Brian Capell, an assistant professor of dermatology, received a $100,000 grant from the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The award will build on Dr. Capell’s previous research, which shows that modulating the types of fatty acids in the diet may prevent the formation of skin and oral squamous cell carcinomas. Squamous cell carcinoma, which can occur in various places throughout the body, is the most common form of cancer worldwide.

Virginia Man-Yee Lee, the John H. Ware 3rd Professor in Alzheimer’s Research in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine, has been awarded the 2024 Outstanding Innovation in Neurodegenerative Disease Research Prize from the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, one of the largest independent funders of neurodegenerative research, in honor of her multiple decades of discoveries that have helped shape awareness and understanding of tau, a protein whose dysregulation is involved in multiple neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and progressive supranuclear palsy. The $400,000 prize will be presented during the Tau2024 Global Conference in March.

Aaron Richterman, an assistant professor of infectious diseases, and Harsha Thirumurthy, a professor of medical ethics and health policy, have been recognized by the Clinical Research (CR) Forum with one of the Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards for 2024. These awards honor groundbreaking achievements in clinical research from across the nation. The pair were honored for their work studying the effects of cash transfer programs on HIV-related outcomes in 42 countries from 1996 to 2019, which was published in Nature Human Behavior. The award recipients are selected by a CR Forum panel from clinical research studies published in peer-reviewed journals in 2023. They are based on the degree of innovation and novelty involved in the advancement of science; contribution to the understanding of human disease and/or physiology; and potential impact upon the diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of disease.

Marco Ruella, an assistant professor of hematology-oncology, has been awarded a Lupus Mechanisms and Targets Award of $600,000 from the Lupus Research Alliance for research to investigate molecular pathways or targets that will lead to new or improved therapies for individuals with systemic lupus erythematosus. His project will focus on using CAR-T cells to precisely target disease-causing B cells.

Andrea L. Schneider, an assistant professor of neurology and epidemiology, has been recognized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the Early Stage Investigator Lecture. The lecture recognizes early career prevention scientists who have already made outstanding research contributions to their respective fields and are poised to become future leaders in prevention research. Dr. Schneider’s research investigates the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI), conditions associated with it, and how to prevent the long-term aftereffects of TBI, like mortality, neurodegeneration, and dementia.