Dear Members of the HMS Community:
We are pleased to announce the inaugural recipients of the Blavatnik Institute Early-Career Investigator Awards (BIECIA). These distinguished awards — made possible through the extraordinary generosity of the Blavatnik Family Foundation — exemplify our shared mission to advance health worldwide through pioneering research, new therapies, and innovative tools to diagnose, prevent, and treat disease.
The BIECIA program was established as part of the historic gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation to support exceptional early-career faculty. In association with the Blavatnik Therapeutics Challenge Awards, which has supported 20 innovative research projects since 2020, the BIECIA program reflects our commitment to transforming translational research within the Harvard Medical School community.
Please join us in congratulating the following investigators:
2025 Blavatnik Institute Early Career Investigator Awardees
Elucidating the interplay of Warburg metabolism, membrane potential, and signaling in cancer
Markus Basan
Elucidating the role of ciliary transport in polycystic kidney disease pathogenesis
Alan Brown
Discovery and manipulation of gut bacterial chemistry for the betterment of human health
Sloan Devlin
The rulebook of molecular recognition: Lessons from chemosensory receptors
Josefina del Marmol
Mechanisms of transcription, replication, and DNA repair
Lucas Farnung
Immunological control of lung homeostasis and repair
Ruth Franklin
Messengers of mayhem: Unveiling the impact of chimeric mRNA in inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease
Ruaidhri Jackson
Dissecting circuit motifs of innate and adaptive behaviors
Wei-Chung Lee
Dissecting specialized secretory biosynthetic mechanisms
Susan Shao
Chemical rescue of somatic mutations in cancer
Qinheng Zheng
Sincerely,
George Q. Daley
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
Harvard University