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| Vikram (Vik) Khurana, MD, PhD | Ali Tavakkoli, MD |
Vikram (Vik) Khurana, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Movement Disorders in the Department of Neurology, was honored with the 2018 Brigham Research Institute (BRI) Director’s Transformative Award for his project, “A Multidisciplinary Program at Brigham to Stratify and Precisely Target Neurodegenerative Disease.”
This award supports teams proposing transformative projects that are collaborative, innovative and interdisciplinary. As the recipient of the award, Khurana will receive $500,000 for his project, which focuses on using genetic and stem-cell technologies to better stratify patients with Parkinson’s disease and related disorders for therapies. The project is a collaboration between investigators in the Brigham's Department of Neurology, Division of Genetics and Department of Pathology. Khurana's collaborators include Tim Bartels, PhD, and Ulf Dettmer, PhD, both of Neurology; Mel Feany, MD, PhD, of Pathology; and Shamil Sunyaev, PhD, and Stephen J. Elledge, PhD, both of Genetics.
Ali Tavakkoli, MD, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Metabolic Surgery in the Division of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery, received the BRI’s 2018 Special Seed Funding Award under the BRI Director’s Transformative Award program for his plan to establish a center for metabolic research and innovation in the fields of obesity and diabetes.
The Special Seed Funding Award provides $100,000 to support a project that represents an exciting area of cross-collaborative research where the Brigham can become a national leader.
