BySaralyn Cruickshank
Two Johns Hopkins faculty members have received the university's prestigious President's Frontier Award, which recognizes exceptional scholars who are on the cusp of transforming their respective fields.
In a surprise virtual presentation Monday, JHU President Ron Daniels presented the award to Alexis Battle, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Sarah Hrst, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Both researchers will receive $250,000 to pursue new lines of research, expand their laboratories, or support their lab members.
"Let me take this moment to say how dazzled we were, Alexis and Sarah, by the ambitions and scope of your research and how highly your colleagues, mentors, and students regard each of you," said Daniels in the virtual presentation. "Having a way to honor those qualities in our faculty was a reason why we created this amazing award eight years ago. You both join a cadre of truly remarkable people from across all our divisions whose work truly stands apart."
The President's Frontier Award was originally launched with a commitment of $2.5 million from trustee Louis J. Forster, A&S '82, SAIS '83, and is now paired with a $1 million donation from alumnus David Smilow, A&S '84. Winners have spanned the university's divisions and included molecular biologist Andrew Holland (2021), mathematician Emily Riehl (2020), astrophysicist Brice Mnard (2019), nephrologist and epidemiologist Deidra Crews (2018), composer Michael Hersch (2017), molecular biologist Scott Bailey (2016), and stem cell research Sharon Gerecht (2015).
The award typically recognizes one winner and one finalist each year, but Battle and Hrst were both selected this year based on the strength of their applications and the demonstrated impact and continued potential of their work.
"The two of you embody in some sense the incredible breadth of research that goes on at JHU," said Ed Schlesinger, dean of the Whiting School of Engineering. "From the very smallest genetic materials that define what life is all about to the planets, space, the cosmos, and the search for life beyond our own worldthere is something particularly poetic about the juxtaposition of both of [your work]."
During the presentation, both Battle and Hrst discussed the transformative impact the award would have on their research teams.
"Last night and today, I was thinking, What do I really want to do if I get this award? And I was really laying out some of the exciting things that I'm hoping will happen over the next few years," Battle said. "So that makes me even more excited now, to know those things are going to be possible. I'm so thrilled, and I'm thrilled to see my students thrive even more."
Image caption: Alexis Battle
Image credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University
Battle is an internationally recognized leader in the field of biomedical engineering whose work has vital implications in the fields of human genetics, computational genomics, and precision medicine. Her research focuses on how genetic variation between individuals leads to changes in gene expression, and how these changes then lead to disease risk and progression. Using machine learning and probabilistic modeling, Battle and her lab create computational models capable of interpreting vast sets of genomics and health data to identify variations in gene expression and follow trends in disease progression caused by these changes in DNA. She has pioneered the use of time-series data to understand the impact of genetic variation at critical time points relevant to disease development.
Her breakthrough computational system, Watershed, holds great promise in the field of personalized genomics. Watershed's advanced modeling system combines personal genetic data and diverse cellular measurements to improve predictions of which genetic sequence differences found in a specific individual will affect that person's health. Applying this system across ancestries, families, and new data types has the potential to improve the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases.
"There is increasing need for creative computational methods in genomics," wrote Michael Miller, director of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, in a letter nominating Battle for the President's Frontier Award. "Seeing the full impact of genomic data on biological and medical research therefore relies on the type of creative and careful methods development Alexis does."
Battle was a senior leader on the GTEx Consortium Project, a massive multi-institution effort that collected and analyzed thousands of human tissue samples to better understand gene expression. With dozens of principal investigators on studies related to the project, Battle's lab played a central role and she served as a senior author on the project's flagship papers.
Educated at Stanford University, Battle received her BS in symbolics systems and her MS and PhD in computer science. She completed a postdoctoral research specialization in genetics at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Stanford. She joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2014 after working as a staff software engineer and engineering manager at Google. She has previously won a Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award (2017), which recognizes early career researchers with a $75,000 grant for their research and creative endeavors, and a Johns Hopkins Discovery Award (2019), which provide grants to cross-divisional teams. She was named a 2016 Searle Scholar and received a 2019 Microsoft Investigator Fellowship. She currently mentors four postdoctoral fellows, one medical fellow, 11 PhD students, and serves as an adviser for three undergraduates in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Hrst, a planetary scientist, studies the composition and characteristics of aerosols in the atmospheres of early Earth and other planets. Using laboratory experiments, modeling, and remote sensing and in situ measurements of atmospheric chemistry, Hrst and her lab work to understand how small molecules transition to become aerosols and the resulting physical and chemical properties of those particles.
Image caption: Sarah Hrst
The work has implications for assessing the habitability of other planets and for the search for life beyond our solar system. Under the right conditions, adding energy to simple mixtures of common gases can produce much more complex molecules like amino acids, which form the building blocks of living organisms.
Essential to her work is her groundbreaking approach to laboratory science. Using a custom-built Planetary Haze Research laba one-of-its-kind experimental labHrst and her group simulate the chemical reactions that contribute to the formation of aerosols in planetary atmospheres. With this approach, she can experiment with a vast range of temperatures (90-800 degrees Kelvin, or -297-980 degrees Fahrenheit) and can use different energy sources to initiate chemical reactions across a variety of atmospheric gases and conditions. Her lab is the first in the world to be dedicated to studying photochemical haze production in exoplanet environments, and she has published research on Saturn, Saturn's moon Titan, and early Earth.
Hrst's work is directly relevant to important space missions, including two upcoming NASA missions: Dragonfly, which will investigate prebiotic organic chemistry and habitability on Saturn's largest moon, Titan; and DAVINCI+, which will probe the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Venus.
"Particularly impressive is her ingenuity and creativity in developing and leading a new scientific field essentially from scratch: extrasolar planet atmosphere laboratory studies," wrote Sabine Stanley, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, in a letter nominating Hrst for the award. "Her work has already had major impact on the global effort to observe and characterize exoplanet atmospheres."
She received the 2020 LAD Early Career Award from the American Astronomical Society's Laboratory Astrophysics Division and the prestigious 2020 James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union, widely considered the highest honor for early career scientists in the field of geological and planetary sciences. She received a Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award in 2017 and was a co-investigator on a Discovery Award led by Maya Gomes in 2020.
Hrst received two bachelor of science degreesone in planetary science and one in literaturefrom the California Institute of Technology. She received her PhD in planetary sciences from the University of Arizona, Tucson. She joined Johns Hopkins in 2014 and currently mentors three graduate students, two postdoctoral research fellows, and an associate research scientist.
Chris Celenza, dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, gave Hrst particular praise for her emphasis on mentorship and collegiality.
"I often think that we are at our best in the arts and sciences when we're reciprocally reinforcing conversations among faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates," Celenza said during the award presentation. "I know in your lab, you've cultivated that very type of engagement, so I want to thank you, deeply, for all you have done for this wonderful Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and for Johns Hopkins and for the Krieger School."
Hrst's dedication to her lab members was evident from the moment they "Zoom bombed" the meeting, joining in on the coordinated surprise. "When I saw the names popping up on the screen, all I could think was how much more great science the people who are already working with me are going to get to do," Hrst said through tears. "And that means the absolute world to me."
The rest is here:
Alexis Battle and Sarah Hrst receive President's Frontier Awards - The Hub at Johns Hopkins
- Copy number variation of the restorer Rf4 underlies human selection ... - Nature.com - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- NYU Langone Health in the NewsThursday, November 9, 2023 - NYU Langone Health - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Eugenics: Plaguing scientific community with dark history | Opinion ... - The Arkansas Traveler - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Cranberries can bounce, float and pollinate themselves: The saucy ... - Japan Today - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Government Housing Assistance Linked to Increased Cancer ... - HealthDay - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Rate of New Lung Cancer Cases Has Decreased Over Last Five Years - HealthDay - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Clinically relevant antibiotic resistance genes are linked to a limited ... - Nature.com - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Disparities in Guideline-Concordant Care Found for Black CRC ... - HealthDay - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Mathematician Heather Harrington is new director at the Max Planck ... - EurekAlert - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- New study finds genetic testing can effectively identify patients with ... - EurekAlert - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- STK11 loss leads to YAP1-mediated transcriptional activation in ... - Nature.com - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- CRISPR-broad: combined design of multi-targeting gRNAs and ... - Nature.com - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Master regulator of the dark genome greatly improves cancer T-cell ... - Science Daily - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Omega Therapeutics Showcases Bidirectional and Multiplexed ... - BioSpace - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Today is International 15q Day - ASBMB Today - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Evolution of taste: Sharks were already able to perceive bitter ... - EurekAlert - November 15th, 2023 [November 15th, 2023]
- Stanford Scientists Uncover New Indicators of Health, Disease, and ... - SciTechDaily - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- NHGRI Director Eric Green elected to the National Academy of ... - National Human Genome Research Institute - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Monkey survives for two years after gene-edited pig-kidney transplant - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Opinion: Interest in RNA Editing Accelerates as Therapies Approach ... - BioSpace - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Regulation of dermal fibroblasts by human neutrophil peptides ... - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Consistent effects of the genetics of happiness across the lifespan ... - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Storytelling through the looking glass of genetics The Stute - The Stute - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Pet dogs shed light on human health, researchers say - UPI News - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Native microbiome dominates over host factors in shaping the ... - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Illinois-led project to sequence soybean genomes, improve future ... - Herald-Whig - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Unrealized targets in the discovery of antibiotics for Gram-negative ... - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- How Biotech And AI Are Transforming The Human - Noema Magazine - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- The Many Lives of Alexandria Forbes - BioSpace - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- CEP20 promotes invasion and metastasis of non-small cell lung ... - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Genotyping, sequencing and analysis of 140,000 adults from Mexico ... - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- The role and impact of alternative polyadenylation and miRNA ... - Nature.com - October 16th, 2023 [October 16th, 2023]
- Human - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - January 30th, 2023 [January 30th, 2023]
- Deep Dive Ties Together Dog Genetics, Brain Physiology and Behavior to Explain Why Collies Are Different from Terriers - Scientific American - December 12th, 2022 [December 12th, 2022]
- How oxytocin drives connections of newly integrated adult-born neurons: Research - Hindustan Times - December 12th, 2022 [December 12th, 2022]
- Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Fact Sheet - National Institute on Aging - December 2nd, 2022 [December 2nd, 2022]
- Human genetic clustering - Wikipedia - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Human Genome Project Fact Sheet - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Abstracts | International Congress of Human Genetics 2023 - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Ancient DNA and Neanderthals | The Smithsonian Institution's Human ... - November 16th, 2022 [November 16th, 2022]
- Biological Influences on Human Behavior: Genetics & Environment - November 16th, 2022 [November 16th, 2022]
- Fluent BioSciences showcasing breakthrough solutions to enable unprecedented scale, cost-efficiency and access for single-cell RNA sequencing at the... - October 28th, 2022 [October 28th, 2022]
- Human behaviour genetics - Wikipedia - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- Nucleome Therapeutics raises oversubscribed 37.5 million Series A financing to decode the dark matter of the human genome and deliver first-in-class... - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Gladstone data scientist elected to the National Academy of Medicine - EurekAlert - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Ocugen to Host R&D Day in New York City on Tuesday, November 1, 2022 - Yahoo Finance - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Pharmacy researcher earns $2.3 million NIH award to study opioid addiction - EurekAlert - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Study shows age often plays a bigger role than genetics in gene expression and susceptibility to disease - Anti Aging News - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- CSRWire - Direct Relief, Amgen and C/Can Team Up To Improve Access to Breast Cancer Diagnostics and Treatment in Paraguay - CSRwire.com - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Maze Therapeutics Appoints Harold Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D., as President, Research and Development and Chief Medical Officer - Business Wire - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- New Rare Disease Therapy Effectively Lowers Plasma Phe in Patients with PKU - MD Magazine - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- GSK : announces expanded collaboration with Tempus in precision medicine to accelerate R&D - Marketscreener.com - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Famous Scientific Discoveries That Changed the Course of History - 24/7 Wall St. - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Construction workers seek fulfilment of their demands - Star of Mysore - October 19th, 2022 [October 19th, 2022]
- Genetics | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Genetics - Wikipedia - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Study looking at human genetics and Covid vaccine immune responses - Science Media Centre - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- ASHG 2022 in Los Angeles brings together researchers from around the world to advance discoveries in genetics, genomics research - EurekAlert - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Maze Therapeutics Appoints Harold Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D., as President, Research and Development and Chief Medical Officer - Yahoo Finance - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The Age of the Pangenome Dawns - DNA Science - PLOS - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Influence of the microbiome, diet and genetics on inter-individual variation in the human plasma metabolome - Nature.com - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Genome editing technologies: final conclusions of the re-examination of Article 13 of the Oviedo Convention - Council of Europe - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative making genome-wide association studies more diverse and representative - EurekAlert - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- New NHS genetic testing service could save thousands of children in England - The Guardian - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Covid protection may be boosted by genes, study shows - Yahoo News Australia - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Genomics in Cancer Care Market is estimated to be US$ 72.61 billion by 2032 with a CAGR of 16.3% during the forecast period 2032 - By PMI -... - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Identification of hub genes and candidate herbal treatment in obesity through integrated bioinformatic analysis and reverse network pharmacology |... - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Our *Homo sapiens* ancestors shared the world with Neanderthals, Denisovans and other types of humans whose DNA lives on in our genes -... - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Blue Eyed People Have a Single Ancestor | History of Yesterday - History of Yesterday - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Heart infection could be cause of death of Polish, US hero - ABC News - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- 23andMe Announces Trials-in-Progress Poster Presentation on 23ME-00610, An Investigational Antibody Targeting CD200R1, at The Society for... - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- The Genetic Drivers Of Longevity In Mice, Humans And Worms - Science 2.0 - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- ANGPTL7, a therapeutic target for increased intraocular pressure and glaucoma | Communications Biology - Nature.com - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- 'Neanderthal Man' Nobel Prize winner Svante Pbo revolutionized anthropology. Here is a look back at his groundbreaking 2014 memoir - Genetic Literacy... - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Understanding Human Genetic Variation - NCBI Bookshelf - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Genetics - National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- People with ME invited to take part in major genetic study - The Independent - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- Ketamine Promising for Rare Condition Linked to Autism - Medscape - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- How a small, unassuming fish helps reveal gene adaptations - University of Wisconsin-Madison - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]
- How Nutrigenomics Explores Links Between Nutrition And Genes - Health Digest - September 14th, 2022 [September 14th, 2022]