Nine Harvard affiliates given NIH grants to pursue research

Nine Harvard faculty members were awarded prestigious grants from the National Institutes of Health Monday.

The Pioneer and New Innovator grants, which fund $138 million in research for the 47 laureates, are a part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research initiative created in 2004 to support unconventional and innovative projects.

“It is nice that they have an award that lets people do unconventional things,” said Pioneer recipient Aravinthan D.T. Samuel, a professor in the physics department whose lab is developing new microscopes to record neural activity in larvae. “One nice thing about the Pioneer award is that it works at the interfaces of the disciplines between chemistry, physics, biology.”

Five of the Pioneer’s 16 winners were Harvard faculty members. The awardees, predominantly established researchers, will receive $2.5 million over the next five years.

Samuel said it was an honor, particularly in light of the “extraordinary group” of winners.

“This is an incredibly exciting program that really does encourage scientists to think about if they really could work on anything, what they might do,” said National Institute of General Medical Sciences Director Jeremy M. Berg. “It is so exciting to give the scientists the freedom to work on what they are most excited about.”

In contrast, the New Innovator grant targets young scientists who have received their doctoral degrees in the past 10 years. Four of the 31 in this category, who will receive $1.5 million over five years, are part of the Harvard faculty.

“It’s really an incredible honor...and a wonderful thing that the NIH is doing to support young people,” said Amy J. Wagers, who works with stem cells at the Harvard-affiliated Joslin Diabetes Center. “It’s a tough time in the funding of biological sciences and particularly difficult for those of us trying to get careers off the ground. This is really transformative in new labs like mine.”

William M. Shih of the Dana-Farber Cancer Research Institute said the grant will allow him to take the next step in trying to create a nanotechnology tool to help come up with a precise picture of membrane proteins.

“It’s a great honor, its prestigious,” he said.

The Pioneer and New Innovator programs had 450 and 600 applicants, respectively. Applications were considered by three reviewers, and the top 25 candidates for the Pioneer awards came to NIH for interviews. Final decisions for both programs were made by the NIH advisory committee and NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni.

“The program is used to identify unusually creative scientists who are interested in attacking problems that have a higher potential impact if they succeed but may be somewhat riskier,” Berg said. “We are trying to identify people early in their careers who have particularly innovative ideas.”

The other Harvard recipients of the awards are Charles M. Lieber, Tom Maniatis, Hongkun Park, Ann Hochschild, Sean M. Wu, and Samara Reck-Peterson.