{"id":304872,"date":"2026-10-12T05:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T05:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/304872\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T05:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T05:50:07","slug":"two-penn-professors-receive-nih-directors-awards-funding-for-impactful-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/304872\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Penn professors receive NIH Director\u2019s Awards, funding for impactful research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Perelman School of Medicine researchers were recently named recipients of the National Institutes of Health Director\u2019s Awards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Epidemiology professor Michael Levy and cancer biology professor Adam Stevens were recognized<\/a> for their bold research with broad impact potential, according to an Oct. 7 announcement. Both researchers were honored under the director\u2019s High-Risk, High-Reward program, which includes four distinct awards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Levy received the Pioneer Award<\/a>, which is given to scientists with innovative approaches to addressing \u201cmajor challenges,\u201d and will fund his research up to $700,000 per year for a five-year period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His project explores the intersection between epidemiology and architecture in an effort to design healthier homes. Using 3D printing, Levy aims to construct homes in a way that minimizes exposure to harmful organisms.<\/p>\n

Previous work treating parasite-infested homes in Peru and an interest in 3D-printed structures led Levy to investigate how curvilinear 3D-printed homes can reduce health risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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He explained that 3D-printed homes \u201coffer this kind of control that architects don\u2019t usually have,\u201d allowing for unique designs with more flexibility compared to the \u201cquadrilinear structures that we all live in.\u201d Quadrilinear structures, he added, contain many hiding places, cracks, and crevices that allow organisms to enter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With Pioneer Award funding, Levy\u2019s team will combine architecture and epidemiology models to find optimal house designs. They will collaborate with the Stuart Weitzman School of Design for field testing and work with Housing and Urban Development to lower health risks associated with poor airflow, harmful microbes, and disease-carrying pests.<\/p>\n

Levy described the award as a \u201cHail Mary\u201d after previously running into funding issues. He added that he is looking forward to establishing his research and involving students in his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can come up with some new design that can be incorporated into the architectures of the future, that would be a real success,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stevens received the New Innovator Award<\/a>, which supports \u201cexceptionally creative\u201d early-career investigators who are pursuing innovative and high-impact research. He will gain access to $475,000 of funding per year for five years as he uses synthetic biology to study the molecular logic of cells.<\/p>\n

His project explores synthetic biology and cell adhesion approaches to engineering tissues that can be used in cancer research, cell therapies, and regenerative medicine. Stevens aims to understand how cells organize into tissues and how researchers can build more complex synthetic tissues for disease modeling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we really try to do is build new tools that allow us to ask questions about how cells organize in tissue,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cBy controlling how cells interact, they allow us to investigate how to really ask bottom-up questions about how these processes work in ways that you can\u2019t do just by perturbing a physiological system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engineered tissues, he explained, can provide \u201can additional capability to these living therapeutics\u201d and an \u201con-demand ability to control how a cell therapy interacts with the body.\u201d This result can contribute to \u201ccontrolling trafficking to a specific tissue or building a type of tissue that can be used in regenerative therapy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The award provides early research funding, which Stevens explained will allow him to \u201cgo after some of the more challenging questions\u201d that he would not have otherwise been able to pursue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Perelman School of Medicine researchers were recently named recipients of the National Institutes of Health Director\u2019s Awards.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-304872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}