CCMB NEWS:  AWARD OF 2006 PILOT PROJECT GRANTS

CCMB's call for proposals May 1 elicited 35 very good applications from pairs of investigators, one in the computational/mathematical/statistical domain and the other in the biological/chemical/clinical domain.  Each proposal received a full peer review, followed by ranking and recommendations from the Review Committee, and finally CCMB Executive Committee decisions on the recommendations.  Reviewers and committee members who were themselves applicants were excluded, of course, from reviews of their own proposals and from final decisions. The originally announced fund of $400,000 was enhanced to $713,000 by internal transfers within the CCMB budget and a supplement from the EBS-Computational Biology Initiative.   

In all, a diverse set of nine projects plus a working group on type 1 diabetes were funded, as listed below.  We expect funded grants from NIH and other agencies as deliverables from this program.  The pilot projects and working groups are intended to accelerate the development of interdisciplinary research by CCMB faculty.  Those for which funding was not available may be enhanced, as well, improved by the peer review feedback.  We are grateful to the applicants and the reviewers who participated.

Center for Computational Medicine and Biology
Fall, 2006 Pilot Grant Competition
Supplemented by EBS Computational Biology Initiative
November 3, 2006

Pilot Grant Recipients

Victoria Booth, Mathematics; Anesthesiology
Michal Zochowski, Biophysics      
Gina Poe, Anesthesiology; Molecular and Integrative Physiology
Geoffrey Murphy, Molecular and Integrative Physiology; MBNI
Project:  Cellular pathologies and their effect on brain dynamics in temporal lobe epilepsy
Award: $67,443

Deborah Gumucio, Center for Organogenesis; Cell and Developmental Biology       
Matthias Kretzler, Internal Medicine
Project: Identification and functional analysis of the hedgehog-regulated signals that mediate intestinal villus formation
Award: $70,000

Trachette Jackson, Mathematics
Rina Ashkenazi, Mathematics       
Gabriela Dontu, Internal Medicine
Project: Combining mathematical and experimental methods to study notch signaling in breast cancer- towards prediction of treatment regimen using notch inhibitors
Award: $79,479

Peter Woolf, Chemical Engineering
Venkat Keshamouni, Internal Medicine
Project: MicroRNA regulation of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in lung cancer
Award: $80,000

Zhaohui Qin, Biostatistics
Nicholas Bergman, Bioinformatics; Microbiology and Immunology       
Project: Joint modeling of OMICS data to prioritize drug target genes in B. anthracis
Award: $68,408

Phillip Andrews, Biological Chemistry
George Michailidis, Statistics       
John Williams, Molecular and Integrative Physiology; Internal Medicine           
Project: Proteomic analysis of the endoplasmic reticulum in pancreas
Award: $77,109

John Younger, Emergency Medicine
Michael Solomon, Chemical Engineering 
Trachette Jackson, Mathematics
Project: Mechanical Characterization and Modeling of Septic Emboli
Award: $70,424

Jianzhi Zhang, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Anuj Kumar, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Project: Understanding duplicate gene evolution by computational and experimental functional genomics
Award: $80,000

Debashis Ghosh, Biostatistics      
Sally Camper, Human Genetics; Internal Medicine          
Project: Mechanisms underlying hypopituitarism in mice: identification of transcription factor target genes
Award: $70,000

Working Group Funding Recipients

Patrick Nelson, Mathematics        
Massimo Pietropaolo, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases  
Project: Type 1 Diabetes: modeling immunoregulation and beta cell function
Award: $50,000

Total Funding 2006: $712,863