Biology professors awarded $8M by NIH

Saeed Tavazoie, Zemer Gitai, Coleen Murphy and Ileana Cristea have been recognized by the NIH for “work deemed ‘high impact’ by the federal medical research agency,” according to a University statement.

Molecular biology department chair Lynn Enquist said he was very proud of the professors’ achievements.

“It’s really an amazing experience as chair to have your faculty recognized with such competitive awards,” he said. “They are the future of the department, and we’re so proud of them.”

Gitai and Murphy are two of 31 scientists receiving the 2008 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, given “to support exceptionally creative new investigators who propose highly innovative projects,” according to the NIH website.

Gitai focuses his research on how cells become organized to improve antibiotics.

“I want to understand how bacteria cells grow and divide and the molecular basis of that,” Gitai said. “I want to build on that fundamental knowledge to come up with strategies to prevent bacteria from harming humans.”

Murphy, on the other hand, studies reproductive aging.

Women who pursue higher education are delaying childbirth, she said, explaining that “older women have difficulty getting pregnant, or there are birth defects.”

Tavazoie is one of 16 recipients of this year’s NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. According to the University statement, he will use his funding to explore “how networks of cells allow microbes to carry our cognitive behavior.”

The fourth award recipient, Cristea, is one of only three recipients of the new Avant-Garde Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), an NIH institute.

Cristea’s research focuses on virus-host interactions for Sindbis fever using a methodology she developed that “allows tracking of protein localization and elucidation of interacting partners” and can be applied to HIV as well, according to an NIDA statement issued this month.

Each of these awards includes grant money for future research. Gitai and Murphy will each receive $1.5 million over five years, and Tavazoie and Cristea will each receive $2.5 million over five years.

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Murphy said that the grant will go a long way toward helping her research.

“I have good people who have good ideas, but not enough man power to carry out the large experiments we have proposed,” she said in an e-mail. “The chemicals and equipment are expensive, but with a combination of people and the New Innovator funding, it will make it possible to do these experiments.”

She added that the grant will allow her lab to “carry out [its] work without having to worry about writing more grants, so we can focus just on the work itself.”

Many grants require detailed research proposals, but the NIH awards are unique, Gitai explained, because the NIH gives researchers freedom to explore.

“They support the general idea and let us use the money to pursue the idea,” he explained. “It gives us more flexibility.”