Skip to contents
In This Issue:
Competition was in the air at BWH on June 21 as finalists presented their research ideas to a panel of judges comprised of junior and senior faculty members and invited guests. As part of last November’s Research Day, the BWH Biomedical Research Institute (BRI) invited researchers to submit research project ideas that aligned with Research Day themes in hopes of being awarded one of four $50,000 seed grants to kick-start their project.
After a rigorous review process, a peer review committee whittled down 62 submissions to seven finalists. Each had six minutes to pitch his or her project to a room of judges, who then voted via real-time text messaging. The four projects below were awarded seed grants.
“The Research Day-themed seed grants generated a great response from the BRI community, with broad representation across the Research Day themes,” said Jacqueline Slavik, PhD, BRI executive director. “The final step, which was the in-person pitch session, was very exciting to witness.
One of the goals of the BRI is to find ways to fund more of these sorts of projects in the future.”
Seed grant awardees:
• Vagus Nerve Stimulation: Integration of Behavior and Cardiac Modulation, Arielle Stanford, MD, Department of Psychiatry
• A Clinical Phenotype Innovation Pilot, Calum MacRae, MD, PhD, Cardiovascular Division, Department of Medicine
• Biomarkers for Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, Mark Johnson, MD, and Bruce Kristal, PhD, Department of Neurosurgery
• Partners Longitudinal Study of the Microbiome in Disease, Jessica Savage, MD, MHS, and Duane Wesemann, PhD, Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy, Department of Medicine