The fund was started in 2016 with a $10 million grant from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, which is headed by global industrialist and philanthropist Len Blavatnik, who is founder and chair of Access Industries. In 2018, the fund was augmented with an additional grant of $15 million. Its goal is to advance entrepreneurship in the life sciences at Yale and expedite the development, application, and commercialization of breakthrough research.
Presenting the awards were (at left in photo) Bill Wiesler, PhD, MBA, director of new ventures and of the Blavatnik Fund, for Yale's Office of Cooperative Research, and (at right) Peter Schiffer, PhD, vice provost for research and professor of applied physics.
Award recipients (l-r) were:
Paul Turner, PhD, Elihu Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and professor of microbiology: Developing Phages as Evolution-Proof Therapies Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria
David Spiegel, MD, PhD, professor of chemistry: Targeted Elimination Platform for Pathogenic Extracellular Proteins
Andrew Wang, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, and Aaron Ring, PhD, assistant professor of immunobiology: Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Inflammation and Cell Death in Sepsis
Anna Marie Pyle, PhD, Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; and professor of chemistry: Nontoxic Antifungals that Target RNA
Andrew Miranker, PhD, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and of chemical and environmental engineering: Wrangling Rogue Proteins
Naftali Kaminski, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Endowed Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary): Curing Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis with Thyroid Hormone Mimetics
John Deacon, PhD, associate research scientist: Improving Small Molecule Therapy Through Targeted Drug Delivery to Solid Tumors
Sidi Chen, assistant professor of genetics: Powerful Platform Technologies for Novel I/O Target Identification