In 2020, 41 Discovery Awards were given to interdisciplinary faculty teams across eleven units of Johns Hopkins. From utilizing machine learning to optimize stroke critical care to tackling CO2 emissions to addressing food insecurity, these Discovery Awards are solving complex problems and expanding the horizons of knowledge.
Altogether, the winning project teams—chosen from 274 proposals—include 136 individuals representing 11 Johns Hopkins entities.
A Bio-engineering Approach to Adjuvant T-cell vaccines– Maxim Rosario (Medicine), Scott Wilson (Medicine) & Jay Bream (Public Health)
A Novel Electronic Health Record-based Intervention for Reducing Falls in Older Adults– Fasika Woreta (Medicine), Pradeep Ramulu (Medicine), Wendy Shields (Public Health), Brent Petty (Medicine) & Jiangxia Wang (Public Health)
Addressing the Double Disparity: Food Insecurity among People with Disabilities– Bonnielin Swenor (Medicine), Laura Samuel (Nursing), Sarah Szanton (Nursing), Elizabeth Stuart (Public Health), Nicholas Reed (Public Health) & Roland Thorpe (Public Health)
Algorithmic Development to Assess Shape and Functional Trajectory in Subcortical Structures in Hippocampal-Sparing Prophylactic Cranial Irradiation in Limited- Stage Small Cell Lung Cancer– Siamak Ardekani (Engineering), Kristin Redmond (Medicine) & Laurent Younes (Engineering)
Analyzing Barriers and Facilitators to Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program among Latino Children in Immigrant Families– Sarah Polk (Medicine), Lingxin Hao (Arts & Sciences), Elizabeth Ogburn (Public Health), Daniela Rodriguez (Public Health) & Maya Venkataramani (Medicine)
Boosting Progressive Learning in Humans and Machines– Christopher Honey (Arts & Sciences) & Joshua Vogelstein (Engineering)
Calibrating the Sulfur Isotope Record to Investigate the Environmental Consequences of Varying Organic Matter Sources– Maya Gomes (Arts & Sciences), Sarah Prehiem (Engineering) & Sarah Horst (Arts & Sciences)
COVID-19 Related School Closings, Re-openings, and Household Mental, Social, and Economic Outcomes– Elizabeth Stuart (Public Health), Annette Anderson (Education), Megan Collins (Berman Institute) & Sarah Johnson (Medicine)
Data-driven AI models for Document Analysis in Medicine, Social Sciences, and the Humanities– Thomas Lippincott (Arts & Sciences), Margaret Chisolm (Medicine), Francois Furstenberg (Arts & Sciences) & Tara Sell (Public Health)
Deafness: New Treatment Options for the Most Common Form of Sensory Impairment in Humans using Magnetic Targeting Systems– Chao Wang (Engineering), Ulrich Mueller (Medicine & Arts & Sciences) & Daniel Sun (Medicine)
Decoding the Role of Gastric Biomechanics in Diabetes, Obesity, and Nutrition– Rui Ni (Engineering), Rajat Mittal (Engineering), Pankaj Jay Pasricha (Medicine), Jung-Hee Seo (Engineering), Michael Schweitzer (Medicine) & Jason Villano (Medicine)
Detecting Pathogens with Sugar: A Chemical Amplifier and Glucometer-based Tool for Easy Disease Diagnostics and Surveillance– Tessa VanVolkenburg (Applied Physics Lab), Leslie Hamilton (Applied Physics Lab), Rebecca Schulman (Engineering)
Developing a Model of Interactions between Climate Change, Conflict and Mental Health to Support Humanitarian Programming in Mali– Judy Bass (Public Health), Jura Augustinavicius (Public Health), Takeru Igusa (Engineering), Benjamin Zaitchik (Arts & Sciences) & Molly Lasater (Public Health)
Developing a Specific and Potent Inhibitor of the Hippo Pathway– Jennifer Kavran (Public Health) & Jun Liu (Medicine)
Developing Novel Methods to Extract Vital Signs to Enhance Remote Medical Monitoring through Virtual Vital Sign Abstraction and Health Status Prediction– Edward Chen (Medicine), Anissa Elayadi (Applied Physics Lab), Jason Spitaletta (Applied Physics Lab), Panagis Galiatsatos (Medicine), Marianne Engel (Applied Physics Lab) & Melanie Lockhart (Applied Physics Lab)
Development of a Fluidic-based Approach for Purifying Human Stem Cell-derived Retinal Cells for Retinal Transplantation– Claire Hur (Engineering) & Donald Zack (Medicine)
Discovering the Benefits of Interactive Music on Fine Motor Control Therapy– Arnold Gomez (Medicine) & Christopher Kennedy (Peabody)
Emulating How Experts Think… Under Unknown Objectives and Constraints: Augmenting Machine Learning through Inverse Optimization to Automatically Generate Personalized Treatment Plans– Kimia Ghobadi (Engineering), Tinglong Dai (Carey Business School), Ilya Shpitser (Engineering) & Todd McNutt (Medicine)
Evaluating and Overcoming Performance Biases Against Underrepresented Populations in Deep Learning for Diagnosis of Disease on Medical Images– Paul Yi (Medicine), Jeremias Sulam (Engineering), Ilya Shpitser (Engineering), Cheng Ting Lin (Medicine), Tin Yan Alvin Liu (Medicine) & Elise Ng (Medicine)
Exploring the Biology of Structure-mediated RNA Decay– Anthony Leung (Public Health), Elana Fertig (Medicine) & Dipali Sharma (Medicine)
From Jedi Knight to Jedi Master: Discovering the New Master of Health Professions Educator Leader– Toni Ungaretti (Education), Rachel Salas (Medicine), Kathleen White (Nursing), Gundula Bosch (Public Health) & Richard Milter (Carey Business School)
Geometry and Generalization: Detecting Unconscious Bias Training in Artificial Intelligence– Susama Agarwala (Applied Physics Lab) & Chikako Mese (Arts & Sciences)
Harnessing Antibody Profiles and Multi-omics Data to Delineate Drivers of the “Allergic March”– Ben Larman (Medicine), Xiumei Hong (Public Health), Hongkai Ji (Public Health) & Xiaobin Wang (Public Health)
Harnessing Machine Learning to Optimize Stroke Critical Care Resource Use– Roland Faigle (Medicine) & Archana Venkataraman (Engineering)
Harnessing Peripheral Nerve Signals from Muscle with a Wireless, Implantable Device for Intuitive Prosthesis Control– Sami Tuffaha (Medicine), Nitish Thakor (Engineering), Gabriela Cantarero (Medicine) & Luke Osborne (Applied Physics Lab)
Hiding in Plain Sight “Stigmatizing Language in Patients” Medical Records– Mary Catherine Beach (Medicine) & Mark Dredze (Engineering)
How Natural Single-guide RNAs Repurpose Cas9 as a Transcriptional Regulator– Joshua Modell (Medicine) & Scott Bailey (Public Health)
Immersive storytelling and artificial intelligence can raise awareness, build empathy and inspire action to improve the health care response to violence against women– Nancy Glass (Nursing) & Gabo Arora (Arts & Sciences)
Interrogation of the Impact of Selection and Competition on the Evolution of Human Pancreatic Cancer Precursor Lesions– Elana Fertig (Medicine), Rachel Karchin (Engineering) & Laura Wood (Medicine)
Lifesaving Breath: AI-driven Continuous Tidal Volume Monitoring Using Accelerometers & Gyroscopes– Laeben Lester (Medicine), Tamas Budavari (Engineering) & Vadim Zipunnikov (Public Health)
Long Read Sequencing to Determine the Relationship between Pathogenic Repeat Expansion and Pathoclisis in C9orf72 ALS/FTD– Solange Brown (Medicine), Winston Timp (Engineering), Dwight Bergles (Medicine) & Loyal Goff (Medicine)
Non-invasive Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (LIFU) Stimulation to Recover Adult Brain Plasticity– Hey-Kyoung Lee (Medicine) & Grace Hwang (Applied Physics Lab)
Novel Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to Target Appropriate COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging in Undecided Populations– Emily Camacho (Applied Physics Lab), Rupali Limaye (Public Health) & Jennifer McKneely (Applied Physics Lab)
Organoid Intelligence (O.I.) – towards Biological Computing– Thomas Hartung (Public Health), David Gracias (Engineering), Lena Smirnova (Public Health) & Brian Caffo (Public Health)
Preparation of Ultra-high Optical Quality Silicon Photonic Waveguides using Confined VLS Growth– Amy Foster (Engineering) & Thomas Kempa (Arts & Sciences)
Preventing Opioid Abuse in Chronic Pancreatitis through Local, Sustained Bupivacaine Delivery from Stents– Jay Pasricha (Medicine), Christopher Stiles (Applied Physics Lab) & Kunal Parikh (Engineering)
Re-engineering the Nucleosome Core to Study the Asymmetric Histone Code– Cynthia Wolberger (Medicine) & Jeffrey Gray (Engineering)
Regulation of Brain Stiffness by Glia– Dwight Bergles (Medicine) & Luo Gu (Engineering)
Spatially Resolved, Closed-Loop Control of Wound Healing– Netz Arroyo (Medicine), Sharon Gerecht (Engineering) & Rebecca Schulman (Engineering)
The Carbon Age: Prospects for Lowering CO2 Emissions in the Short Term by Increasing Fossil Fuel Use?!– Jonah Erlebacher (Engineering), Ben Hobbs (Engineering) & Sarah Jordaan (Advanced International Studies)
Using Motor Imagery and Machine Learning-Based Real-Time fMRI Neurofeedback to Improve Motor Function in Cerebellar Ataxia– Cherie Marvel (Medicine), Archana Venkataraman (Engineering) & Linda Rosenthal (Medicine)
