2020 NIH Director’s Early Independence Awards Announced

By The ASCO Post Staff
October 25, 2020

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Early Independence Award, established in 2010, is part of the High-Risk, High-Reward Research program managed by the Common Fund. The award provides an opportunity for exceptional junior scientists to skip the traditional postdoc and start an independent research career at a supportive institution directly following the completion of their graduate degree or clinical training. The awards provide $250,000 in direct costs per year for up to 5 years. Based on their project proposals, the following individuals applied for and received the 2020 awards:

• Adam L. Bailey, MD, PhD, University of Utah: “Determinants of Yellow Fever Pathogenesis in Humans”
• Sally L. Baxter, MD, MSc, University of California San Diego: “Multimodal Health Information Technology Innovations for Precision Management of Glaucoma”
• Alexander Bick, MD, PhD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center: “Targeting Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential Using Human Genetics”
• Hyunghoon (Hoon) Cho, PhD, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard: “Computational Methods for Enhancing Privacy in Biomedical Data Sharing”
• Moisés Expósito-Alonso, PhD, Carnegie Institution for Science and Stanford University: “Predicting and Controlling Polygenic Health Traits Using Probabilistic Models and Evolution-Inspired Gene Editing”
• Jacob A. George, PhD, University of Utah: “Patient-Centered Rehabilitation and Dexterous Assistive Devices for Stroke Patients Using Bionic Exoskeletons Controlled by Noninvasive Electromyography”
• Sarah J. Hill, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School: “Dissecting the Interaction Between DNA Damage Repair Defects and the Tumor Microenvironment”
• Chi-Min Ho (Mimi), PhD, Columbia University: “Molecular Basis of Effector Protein Export in the Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum”
• Anna S. Nam, MD, Weill Cornell Medicine, “Defining Malignant Hematopoiesis Via Single-Cell Multiomics”
• Ijeoma Opara, PhD, MSW, MPH, Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare: “Understanding the Role of Neighborhoods on Urban Youths Substance Use and Mental Health: A Community-Based Substance Abuse Prevention Project”
• Andrew B. Stergachis, MD, PhD, University of Washington: “Investigating the Contribution of Noncoding Genetic Variation to Rare Disorders”
• Jotham Suez, MSc, PhD, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health: “The Role of Non-Nutritive Sweeteners-Microbiome Interactions in the Pathogenesis of Metabolic Syndrome”
• Waring “Buck” Trible, PhD, Harvard University: “The Molecular Basis of Caste Development and Evolution in Ants.”

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