Among the team members to be granted Johns Hopkins University’s newly created Discovery Awards are ICM core faculty members Suchi Saria, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, and Joel Bader, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

Suchi Saria’s project, with Livia Casciola-Rosen, Fred Wigley, and Laura Hummers of the Department of Medicine’s rheumatology division, is entitled, “A Novel Computational Approach to Scalable Biomarker Discovery in Autoimmune Diseases: A Pilot in Scleroderma.”

Joel Bader’s project, partnering with Jessica Dymond of the Applied Physics Laboratory and Joel Schildbach of the Department of Biology, is entitled, “High Throughput Discovery and Domestication of Bacteriophages for Human Microbiome Engineering.”

The Discovery Awards program, intended to find “innovative, collaborative research or creative projects” was introduced this year as part of a $15 million commitment over three years. In this first year, just 23 teams, composed of researchers from at least two Hopkins schools or affiliates, were selected from over 200 applications. According to President Daniels, “The number of applicants and the breadth of their ideas was thrilling to see. It speaks to our community’s desire to transcend barriers to collaboration and find bracing approaches to research questions.” Winning cross-divisional collaborative projects received up to $100,000 for one year.

Congratulations to Suchi and Joel!