Louisiana’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes, or ECHO program, has secured a share of $13 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. The award, which is for the program’s third award cycle, will support its efforts and research for five years. 

Founded in 2016, Louisiana’s ECHO program unites researchers from Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Ochsner Health System, Tulane University, and LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans with leading pediatric clinicians at Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital in New Orleans. This collaboration brings together research capabilities and two free-standing children’s hospitals in the state, with a third under construction. 

The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), a national non-profit whose mission is to support and advance healthy aging through biomedical research, will host its annual Scientific Awards of Distinction ceremony in conjunction with the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), on November 13, 2025 from 6:30pm-9:00pm ET in Room 306 of the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts. AFAR Scientific Director Steven N. Austad, PhD, will host the ceremony and present the awards to David B. Allison, PhD (2025 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction), Lauren Hunt, PhD, RN, FNP (2025 Terrie Fox Wetle Rising Star Award in Health Services and Aging Research), and Arlan Richardson, PhD (2025 George M. Martin Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award). Award recipients will share lectures and remarks. A reception will follow. 

Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed Nicheformer, the first large-scale foundation model that integrates single-cell analysis with spatial transcriptomics. Trained on more than 110 million cells, it offers a new way to study how cells are organized and interact in tissues – knowledge that is crucial for understanding health and disease.