David Keener, a PhD candidate in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Program, has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute for Neurological Diseases and Stroke. The grant will help fund Keener’s project on Rett syndrome, a genetic neurodevelopmental disease generally diagnosed in girls 6 to 18 months old that eventually…
Three UMass Chan Medical School researchers are receiving awards from the American Macular Degeneration Foundation as part of the nonprofit’s $1.1 million investment into studies aimed at disease prevention, risk reduction, new treatments and cures for age-related macular degeneration. Claudio Punzo, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology & visual sciences; Johanna Seddon, MD, ScM, professor of ophthalmology & visual sciences; and…
Imagine being able to watch the smallest units of life—like cells and molecules—working together in real time. Seeing and measuring biological processes, a field called dynamic imaging, can help scientists unlock tremendous knowledge for treating diseases, from cancer to Alzheimer’s. In an effort to take biological imaging to the next level, two Boston University College of Engineering researchers are spearheading…
Imagine a future where we can build replacement organs as easily as tech companies churn out new phones. Or where a heart attack can be cured with a simple patch. Or where liver failure can be reversed with a supercharged tissue implant. They might sound like ideas pulled straight from a sci-fi movie, but this future is closer than you…
Today, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced Wyss Core Faculty member David Walt as the recipient of its 2023 Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize. Walt is honored for the development of microwell arrays that greatly advanced the fields of genomics and proteomics. Awarded biennially, the Russ Prize recognizes an outstanding bioengineering achievement in widespread use that improves the human…
Congratulations to Dan Barouch, MD, PhD, one of this year’s recipients of the King Faisal Prize! Barouch, a founding member and steering committee member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, was jointly awarded the 2023 King Faisal Prize for Medicine with vaccinologist Sarah Gilbert, PhD, of the University of Oxford. The King Faisal Prize was established in…
The “Immuno-engineering to Improve Immunotherapy” (i3) Center at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering selected Elizabeth Carstens, M.D., and Yang (Claire) Zeng, M.D., Ph.D. as the 2022 recipients of its annual grant award. The newly formed research team is exploring DNA origami as a vehicle for the targeted delivery of messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules encoding chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to T cells…
Anastasia Khvorova, PhD, the Remondi Family Chair in Biomedical Research, professor of RNA therapeutics, and a leader in transformative discoveries in fundamental chemical biology, was named a 2022 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. The National Academy of Inventors Fellows Selection Committee selected Dr. Khvorova for her “ . . . highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating…
William Hahn, MD, PhD, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and William Rosenberg professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the organization announced today. The NAI Fellows Program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a…
The last time BU named a scholar to its Arthur G. B. Metcalf Chair, Bill Clinton was president. The last person appointed Wang Professor was during the first year of the presidency of Clinton’s predecessor, George H. W. Bush (Hon.’89). The faculty holding those seats retired four (Metcalf) and three (Wang) years ago, and now both chairs have new occupants.