PHILADELPHIA – University of Pennsylvania researchers will receive five of the 10 grants being awarded this year by the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation, part of The Pittsburgh Foundation, which supports cutting-edge scientific research in chemistry, biology, and physics at institutions across Pennsylvania. Two of those five will go to researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine.
Other Penn schools represented are the School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. The researchers won awards in two categories: New Investigator Research grants of $150,000 for two years and New Initiative Research grants for $300,000 for two years.
The Penn Medicine recipients are:
Maya Capelson, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of Cell and Developmental Biology for research on “The Nuclear pore as a novel scaffold for spatial genome organization.” Capelson and her colleagues will investigate the basic mechanisms of how the genome is organized by nuclear scaffolds, such as nuclear pores, and how this organization contributes to turning genes on and off.
Matthew Good, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of Cell and Developmental Biology, for research on “Building synthetic cell-like compartments to investigate the impacts of cell size and shape on intracellular function.” The Good Lab will study the role cell size plays in specifying biological function. Researchers there will develop a synthetic cell system to uncover how cellular dimensions regulate intracellular assembly and gene expression in both healthy and diseased cells.
For more information, please see the full Penn release: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-researchers-receive-over-1-million-kaufman-foundation-awards.
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.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.