Grants

The British Heart Foundation announces its shortlist of four research projects competing for a single £30 million award, the Big Beat Challenge. Each team has been awarded £50,000 to develop their full applications.

12 scientists with novel approaches to fighting cancer have been named 2020 recipients of the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award.

After showing that a 10-week therapeutic horseback riding intervention reduced irritability and hyperactivity while improving the social communication skills of youth diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus researcher and Children's Hospital Colorado psychologist, Dr. Robin Gabriels, has received a $2.5 million grant to investigate why the therapy works.

A new $2.5 million grant will help an interdisciplinary team of researchers analyze innovative approaches to improving urban sustainability. The team will study various approaches to bolstering local food production in Des Moines and the surrounding area and how those approaches could affect nutrition, waste and environmental impacts.

Rice recruits synthetic biologist Caroline Ajo-Franklin with a $6 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas to bolster the university's cutting-edge Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology program.

With nearly $2 million in new support from the NSF, Lehigh University engineering professor Anand Jagota and collaborators from Cornell University and tire manufacturer Michelin North America seek to develop 2 novel mechanisms to improve friction of soft materials based on bio-inspired design of near-surface structures. In January, the team's first paper on research partially funded by the new grant was accepted for publication in the journal Soft Matter.

'Innovative research award' will help University of Colorado Cancer Center investigators pinpoint the genetic changes that allow BRAF pediatric brain cancers to become resistant to BRAF inhibitors.

George Mason University's Aarthi Narayanan and Remi Veneziano received $314,000 from US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) for a project using DNA-nanoparticles to improve vaccine design. The new design uses one-, two-, and three-dimensional structures made out of DNA molecules to increase immunogenic potential by delivering precise arrangements of heterogenous antigens while ensuring safety.

Welsh battery developer, Deregallera, has won a share of Welsh Government's EU funded £63.4m SMART Cymru programme funding that will enable the Caerphilly based company to commission a pilot scale pouch cell production line for advanced sodium-ion batteries.

Northern Arizona University biologist Matt Salanga leads an 18-month project to find a combination of drugs to fight melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer