In 2023, 35 Discovery Awards were given to interdisciplinary faculty teams across twelve units of Johns Hopkins. From minimizing cancer cell polyploidy and maximizing cancer cell death with low dosage stochastic treatment to reimagining Johns Hopkins’ midcentury science television show, these Discovery Awards are solving complex problems and expanding the horizons of knowledge.
Altogether, the winning project teams—chosen from 191 proposals—include 115 individuals representing 10 Johns Hopkins entities.
Automated Sedation State Assessment for Improved Sedation Decisions Using Machine Learning and Low-cost Accelerometry – Sapna Kudchadkar (Medicine), Nicholas Durr (Engineering), James Fackler (Medicine) & Kristen Brown (Nursing)
Baltimore Block by Block: Mobile Environmental Mapping Feasibility Study – Michael Bader (Arts & Sciences), Julia Burdick-Will (Arts & Sciences/Education), Peter DeCarlo (Engineering) & Kirsten Koehler (Public Health)
Big Bata Analytics of Social Behaviors in Marmosets – Xiaoqin Wang (Medicine) & Mounya Elhilali (Engineering)
Constructing Whole-body PET/CT Atlas for PSMA Therapy Dosimetry – Junyu Chen (Medicine), Aaron Carass (Engineering), Steven Rowe (Medicine) & Yong Du (Medicine)
Continuous and Active Surveillance of Shunt Infections using Clip-on Device – Mark Luciano (Medicine), Jeeun Kang (Engineering) & Dipankar Biswas (Medicine)
Cyber Operations as a Geopolitical Instrument – Thomas Rid (International Studies), Jenny Kelley (Applied Physics Lab), Rob Heald (Applied Physics Lab) & Elly Rostoum (International Studies)
Deciphering the Methylome in the Human Pathogen Trypanosoma Cruzi, an Early Eukaryotic Organism Without Apparent Transcriptional Control – Monica Mugnier (Public Health), Winston Timp (Engineering) & Robert Gilman (Public Health)
Defining Splice Variants as Candidate Neoantigens in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) Epithelial Subtypes Using Long-read Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) Sequencing – Jacquelyn Zimmerman (Medicine), Elana Fertig (Medicine), Winston Timp (Engineering), Richard Burkhart (Medicine), Elizabeth Jaffee (Medicine) & Neeha Zaidi (Medicine)
Diversification of Retinal Ganglion Cells in Human Retinas and Organoids – Robert Johnston (Arts & Sciences), Alex Kolodkin (Medicine) & Genevieve Stein-O’Brien (Medicine) *Co-Funded with the One Neuro Initiative*
Does Cerebellar Dysfunction Impair Hippocampal Recalibration? – Noah Cowan (Engineering), James Knierim (Medicine) & Amy Bastian (Medicine) *Co-Funded with the One Neuro Initiative*
Endocytosis of Amyloid-β in Alzheimer’s Disease – Hiromi Sesaki (Medicine), Rejji Kuruvilla (Arts & Sciences) & Jiou Wang (Public Health)
Extreme Heat and Poor School Infrastructure: Implications for Violence among Baltimore City Youth – Genee Smith (Public Health), Richard Lofton (Education) & Vanya Jones (Public Health)
Find the Midwife – Mary Fissell (Medicine), Noelene Jeffers (Nursing), Annette Porter (Arts & Sciences) & Bernadette Wegenstein (Arts & Sciences)
Foundation Model Personas: Restorative Brain-computer Interface for Generating Context-sensitive Sentences – Han Yi (Applied Physics Lab) & Nathan Crone (Medicine)
Have Commercial Frictions Slowed Down Biosimilar Penetration? – Manuel Hermosilla (Business) & Joseph Levy (Public Health) *Co-Funded with the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative*
High-Entropy Capacitive Energy Storage – Corey Oses (Engineering) & Seyed Koohpayeh (Arts & Sciences) *Co-Funded with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute*
Longitudinal Real-Time Monitoring of Effects of Microplastic Exposure on Cellular Behaviors and Signal Transduction in the Lung Tissue – Yun Chen (Engineering), Chuan-Hsiang Bear Huang (Medicine) & Enid Neptune (Medicine)
Measuring 40 Years of Excess Mortality Among Persons with Mental and Behavioral Disorders in Baltimore: A Genetically-informed Multi-cohort Analysis – Kenneth Feder (Public Health), Peter Zandi (Medicine), Rashelle Musci (Public Health), David Sosnowski (Public Health), Jill Rabinowitz (Public Health) & Shruti Mehta (Public Health), Gregory Kirk (Medicine), Becky Genberg (Public Health), Jing Sun (Public Health), Brion Maher (Public Health), Adam Spira (Public Health), Holly Wilcox (Public Health) & Nicholas Ialongo (Public Health)
Measuring the Implementation of Universal Design in Hospitals: a RAMP Methods Project – Bonnielin Swenor (Nursing) & Jack Iwashyna (Medicine/Public Health) *Co-Funded with the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative*
Mechanical and Immune Atlas of Acral Skin to Address Acral Melanoma Metastasis and Anti-PD-1 Resistance – Vito Rebecca (Public Health), Shawn Kwatra (Medicine), Luo Gu (Engineering) & Pei-Hsun Wu (Engineering)
Microelectronic Conduits for Cardiac Conduction Relay – Hee Cheol Cho (Engineering) & Paul Kucher (Applied Physics Lab)
Minimizing Cancer Cell Polyploidy and Maximizing Cancer Cell Death with Low Dosage Stochastic Treatment – Kenneth Pienta (Medicine), Yannis Kevrekidis (Engineering/Medicine) & Robert Austin (Medicine)
Personalized Intestinal Reconstruction Without Surgery – Samuel Alaish (Medicine), Sung Hoon Kang (Engineering) & Axel Krieger (Engineering)
Photoacoustic Assessment of Peripheral Nerve Injury – Muyinatu Bell (Engineering) & Sami Tuffaha (Medicine)
Photoelectrochemical Carbon Capture: Using Sunlight to Clean the Air – Susanna Thon (Engineering), Sara Thoi (Arts & Sciences) & Yayuan Liu (Engineering) *Co-Funded with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute*
Reimagining Johns Hopkins’ Midcentury Science TV Show – Adam Rodgers (Arts & Sciences), Anna Marlis Burgard (University Press), Linda DeLibero (Arts & Sciences), Sig Libowitz (Arts & Sciences), Barbara Kline Pope (University Press) & Annette Porter (Arts & Sciences)
Sensor Fusion for Navigation in 3D Space – Kathleen Cullen (Medicine), Cindy Moss (Arts & Sciences) & Adam Charles (Engineering)
Simulation Assisted Navigation for Skull Base Surgery – Adnan Munawar (Engineering), Peter Kazanzides (Engineering), Francis Creighton (Medicine), Deepa Galaiya (Medicine) & Russell Taylor (Engineering)
Structural Mechanisms of Receptor Activation – Kalina Hristova (Engineering) & Edward Twomey (Medicine)
Supply-chain-constrained Capacity Expansion for Decarbonized Power Grid – Yury Dvorkin (Engineering), Bentley Allan (Arts & Sciences), Dan Ockerman (Applied Physics Lab) & Mahdi Mehrtash (Engineering) *Co-Funded with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute*
Targeting a New Pathway to Treat Metastatic Estrogen Receptor Positive Breast Cancer – Jennifer Kavran (Public Health), Utthara Nayar (Public Health) & Jamie Spangler (Engineering)
The Vitreous Ecosystem in Diabetic Retinopathy Profiled by Molecular MRI – Shanshan Jiang (Medicine) & Vishal Patel (Engineering)
Uncertainty Calibration Under Subpopulation Shift for Socially Responsible Decision Making – Anqi Liu (Engineering), I-Jeng Wang (Applied Physics Lab), Roy Adams (Medicine) & Lingxin Hao (Arts & Sciences)
Uncovering a Neurobiological Algorithm for Constructing Combinatorial Designs – Shreesh Mysore (Arts & Sciences), Michael Dinitz (Engineering), Ernst Niebur (Medicine) *Co-Funded with the One Neuro Initiative*
Understanding AI-based Collective Intelligence in Medical Image Segmentation for Clinical Applications – Vishal Patel (Engineering), Swaroop Vedula (Engineering) & Shameema Sikder (Medicine)
