An interdisciplinary team of Caltech researchers has received an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program. The grant is part of the NIH Common Fund, which supports high-impact programs across NIH institutes and centers. The Transformative Research Award, established in 2009, promotes cross-cutting, interdisciplinary approaches and is open to individuals and teams of investigators who propose research that could potentially create or challenge existing paradigms.
Co-principal investigators on the award are Michael Elowitz, the Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson Professor of Biology and Bioengineering and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; Lior Pachter, Bren Professor of Computational Biology and Computing and Mathematical Sciences; and Carlos Lois, research professor of biology; and Rong Lu of USC. Elowitz, Pachter, and Lois are affiliated faculty members with the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech.