PHILADELPHIA — Gregory F. Sonnenberg, Ph.D., a research associate at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, has been given an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award. These grants encourage scientists who have demonstrated outstanding scientific creativity, intellectual maturity, and leadership skills with the opportunity to conduct independent biomedical or behavioral research by essentially skipping the traditional postdoctoral training period.
Fourteen exceptional early-career scientists who were within one year of completion of their doctoral degrees or clinical residencies will be supported by the NIH Common Fund and contributing NIH Institutes in the second annual cohort of awardees. NIH plans to commit approximately $25.9 million collectively to support their research projects over a five-year period.
“I am enormously honored to be a recipient of the 2012 NIH Director's Early Independence Award and extraordinarily grateful for the outstanding mentoring and institutional commitment to success my advisors and the University of Pennsylvania have provided me,” says Sonnenberg. “This award will allow me to bypass traditional post-doctoral training and immediately follow and develop my own long-term research interests.”
The gastrointestinal tracts of human beings are colonized with over 100 trillion beneficial commensal bacteria, he explains. Interactions between the human immune system and these commensal bacteria dictate the state of health not only within the gastrointestinal tract , but also many other vital organs in the periphery of the body. Abnormal relationships between our immune system and commensal bacteria have been causally linked to the pathogenesis and progression of numerous chronic human diseases including HIV, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease.
“The award will allow me to establish and lead an independent research laboratory within the Department of Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology interrogating what maintains healthy host-commensal relationships and what goes wrong in chronic human diseases,” says Sonnenberg.
“It has been our distinct honor to support Greg’s application, and his receipt of the NIH award is a true testimony to his intelligence, creativity, and work ethic. His research bridges basic science and translational medicine,” states Anil K. Rustgi, MD, chief of Gastroenterology. “The whole process is an illustration of the multi-disciplinary support for him, involving the Department of Medicine, the Division of Gastroenterology, and the Institute for Immunology."
“The NIH is identifying those exceptional students that have the intellect, innovation, drive, and maturity to flourish independently without the need for traditional post-doctoral training,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
More information on the Early Independence Award is available here.
The NIH Common Fund supports a series of exceptionally high impact research programs that are broadly relevant to health and disease. The NIH Director’s awards Program is funded through the Common Fund and managed by the NIH Office of the Director in partnership with the various NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices. Common Fund programs are designed to overcome major research barriers and pursue emerging opportunities for the benefit of the biomedical research community at large. The research products of Common Fund programs are expected to catalyze disease-specific research supported by the NIH Institutes and Centers. Additional information about the NIH Common Fund can be found at http://commonfund.nih.gov.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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