Four researchers: John F. Brooks II, Zemer Gitai, Fenna Krienen, Michael Skinnider

Brooks, Gitai, Krienen and Skinnider win prestigious NIH awards

From left: John F. Brooks II, Zemer Gitai, Fenna Krienen, Michael Skinnider

Every year, the National Institutes of Health selects a handful of researchers performing innovative blue-sky scientific research to receive funding through its High-Risk, High-Reward Research program.

Nobel laureate John Hopfield, an emeritus Princeton professor whose work transcended departmental boundaries, celebrated that kind of scientific research in a press conference Tuesday following the announcement of his 2024 Nobel Prize in physics, noting that “the kind of science which has such extensive possibilities [also has] the possibility that you just don’t find anything at all. That’s a risk you have to take.”

This year, the NIH awarded $207 million in grants to 67 high-risk, high-reward biomedical and behavioral researchers, including four at Princeton: John F. Brooks II, Zemer Gitai, Fenna Krienen and Michael Skinnider.

Graduate alumna Rong Lu, who completed her Ph.D. at Princeton in 2007, also won an award, to pursue her research at the University of Southern California where she is an associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. 

The goal of these NIH Director’s Awards is to “enable exceptionally creative scientists to potentially transform biomedical science,” according to the organization. 

“The High-Risk, High-Reward program champions exceptionally bold and innovative science that pushes the boundaries of biomedical and behavioral research,” said Tara Schwetz, deputy director of the NIH for Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives in the awards announcement. “The groundbreaking science pursued by these researchers is poised to have a broad impact on human health.”

Directors Pioneer Award

Since 2004, the Directors Pioneer Award has encouraged researchers at all stages of their careers "to pursue new research directions and develop groundbreaking, high-impact approaches to a broad area of biomedical, behavioral or social science," the announcement said.

Zemer Gitai

Gitai is the Edwin Grant Conklin Professor of Biology and a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology. His research team focuses on the bacteria that cause diseases and on innovative ways of fighting them. They investigate fundamental bacterial cell biology, host-pathogen interactions and antibiotic development. The Pioneer Award will allow Gitai to pursue what NIH describes as “a single-cell approach to developing non-traditional antibiotics.”

Gitai joined the Princeton faculty in 2005. He holds a bachelors degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a doctoral degree from the University of California-San Francisco, and he pursued postdoctoral research in the lab of Lucy Shapiro at Stanford University. His groups previous discoveries include a bacterial speedometer and a poisoned-arrow antibiotic that he is working to bring to the market.

Gitais achievements have been recognized by many prestigious awards, including a previous Pioneer Award in 2015, a Transformative Research Award in 2021, the Human Frontier Science Programs Young Investigator Award in 2013, the NIH New Innovator Award in 2008, and the Beckman Young Investigator Award in 2007. In March, he was elected into the American Academy of Microbiology.

Directors New Innovator Award

Established in 2007, the New Innovator Award supports unusually innovative research from early career investigators, according to NIH, which defines "early career" as being within 10 years of a researcher's education. 

John F. Brooks II

Brooks is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology. He investigates how circadian rhythms affect the trillions of microorganisms that colonize our gut microbiome, which the NIH in their award described as the molecular conversation that occurs between animals and microorganisms across both time and space.The New Innovator Award will support Brooks and his research team as they study how "the circadian clock coordinates animal and microbial metabolism."

Brooks joined the Princeton faculty in January 2022 after completing a Ph.D. in microbiology from Northwestern University and a B.S. in microbiology from the University of Michigan. He also performed postdoctoral studies at the University of Texas-Southwestern in the laboratory of Lora Hooper.

His previous honors include a Hanna H. Gray Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a Searle Scholar Award, a Pew Biomedical Scholar Award and a Hypothesis Fund Award.

Fenna Krienen

Krienen is an assistant professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and affiliated faculty in Quantitative & Computational Biology. Her research focuses on the outsized development of the human neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for advanced cognitive abilities like language, problem-solving and empathy.

Humans have a much larger neocortex than other primates, allowing for enhanced cognition but also making humans more vulnerable to neurological disorders like autism and Alzheimer’s disease. The NIH funding will support Krienen and her research team as they investigate how genomic recording systems "reveal evolutionary modifications in the primate neocortex."

She came to Princeton in 2022 after completing an undergraduate degree at UC-Berkeley, a Ph.D. at Harvard University and a postdoctoral fellowship with Steve McCarroll at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute.

Krienen’s previous awards include a 2023 Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship from Klingenstein Philanthropies and the Simons Foundation, a 2020 Next Generation Leader award from the Allen Institute and a 2019 Bridge to Independence Fellowship from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.

Directors Early Independence Award

Since its 2011 creation, the NIH Early Independence Award has provided funding to allow exceptional junior scientists to bypass a traditional postdoctoral fellowship and launch independent research labs.

Michael Skinnider

Skinnider is an assistant professor in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and an assistant member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Princeton Branch.

He investigates the small molecules in the human body that collectively influence our risk of disease and determine how we respond to prescription drugs. But so far, the vast majority of these small molecules remain unknown the “dark matter” of the metabolome.

Skinnider and his group are working to illuminate this metabolic dark matter. They are developing cutting-edge AI technologies to translate data from mass spectrometers, the workhorse of metabolomics, to identify these chemical structures and link them to human diseases, including cancer. This Early Indepence Award will support his creation of a machine-learning platform to illuminate the chemical dark matter in mass spectrometry-based metabolomics.

Skinnider came to Princeton in 2023 after receiving his undergraduate degree from McMaster University and his M.D./Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. He also spent time as a visiting Ph.D. student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. 

His previous honors include the 2023 Young Explorer Award from the journal Science and the NOMIS foundation, the 2022 International Birnstiel Award, the 2021 Scholarship in Molecular Medicine from the Dan Davis Foundation and the 2020 Borealis AI Fellowship. He was also selected for the 2020 Forbes 30 under 30 list and the 2024 cohort of the Talented 12 early career researchers by Chemical & Engineering News.

Dan Vahaba contributed to this article.