Joshua Vogelstein, ICM core faculty member and assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering has been selected to receive a two-year, $250,000 Schmidt Science Nascent Innovation Grant grant. The grant was created by the Palo Alto, California-based Schmidt Family Foundation to support the innovative use of data science and technology in research projects that depart from a faculty member’s core research area.

Vogelstein will work with Hopkins neuroscientist Richard Huganir to explore connectome coding, a discipline on the frontier of brain science that seeks to understand the relationship between genetics and experiences and synaptic connections in the brain. Vogelstein says that this project has the potential to yield incredibly large data sets that will require new analytical methods to make discoveries about how synapses are distributed in the brain and how they change with experience. The results could have ramifications for understanding and treating developmental and aging disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease.