In 2025, 39 Discovery Awards were given to interdisciplinary faculty teams across twelve units of Johns Hopkins.
From uncovering the neural mechanisms behind mosquito attraction to blood and transforming glaucoma care through noninvasive imaging and predictive modeling, to developing scalable interventions for maternal obesity and postpartum depression and detecting hazards in healthcare settings using AI-powered simulations, these Discovery Awards are making it possible—tackling urgent challenges and advancing bold, cross-disciplinary research.
Altogether, the winning project teams—chosen from 274 proposals—include 150 individuals representing 12 Johns Hopkins entities.
3D Spatial and in vivo Interrogation of the Vital Role of Stroma in Mortality in Acral Lentiginous Melanoma – Ashley Kiemen (Medicine), Vito Rebecca (Public Health) & Joel Sunshine (Medicine)
Advanced Polymer Electrolyte Design for Next-Generation Solid-State Sulfur Batteries – Rachel Altmaier (Applied Physics Lab), Joel Sarapas (Applied Physics Lab) & V. Sara Thoi (Arts & Sciences) *Co-Funded with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute*
Advancing Early Detection of Breast Cancer Using Liquid Biopsies – Jessica Tao (Medicine), Kala Visvanathan (Public Health), Jillian Phallen (Medicine), Emily Ambinder (Medicine), Jenna Canzoniero (Medicine) & Robert Scharpf (Medicine)
An Integrative Approach for Neoantigen Discovery from Liquid Biopsies – Soojung Hur (Engineering), Thomas Pisanic (Engineering), Rachel Karchin (Engineering), Cesar Santa-Maria (Medicine) & Leslie Cope (Medicine)
ARIC AI-ECG: A Novel Deep Learning on Serial ECGs to Predict Cardiovascular Risk Using Longitudinal Data Over 35 Years from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study – Kunihiro Matsushita (Public Health), Natalia Trayanova (Engineering) & Jonathan Chrispin (Medicine)
Azo Prodrugs of DXP Synthase Inhibitors – Caren Freel Meyers (Medicine) & Steven Rokita (Arts & Sciences)
Brightness-Invariant Tracking Estimation for Cardiac Tagged-MRI – Jerry Prince (Engineering), Bharath Ambale-Venkatesh (Medicine), Aaron Carass (Engineering) & Joao Lima (Medicine)
Building Hierarchical Theories of Complex Systems with Diffusion Models – Matthieu Wyart (Arts & Sciences) & Ioannis Kevrekidis (Engineering) *Co-Funded with the Data Science and AI Institute*
Causal Reasoning and Memory in Humans and Language Models: A Flash Fiction Contest in Baltimore City – Janice Chen (Arts & Sciences), Dora Malech (Arts & Sciences), Tom Lippincott (Engineering), Hale Sirin (Arts & Sciences) & Daniel Princiotta (Education)
Combining Statistical and Experimental Genetics to Understand the Basis of Variation in Human Fertility – Rajiv McCoy (Arts & Sciences), Yumi Kim (Arts & Sciences) & Philip Jordan (Public Health)
Control-theoretic Inference-Time Value Alignment – Daniel Khashabi (Engineering), Mahyar Fazlyab (Engineering), Gillian Hadfield (Government & Policy) & Benjamin Van Durme (Engineering)
CORRECT-O2 – Counteracting Obscured Racialized Risks by Examining Corporate Tactics in the Pulse Oximetry Market – Theodore Iwashyna (Medicine), Cecilia Tomori (Nursing), Ashraf Fawzy (Medicine), Katrina Hauschildt (Medicine), Kadija Ferryman (Berman), Emmanuel Drabo (Public Health) & Deidra Crews (Medicine)
Cross-Sector School Attendance Data Sharing to Improve Health and Academic Outcomes: A Maryland Roadmap to Implementation – Megan Tschudy (Medicine), Beth Marshall (Public Health) & Amanda Neitzel (Education)
Curating and Archiving Black Baltimore (CABB) – Gabrielle Dean (Library & Museums), Lawrence Jackson (Arts & Sciences) & Sean Jones (Peabody)
Decoding Neuronal Representations in Brain Organoids: A Physics-Based Approach to Understanding Biological Learning – Brice Ménard (Arts & Sciences), Thomas Hartung (Public Health) & Lena Smirnova (Public Health)
Developing Diagnostic and Targeted Treatment Strategies for Glaucoma – Bryce Chiang (Medicine), Amir Manbachi (Engineering), Thao (Vicky) Nguyen (Engineering) & Harry Quigley (Medicine)
Development of a Novel Therapeutic for the Treatment of Dosage Disorders – Jeff Coller (Medicine), Hai-Quan Mao (Engineering) & Richard Huganir (Medicine/Arts & Sciences)
Development of a Scalable Behavioral-psychosocial Intervention to Address the Syndemic of Maternal Obesity and Postpartum Depression – Kelly Bower (Nursing), Rheanna Platt (Medicine), August Summers (Public Health), Wendy Bennett (Medicine) & Lindsay Martin (Medicine)
Engineering an Antibody-drug Conjugate with an Oncolytic Peptide Payload to Treat Colorectal Cancer – Aleksander Popel (Medicine), Jamie Spangler (Engineering) & Eric Christenson (Medicine)
Engineering High Strength Anesthetic Sutures for Durable Pain Management and Opioid Use Reduction – Michael Purcell (Applied Physics Lab), Kunal Parikh (Medicine) & Spencer Shumway (Medicine)
Exposome Dashboard for Precision Medicine: Integrating Environmental and Health Data for Personalized Healthcare – Fenna Sille (Public Health), Lesliam Quiros Alcala (Public Health), Kate Fitzgerald (Medicine), Thomas Hartung (Public Health), Ana Rule (Public Health), Kirsten Koehler (Public Health), Peter DeCarlo (Engineering) & Thomas Pisanic (Engineering)
Fidelio and Unjust Incarceration – Marin Alsop (Peabody), Bernadette Wegenstein (Arts & Sciences), Carolyn Sufrin (Medicine), Sam Bessen (Libraries & Museums) & Andrew Kipe (Peabody)
Finding the Neuromodulatory Switch that Drives Mosquito Attraction – Christopher Potter (Medicine) & Andrew Gordus (Arts & Sciences) *Co-Funded with the OneNeuro Initiative*
Genetic Mutations Predispose Patients to Post-Chemotherapy Autonomic Dysfunction – Malcolm Brock (Medicine) & Jin Kang (Engineering)
Hyperreflective Foci Analysis in Optical Coherence Tomography – Aaron Carass (Engineering), Tin Yan (Alvin) Liu (Medicine) & Jerry Prince (Engineering)
Malaria Parasite Biomarker Discovery and Protein Engineering to Design a Better Rapid Diagnostic Test – Jane Carlton (Public Health), Jamie Spangler (Engineering) & Yuka Manabe (Medicine)
MUSCLE-AID: AI-Driven Wearable Muscle Ultrasound Sensors to Detect Overuse Injury – Preeti Raghavan (Medicine), Muyinatu Bell (Engineering) & Kris Chesky (Peabody)
PATCH: Psilocybin for Amblyopia – Targeting Critical periods in Humans – Frederick Barrett (Medicine), Ann-Margaret Ervin (Public Health) & Bo Wang (Medicine) *Co-Funded with the OneNeuro Initiative*
Patient-Centered Biospecimen Market Design: Unlocking the Potential of Biobanking to Drive Discovery and Precision Medicine – Mario Macis (Business), Itay Fainmesser (Business), Marielle Gross (Berman), Clayton Yates (Medicine), Olivia Kates (Medicine), Brandi Scully (Medicine), Idris Leppla (Medicine) & Vivian Altiery De Jesus (Medicine)
Patient-specific “IPEN” for Acute Ischemic Stroke – Katsuyuki Taguchi (Medicine) & Aaron Carass (Engineering)
Smart Room Monitoring: AI-Powered 3D Simulation for Multi-Factor Fall Hazard Detection in Healthcare Settings – Erik Hoyer (Medicine), Danielle Howe (Applied Physics Lab), Kimia Ghobadi (Engineering), Lee Stearns (Applied Physics Lab) & Alan Ravitz (Applied Physics Lab)
Storytelling for Climate Change: Using Transportative Narratives to Overcome Climate Change Skepticism & Reduce Opinion Polarization – Rajiv Rimal (Public Health), Graham Sack (Arts & Sciences), Wonjung Bae (Arts & Sciences), Peter Orton (Public Health), Saraniya Tharmarajha (Public Health) & Daryl Stephens (Public Health)
Suppression of Residual HIV-1 Expression in the Brain by an HIV-encoded Antisense Transcript – Fabio Romerio (Medicine) & Danfeng Cai (Public Health)
Symbiotic interactions between green and grey infrastructure in future cities: sewers and street trees – Meghan Avolio (Arts & Sciences) & Ciaran Harman (Engineering)
Transforming Hypertension Care Through Artificial Intelligence: A Multi-Divisional Initiative Enabling Clinicians to Drive Precision Population Health Improvements – Yvonne Commodore-Mensah (Nursing), Harold Lehmann (Medicine), Alhassan Yasin (Engineering), Oluwabunmi Ogungbe (Nursing), Lisa Cooper (Medicine), Serwaa Karikari (Business) & Judy Greengold (Medicine)
Ultra-Sensitive Detectors for Dark Matter Discovery – Danielle Norcini (Arts & Sciences), Susanna Thon (Engineering), George Coles (Applied Physics Lab) & Nam Le (Applied Physics Lab)
Unleashing the Alpha-Tiger for Radiopharmaceutical Therapy of Cancer – Zaver Bhujwalla (Medicine), Hai-Quan Mao (Engineering), Dmitri Artemov (Medicine), Sangeeta Ray (Medicine) & Jiefu Jin (Medicine)
Unraveling the Complexity of Action Potential Propagation in Unmyelinated Axons – Shigeki Watanabe (Medicine) & Ana Damjanovic (Arts & Sciences) *Co-Funded with the OneNeuro Initiative*
Using AI to Make Social Media More Prosocial – Jason Eisner (Engineering), Andrew Perrin (Arts & Sciences), Daniel Khashabi (Engineering) & Ziang Xiao (Engineering)
