School of Medicine announces 2026 Cultivating Team Science Awards
Awardee teams will focus on cancer treatments for children and young adults and identifying early warning markers and developing new treatments that reduce pain and improve recovery
The grants are awarded for collaborative science projects led by School of Medicine faculty principal investigators with teams representing at least two different School of Medicine departments.
“Congratulations to our 2026 Cultivating Team Science awardees,” said Vice Dean for Research Kim E. Barrett. “We are proud to foster their innovative multidisciplinary research, which we hope will ultimately improve lives.”
The School of Medicine recently announced Laura Borodinsky, professor in the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology and Clifford Pereira, professor in the Department of Surgery, as the 2026 recipients of the Cultivating Team Science Awards.
2026 Cultivating Team Science Awardees
Laura Borodinsky
Laura Borodinsky’s team is targeting more precise medulloblastoma treatments for children, hoping to reduce long‑term side effects of current therapies. Medulloblastoma is a cancerous brain tumor that usually afflicts only children and young adults.
Clifford Pereira’s project studies how nerve signals trigger painful abnormal bone growth after injury, with the goal of identifying early warning markers and developing new treatments that reduce pain and improve recovery for high‑risk patients.
The Cultivating Team Science Award aims to incentivize collaborative science by fostering new research teams. Awardees have bold ideas that will open new areas of investigation among departments and schools and have a multiplicative effect on extramural research funding in the near future.
The Cultivating Team Science Award provides $100,000 annually per team, totaling $200,000 in two-year seed funds for grant applications.
