Brain Science Institute's Newest Grant Recipients Stand Out For Breadth, Innovation

Hopkins' Brain Science Institute has just announced its second cycle of research grants, awards totaling $6.4 million over a two-year period. The16 grants extend to research teams throughout the university's schools and campuses, advancing the BSI goal to solve fundamental questions of brain development and function and translate those findings into therapy.

The proposals reflect the BSI's aim to spark broader collaborations and unusual creativity in neuroscience research across Hopkins. Three-quarters of the faculty who applied are in the School of Medicine, from 11 departments, and from the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences and the Institute for Cellular Engineering (ICE). The remaining quarter include faculty from Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab, the university's schools of Engineering, Public Health, Education, Arts and Sciences, and the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute as well as the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Among the successful grantees in the Perception and Cognition area are investigators whose proposals involve novel neuroimaging. Other projects include a broad-based effort in systems physiology-led by the Mind Brain Institute's Edward Connor-to identify common themes in handling visual, auditory and somatosensory information. Hongjun Song and his ICE colleagues sparked reviewers' enthusiasm: Song's team hopes to differentiate human induced pluripotent stem cells from skin into desired neuronal types for research. Psychiatry's Akira Sawa will assess altered oxidative lymphocyte metabolism in schizophrenia patients. And Jef Boeke has developed a retrotransposon-based tiling chip to hunt for genetic changes in that disease.

For a complete list of grantees, check the BSI web site at: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.
org/brainscience

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