Research teams led by junior faculty win seed funding for new projects
Congratulations to Neuroscience faculty member Kendra Sewall for her Junior Faculty Award.
Junior Faculty Awards provide up to $40,000 in funding each year for two years. That’s about how much it takes to fund a graduate student, and in fact, the award budgets are often allocated that way.
For Sewall, the funding will allow her to assign a doctoral student to a new project: a study of how low levels of lead affect early cognitive development, using an animal model with some unique similarities to human neurological development — songbirds.
The institute’s flagship funding program, the Junior Faculty Awards are designed to provide seed funding for new projects that have the potential to grow into vibrant research programs attracting major federal grants.
In addition to fostering novel research, another goal of the program is to encourage collaboration: eligible projects are partnerships between a pre-tenure, tenure-track faculty member and a more senior researcher in another department.