Now in its 12th year, the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences recognizes outstanding achievement by promising scientists aged 52 or younger. The prize includes a $100,000 honorarium for the awardee, made possible by a donation to the FNIH by philanthropist Ann Lurie, President of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation and President of Lurie Holdings, Inc.
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The winner, selected by a distinguished jury of biomedical researchers, chaired by Solomon H. Snyder, MD, Vice Chairman of the FNIH Board, will be honored at the FNIH 12th Annual Awards Ceremony on October 29, 2024, in Washington, D.C.
2024 Award Recipient
Howard Y. Chang, MD, PhD
Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research, and Professor of Dermatology and Genetics at Stanford University; Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Dr. Chang’s discovery of long noncoding RNA and its role in gene regulation helped shed light on the 98% of the human genome that does not code for proteins. The discovery followed the Chang team’s development of a new genomic technology called ATAC-seq, which was a million times more sensitive than previous methods in mapping active DNA regulatory elements and transformed the field of epigenetic research. Recently, the team published research suggesting that Xist, a type of long noncoding RNA, may help explain why autoimmune diseases are more common in women than men.
Selection Committee
Dr. Chang was selected as the 2024 Lurie Prize recipient by a jury of distinguished biomedical research leaders:
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Solomon H. Snyder, MD, Chair
Distinguished Service Professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacology & Psychiatry, Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
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Cynthia Wolberger, PhD, Co-Chair
Professor and Director, Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
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Ronald M. Evans, PhD
Professor & Director, Gene Expression Laboratory and March of Dimes Chair in Molecular & Developmental Biology, Salk Institute for Biological Studies Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
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Carl Nathan, MD
R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor, Chairman, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Weill Cornell Medical College
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Susan S. Taylor, PhD
Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of California San Diego
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Xiaowei Zhuang, PhD
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor of Physics at Harvard University
Previous Recipients
Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD and Vamsi Mootha, MD
Dr. Navdeep S. Chandel showed the expanded role of mitochondria in a cell beyond energy production. His research has revealed how mitochondria function as signaling organelles that control the body’s normal functions and impact diseases, including cancer and inflammation.
Dr. Vamsi Mootha has combined genomics and computation with classic biochemistry to gain a holistic and mechanistic understanding of mitochondria. His team has used this approach to discover new disease genes and identified hypoxia as a candidate therapy for mitochondrial disorders.
Anne Brunet, PhD, and Andrew Dillin, PhD
Dr. Anne Brunet employed a unique multi-organismal approach to investigate the ability of enzymes to regulate genes implicated in aging and has identified genes and pathways critical for maintaining neural stem cells that may help preserve brain function during aging.
Dr. Andrew Dillin explored the ability of organisms to sustain proper protein production processes essential to maintaining cellular structure and function in aging.
Xiaowei Zhuang, PhD
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor of Physics at Harvard University.
Dr. Zhuang’s research lab at Harvard pioneered the development of super-resolution microscopy and genome-scale imaging showing new spatial and functional organizations of molecules and cells.
Aviv Regev, PhD
Executive Vice President of Genentech Research and Early Development; Co-Founder, Human Cell Atlas; Founding Director, Klarman Cell Observatory at the Broad Institute
Dr. Regev laid the groundwork for the field of single-cell genomics and spearheaded leading-edge technologies that enable a sharper perspective on human cells and applied them to revolutionize understanding of biology and disease.
Yasmine Belkaid, PhD
Director of the Microbiome Program Chief of the Metaorganism Immunity Section in the Laboratory of Immune System Biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Belkaid revolutionized our understanding of the role of these microbes in the gut and skin, demonstrating that they are essential for triggering an immune response to help fight infection, but that they also can initiate inflammatory disease.
Zhijian "James" Chen, PhD
Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences, Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Chen discovered the enzyme cyclic GMP‐AMP synthase (cGAS) and its corresponding pathway, which solved a century-old mystery about DNA.
David M. Sabatini, MD, PhD
Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Sabatini discovered the mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) cellular pathway as a key regulator of growth and metabolism in response to nutrients.
Jeannie T. Lee, MD, PhD
Molecular Biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School
Dr. Lee’s pioneering work has elucidated how long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) control gene expression and chromosome architecture, and how an entire sex chromosome can be turned off. Her work has shown that lncRNAs have a special place in epigenetics regulation, for — unlike proteins — lncRNAs can target biological activities to a unique location in our genome.
Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD
D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
Dr. Deisseroth pioneered the field of optogenetics, which has greatly expanded our understanding of normal behavior as well as of diseases like Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and depression by combining genetic manipulation and optics to activate or deactivate precisely targeted brain cells.
Jennifer Doudna, PhD
Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology, University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Doudna’s research seeks to understand how non-coding RNA molecules control the expression of genetic information and she has published extensively in the field of CRISPR-Cas biology. In 2012, she and her colleagues at UC Berkeley and Sweden discovered CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a gene-editing technique that gives researchers the equivalent of a molecular surgery kit for routinely disabling, activating or changing genes.
Ruslan M. Medzhitov, PhD
David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine
Dr. Medzhitov has made seminal discoveries related to the innate immune system, the human body’s first line of defense against invading organisms which cause infection.
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