Faculty Grants & Awards

2009 Awards

• Michael Bevan, associate professor, was awarded a stimulus grant from the National Science Foundation on “Integrated Self & Directed Assembly of Multi-Component Colloidal Structures”.
• Sharon Gerecht, assistant professor, was awarded the 2009 North America Vascular Biology Organization Junior Investigator Award.
• David Gracias, associate professor, was awarded an NSF grant to develop strategies to enable the manufacture of three dimensional nanostructures and a collaborative grant with the Army Research Laboratory on developing microscale devices with sensor modules.
•  Jeffrey Gray, associate professor, was awarded a renewal of an NIH grant in collaboration with the University of North Carolina, the University of Washington, and the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center to develop the Rosetta biomolecular modeling software.  In September, Gray's lab released PyRosetta 1.0, an interactive biomolecular modeling platform.
  (www.pyrosetta.org) and published a book of PyRosetta educational modules.
• Justin Hanes, professor, was awarded with the Young Investigator Award by The Controlled Release Society as well as was the keynote lecturer on “Advancing Health through Innovations in Drug Delivery” at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientist Conference on Evolving Science and Technology in Physical Pharmacy and Biopharmaceutics.  He has also been awarded with NIH grants on “New Approaches to Overcome the Sputum Barrier to Gene Delivery” as well as “Mucus Penetrating Nanoparticles for Early Stage Cervical Cancer”.
• Marc Ostermeier, associate professor, was awarded with three new grants: a $1.3 million  R01 grant from NIH to create protein switches that activate prodrugs in cancer cells and serve as biosensors for biological molecules; a $650,000 grant from NSF to use NMR, computational modeling, and mutagenesis approaches to develop a structural model of an engineered switch to provide insight into its allosteric mechanism; and a $1.5 million grant as co-investigator with Konstantopoulos from DTRA to develop a fundamental understanding of Biomolecular recognition and apply it to the development of a synthetic binding platform.
• Denis Wirtz, professor, has been selected as Editor and Board Member of “Physical Biology”; Editor of “Comprehensive Biophysics”, Section on Cell Biophysics in the Cell Press.  As well as a 2009 Schwarz Lecturer; Editor-in-Chief of “Cell Health and the Cytoskeleton”; and a Member of the National Cancer Institute Advisory Panel on Physics of Cancer.

2008 Awards

• NIH Director's New Innovator Award Goes to David Gracias (expand)
  NIH Director's New Innovator Award Goes to David Gracias
  
  On September 22, 2008 the National Institutes of Health named David Gracias the recipient of a 2008 NIH Director's New Innovator Award. The award, given in recognition of David’s pioneering work in microscale and nanoscale tools and devices for medicine, also serves as confirmation of his role as an exceptionally innovative engineer and acknowledges the great potential his research holds. This year, only 31 individuals were selected for the honor. Launched in 2007, the New Innovator Award is a key component of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research and is intended to stimulate and sustain innovation. More information about the award can be found here. (collapse)
• Professor Denis Wirtz awarded an NIH/NIGMS-RO1 grant for $1.42 million (expand)
  Professor Denis Wirtz awarded an NIH/NIGMS-RO1 grant
  Professor Denis Wirtz and his colleague Professor Didier Hodzic at Washington University in St. Louis were awarded a $1.42 million dollar research grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the structural role and functions of the connections between the nucleus and the cytoskeleton in normal cells and cells derived from models of human diseases, including progeria and muscular dystrophy. (collapse)
• Prof. Denis Wirtz Awarded T-32 National Cancer Institute Training Grant for $1.6 million (expand)
  Prof. Denis Wirtz Awarded T-32 National Cancer Institute Training Grant for $1.6 million
  Professor Denis Wirtz has been awarded a $1.6 million T-32 National Cancer Institute training grant to recruit two outstanding postdoctoral trainees every year with MD and/or PhD degrees and diverse backgrounds in either biochemistry, physics, molecular/cellular/cancer biology, or an engineering/physics discipline. Postdoctoral fellows will conduct research in nanotechnology for cancer medicine. Please check the Website of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology in the coming weeks for more details on this exciting opportunity and information about how to apply. (collapse)
• Prof. Konstantopoulos awarded NIH-RO1 grant (June 2008) (expand)
  Prof. Konstantopoulos awarded NIH-RO1 grant
  
  Prof. Konstantopoulos was awarded a research grant in the amount of approximately 1.6 million dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIAMS) to delineate shear-induced signaling networks in mammalian cells. (collapse)
• Sharon Gerecht receives Maryland Outstanding Young Engineer Award (May 2008) (expand)
  Sharon Gerecht receives Maryland Outstanding Young Engineer Award
  Gerecht is being recognized for her research in bioengineering stem cell systems for specific therapeutic applications. The differentiation and function of stem cells are greatly influenced by their microenvironment and Gerecht exploits modern microengineering techniques to alter these microenvironments to engineer stem cells that can be used to perform specific functions or tasks. The award is sponsored by the Maryland Academy of Sciences and conferred by the Maryland Science Center in the hopes of encouraging the important work of young scientists and engineers in the state of Maryland, and to increase public awareness of their accomplishments. It is given in recognition of the extraordinary contributions of Maryland engineers under the age of 35. (collapse)
• Professor Gracias awarded 2008 DuPont Young Professor Award (May 2008) (expand)
  Professor Gracias awarded 2008 DuPont Young Professor Award
  Gracias was selected as one of twelve recipients of the 2008 DuPont Young Professor Award. This 40 year old award at DuPont is meant to support young promising untenured faculty. Gracias will receive $75,000 over three years as a part of the DuPont award to support his group’s research on the understanding of electronic conduction at the interfaces of organic semiconductors and dielectrics within functional organic electronic devices such as organic field effect transistors. In the past few years Gracias has utilized non-linear optical spectroscopy to study molecular changes in organic transistors in-situ during transistor operation. The research theme in the Gracias group focuses on the science of miniaturization with applications in electronics and medicine and is also funded by the NSF, NIH, DOD, Beckman and Dreyfus Foundations. (collapse)
• Professor Denis Wirtz’s lab discovers how proteins control the process when bacteria multiply (April 2008) (Link to full article...)
• Joelle Frechette wins NSF Career Award (March 2008) (expand)
  Joelle Frechette wins NSF Career Award
  Congratulations to Assistant Professor Joelle Frechette who received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award-the foundation's most prestigious award for new faculty members. Joelle’s CAREER program in materials design and surface engineering will support her research to harness interfacial phenomena and achieve external, reversible, and local control of wetting and adhesion properties between surfaces. Her award also supports the development of workshops created in conjunction with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) for visually impaired students. (collapse)

2007 Awards

• Mike Betenbaugh and team awarded National Science Foundation EFRI grant (November 2007) (expand)
  Mike Betenbaugh and team awarded National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innnovation (EFRI) grant
  Mike Betenbaugh heads a team of scientists on a National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation award for a project entitled "An integrated computational and experimental model for biochemical and electrical interactions in ion channels and the impact of sialic acid on neuronal function". Dilip Asthagiri (co-PI) from Chemical Engineering and Allan Gottschalk (co-PI, Johns Hopkins Medical Institute) who lead the molecular scale to neuron scale modeling effort. Esperanze Recio-Pinto (co-PI, NYU), Karen Palter (co-PI, Temple University), and Mike Betenbaugh (PI) will lead the experimental effort starting from the level of the single ion-channels leading up to the functioning organism. This 2 million dollar award will sustain this effort for about four years. (link to full article) (collapse)
• Justin Hanes awarded an NSF grant to create a New Undergraduate Engineering Minor in Nanotechnology Risk Assessment and Public Policy (October 2007) (expand)
  Justin Hanes awarded an NSF grant to create a New Undergraduate Engineering Minor in Nanotechnology Risk Assessment and Public Policy (October 2007)
  This grant seeks funding to develop a new undergraduate engineering minor at Johns Hopkins, housed in the Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT), and involving: the Whiting School of Engineering, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Risk Sciences & Public Policy Institute, the Berman Institute for Bioethics, The Center for Law and the Public’s Health, and the Center for Educational Outreach. co-PIs are Jonathan Links (Environmental Health Sciences) and Edward Bouwer (Geography and Environmental Engineering). (collapse)
• David Gracias awarded the 2007 Maryland Young Engineer of the Year Award (May 2007)