The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced on August 27 the first winners of its Genomic Innovator Award for early-career researchers.
The program is set to award approximately $500,000 annually over a project period of five years, the NIH said. The NHGRI created the award program last year as a means of supporting early-career investigators in genome biology, genomic medicine, technology development, and societal implications of genomic advances.
The program is open to those with new investigator status -- that is, scientists who have not received substantial independent NIH funding -- who also have shown potential to make important contributions to the field of genomics. In contrast with most NIH grants, the Genomic Innovator Award is intended to be more people-focused, providing sustained funding to promising investigators.
The following principal investigators have received the 2019 Genomic Innovator Award:
- Channabasavaiah Gurumurthy, PhD, from the University of Nebraska Medical Center
- Eric Gamazon, PhD, from Vanderbilt University Medical Center
- Dr. Jason Vassy from Harvard Medical School
- Luca Pinello, PhD, from Massachusetts General Hospital
- Dr. Stacy Gray from City of Hope in Duarte, CA
- Timothy O'Connor, PhD, from the University of Maryland, Baltimore
