| Departments — Pulse | Spring 2009 |
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Linked In What do urban planning and neuroimaging have in common? What about smog and kidney disease, or cancer vaccines and polymers? These The first round of 62 pilot grant recipients, announced this spring, connects 218 investigators from 23 Harvard schools and academic health care centers with the shared goal of addressing important issues in human health. The urban planning and neuroimaging collaboration, for example, will unite researchers from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Massachusetts General Hospital. The Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital will join forces to study the effects of air pollution on kidney disease. And the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences will collaborate on the role of polymers in vaccinations. With these one-year, $50,000 grants, Harvard Catalyst aims to stimulate clinical and translational research in three ways. First, the grants enable researchers to jointly address important scientific questions. Second, they provide the means to generate the preliminary data needed to apply for long-term funding. Lastly, the grants help focus scientific resources and expertise on high-risk, high-impact areas of research. “The pilot grants of Harvard Catalyst demonstrate the drive among the faculty to collaborate on unique problems,” says Jeffrey Flier, dean of HMS. “Watching this process unfold has confirmed my deep conviction that we can most effectively impact human health by encouraging people from across Harvard who have never worked face to face to work together.” For more information, visit http://catalyst.harvard.edu. Photo: ©iStockPhoto.com |
are just a few of the intriguing research collaborations to receive grant funding from
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