The 2024-2025 application cycle for the Paul T. Englund Emerging Scholar awards is now open to postdoctoral fellows and early assistant professors. (For applicants within Johns Hopkins, postdoctoral fellows are eligible.) Learn more about the awards and previous recipients. Apply by Nov. 13.

Molecular Biology and Genetics Professor Jeremy Nathans is one of two winners of the World Laureates Association Prize (WLA Prize) for his discoveries of the genes, regulation and plasticity underlying human color vision and revealing disease mechanisms leading to blindness. 

Congratulations to scientist Takanari Inoue, who received the 2024 Carolyn Cohen Innovation Award from the Biophysical Society, a professional organization for biophysicists. Inoue received the award for his work developing powerful molecular tools by bridging the fields of cell biology, chemical and synthetic biology and biophysics.

Four teams of scientists at Johns Hopkins have received collaborative pair awards from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. All awardees are focusing on solving important scientific questions and challenges in the brain. 

Neuroscientist Dwight Bergles and his former postdoc, Amit Agarwal, contributed to findings published in Nature that won this year’s BIAL Award in Biomedicine. The research shows that brain tumor cells link up with neurons, forming neural circuits and fueling cancer growth.

Two basic science faculty members were recently honored with professorships:

Deborah Andrew was installed as the Bayard Halsted Professor in the Department of Cell Biology. 

Cynthia Wolberger received the Brown Advisory Colleagues Professorship in Scientific Innovation. 

Developmental biologist Deborah Andrew won this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Developmental Biology and the George W. Beadle Award from the Genetics Society of America for contributions to student education, faculty development and service to the Drosophila research community. Andrew studies how “tube” organs (salivary glands, trachea) form in a fruit fly, which may give insights to human development and disease. 

Congratulations to Johns Hopkins University student Xiomara McDonald and cell biologist Shigeki Watanabe, who are among five teams participating in the McKnight Pecot Fellows award program. In Watanabe's lab, Xiomara will be using electron microscopy to study how Parkinson's disease mutations affect signals passing between neurons.

Among new grants announced by the European Research Council, scientist Rachel Green, director of the department of molecular biology and genetics, will be working with scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory & the Technical University of Berlin to understand the roles of ribosomes in protein synthesis & signaling. Green and colleagues Jan Kosinski, Julia Mahamid & Juri Rappsilber will create an in-cell map of ribosomes & new methods for next-generation, in-cell structural bio.