Awards + Announcements

This year’s Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science will be awarded to Whitehead Institute director Ruth Lehmann. It recognizes women scientists with a stellar record of research accomplishments who also have made significant contributions to mentoring other women in science.

Whitehead Institute establishes Whitehead Initiative on Biology, Health, and Climate Change

The new Whitehead Initiative on Biology, Health, and Climate Change (WIBHC) is designed both to explore climate change’s biological impacts and spark biotechnology interventions to counter its detrimental effects. Philanthropic funders have already stepped up to help underwrite two novel WIBHC research projects.

Whitehead Institute has three contenders in the starting round of STAT Madness 2022, STAT’s March Madness-style competition of the year’s top biomedical research discoveries. 

Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann has been awarded the 2022 Gruber Genetics Prize – one of the most prestigious recognitions in the field of genetics – along with fellow developmental biologists James Priess of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Geraldine Seydoux of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

$3 Million grant will underwrite bioengineering of orphan crops as a method for enhancing global food security
 

Whitehead Institute Member Pulin Li has been selected by The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group to be an Allen Distinguished Investigator. The Allen Distinguished Investigator program backs creative, early-stage research projects in biology and medical research that would not otherwise be supported by traditional research funding programs. Each Allen Distinguished Investigator award provides three years of research funding.

Kipp Weiskopf—who is identifying ways to prompt macrophages to fight cancer—has been named a Valhalla Fellow.

Whitehead Institute Member Pulin Li has received a New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The prestigious award supports unusually innovative research from early career investigators. It is part of an NIH initiative supporting exceptionally high-impact studies addressing major research opportunities or gaps.

Whitehead Institute Member Sebastian Lourido has been selected as a recipient of a 2021 Odyssey Award from the Smith Family Foundation. The Award — which was created to fuel creativity and innovation in junior investigators in the basic sciences — supports high impact ideas with the potential to generate breakthroughs and drive new directions in biomedical research.