12 Boston scientists win NIH Pioneer, New Innovator awards

Boston-area research institutions tied with California universities to each win a dozen federal grants designed to foster innovative research at a time of tight funding.

Twelve of 47 winners announced today by the National Institutes of Health are scientists working at Harvard, MIT, and Harvard-affiliated hospitals in Boston. California also had 12 winners from Stanford, the University of California, and Cal Tech. Last year 16 of 41 winners were from Greater Boston and seven were from California.

This is the second year that NIH, the nation's biggest funder of biomedical research, has made grants through the New Innovator Award program. Only early career investigators who have not yet won NIH grants are eligible. Younger scientists have been waiting longer to win their first grants, from an average age of mid-30s about 10 years ago to their 40s in recent years. Four of this year's 31 grants will support Boston scientists, who will receive $1.5 million over five years.

Half of the 16 prestigious Pioneer Award winners come from Harvard or MIT. It is the fifth year of the program, which is open to scientists at any stage of their career. Its goal is to spur innovation at a time when the federal budget for research has been flat after doubling from 1998 through 2003. Pioneer grants provide $2.5 million over five years.

Here are the Massachusetts Pioneer Award recipients and the NIH descriptions of their work:

Ann Hochschild, Harvard Medical School professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, who will use bacterial systems to study infectious particles called prions.

Charles M. Lieber, Harvard University professor of chemistry, who will develop interfaces between nanoelectronic devices and cells to create new biomaterials and tools for studying the brain.

Tom Maniatis, Harvard University professor of molecular and cellular biology, who will use stem cells to examine the mechanisms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease of motor neurons.

Hongkun Park, Harvard University professor of chemistry and of physics, who will develop new nano- and microelectronic tools that enable the meticulous study of the design principles of the brain.

Aviv Regev, MIT and Broad Institute assistant professor of biology, who will examine how the regulatory networks that control cell function change over time in development, disease, and evolution.

Aravinthan D.T. Samuel, Harvard University associate professor of physics, who will develop new biophysical and imaging techniques to link behavioral responses with neuronal activity.

Alice Y. Ting, MIT associate professor of chemistry, who will develop new technologies to image and study proteins in living cells.

Alexander van Oudenaarden, MIT professor of physics, who will explore the role of random variables in gene expression during cellular development and specialization.

Here are the Massachusetts New Innovator Award recipients:

Samara Reck-Peterson, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of cell biology, who will couple genetics with biophysics to discover biomedically important molecules that control how molecular motors deliver diverse cargo to the right place at the right time within cells.

Dr. Sean M. Wu, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School assistant professor of medicine, who will employ mechanisms of embryonic development to engineer functional tissues for organ regeneration using pluripotent stem cells from different species.

William M. Shih, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute assistant professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology, who will develop tools for atomic-resolution imaging of membrane proteins to enable structure-based drug design.

Amy J. Wagers, Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard University assistant professor of stem cell and regenerative biology, who will study the mechanisms by which aging impairs blood cell function and develop strategies to prevent or reverse these age-acquired defects.