind, were the subject of a Scientific American cover story in May 2005. Boahen will use his award to develop Neurogrid, a specialized hardware platform that will enable the inner workings of the brain's cortex to be simulated in detail.

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Chakraborty
Chakraborty

Earlier in his career, Arup K. Chakraborty, Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry & Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researched the development and application of quantum and statistical mechanical approaches to the study of polymers and catalysts. Since 2000, his research has been focused on immunology. Chakraborty has demonstrated that theoretical methods rooted in physics and engineering can complement biological experiments to understand the mechanism of how T lymphocytes communicate with other cells and detect the presence of minute amounts of antigen. With his award, he will use related approaches to better understand the principles that govern the emergence of autoimmune diseases.

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Gierasch
Gierasch

Lila M. Gierasch, Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology & Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, focuses on protein folding and protein-peptide interactions. She will use her award to develop new ways to observe protein folding in vivo. This work aims to provide fundamental knowledge needed to understand diseases associated with protein misfolding, such as Alzheimer's and cystic fibrosis.

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Heald
Heald

Rebecca W. Heald, associate professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, has done groundbreaking research on the mechanisms of cell division, focusing on the mitotic spindle apparatus, which segregates duplicated chromosomes equally to the two daughter cells. She will use her award to study how cells determine the size of their component organelles, such as the spindle.

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Kirkegaard
Kirkegaard

Karla Kirkegaard, professor and chair of the department of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, has combined her interests in biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics to develop an approach to guide the selection of antiviral targets. Her goal is to suppress drug-resistant RNA genomes that are inevitably formed when error rates of RNA replication are high. She will use her award to identify dominant RNA genomes of the hepatitis C, polio, West Nile, and dengue viruses that could be targeted by drugs. She also aims to quantify the extent to which antiviral compounds targeted at the identified molecules suppress growth of drug-resistant variants.

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Kodadek
Kodadek

Thomas J. Kodadek, professor of internal medicine and molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, directs the Division of Translational Research and holds the Julie & Louis Beecherl Jr. Chair in Medical Science. His research focuses on the novel roles of the proteasome in gene expression and the development of new proteomic technologies. He will use his award to develop a chemistry-based approach to monitor and manipulate the immune system.

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Lee
Lee

Earlier in his career, Cheng Chi Lee, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, developed a novel technology for gene cloning. During the past decade, he has carried out innovative research on the identification of genes and their roles in regulating circadian rhythm in mammals. He recently identified an end product of metabolism that regulates torpor, a mammalian hypothermic behavior. Lee will use his award to investigate the biological processes of suspended animation that are analogous to severe hypothermia in nonhibernating mammals. This work could have many medical applications.

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Nudler
Nudler

Evgeny A. Nudler, professor of biochemistry at New York University School of Medicine, has done pioneering studies in various biological fields. His original work on transcription explained how RNA polymerase moves and recognizes pausing and termination signals in DNA and RNA. His studies on bacterial gene regulation led to the discovery of riboswitches (metabolite-sensing RNA) that control more than 3% of all bacterial genes. More recently, his group uncovered key regulators of the heat shock response in eukaryotic cells. Nudler has also made important contributions in the area of nitric oxide biochemistry in both animal and bacterial systems. He will use his award to develop conceptually new approaches to treat and prevent infectious diseases.

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Pielak
Pielak

Gary J. Pielak, a professor of chemistry and a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, also directs the UNC Macromolecular Interactions Facility and codirects the UNC Biomolecular NMR Facility. Pielak has done pioneering research in protein engineering, biological electron transfer, and protein thermodynamics. He will use his award to study proteins involved in neurodegenerative diseases at the atomic level inside living cells.

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Relman
Relman

David A. Relman, associate professor of microbiology and immunology and of medicine at Stanford University, is also chief of infectious diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. He has made significant contributions in the areas of microbial pathogen discovery and host-microbe interactions, including the identification of microbial causes for several important human diseases. He will use his award to characterize the microbial communities indigenous to humans and to understand the roles of these communities in health and disease.

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Segal
Segal

Rosalind A. Segal's laboratory focuses on the biology of brain tumors by probing the complex molecular machinery of the developing brain. She is associate professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and a member of the department of pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her research aims to understand the mechanisms critical for normal development of the nervous system and how deregulated proliferation, migration, and survival of cells can cause brain tumors and other neurological diseases. She will use her award for genetic and biochemical studies to identify the way complex sugars work to maintain neural stem cells in developing and adult brains.

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Sherley
Sherley

The research of James L. Sherley, associate professor in the Biological Engineering Division at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is well-known for its elucidation of mechanisms responsible for the specialized renewal properties of adult stem cells and the use of this knowledge to address major research problems limiting the development of adult stem cells for biomedicine. These problems include producing large numbers of adult stem cells for research and development. He will use his award to enable a new era of cellular medicine by developing routine methods for the production of several types of human adult stem cells with clinical potential.

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Xia
Xia

Younan Xia, professor of chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, is best known for the co-invention of soft lithography with Harvard University chemistry professor George M. Whitesides, as well as the development of many methods for the controlled synthesis of nanomaterials. He has also done pioneering research to understand and manipulate the evolution pathways from atoms to nanocrystals. He will use his award to develop new tools for studying complex biological systems by harnessing the power of nanomaterials.

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