Current and Former Awardees

Dale F. Frey Breakthrough Scientists

2025 Recipients

Akanksha Thawani, PhD

"Mechanisms of retrotransposon spread and regulation and their applications in gene therapy" at Columbia University

2025 Recipients

Rongxin Fang, PhD

“Imaging and engineering of cellular communication in the brain and tumors” at Stanford University School of Medicine

Xin Gu, PhD

“Catching transcription factors for degradation via the midnolin-proteasome pathway” at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Harvard Medical School

Fangyu Liu, PhD

"Targeting membrane enzymes for next-generation precision medicine against cancer" at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Qinheng Zheng, PhD

“Chemical rescue of somatic mutations in cancer” at Harvard Medical School

2024 Recipients

Junhong Choi, PhD

"Uncovering cellular development in cancer through precise genome editing"
at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Rachel Segal Greenberg, PhD

“The function of interoceptive circuits in reproduction and cancer” at Harvard Medical School

2023 Recipients

Liudmila Andreeva, PhD

"Making an inflammasome: Structural and biochemical elucidation of NLRP3 inflammasome activation" at Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen

Erin E. Duffy, PhD

"Activity-dependent changes in RNA stability as a mechanism for synaptic plasticity" at Harvard Medical School

Courtney Ellison, PhD

"The regulation and function of type IV pili in Acinetobacter biofilm formation" at University of Georgia

Christopher P. Lapointe, PhD

“Fundamental mechanisms that underlie human translation initiation and its dysregulation in cancer” at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Abigail Overacre-Delgoffe, PhD

"Harnessing the immune response to cancer through the microbiota" at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center

Tyler Starr, PhD

"Protein evolution at the host-virus interface" at University of Utah

Benjamin M. Stinson, PhD

"Mechanism of DNA processing during non-homologous end joining" at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Lexy von Diezmann, PhD

"Single-molecule dynamics of DNA repair assemblies in live cells" at University of Minnesota

2022 Recipients

Robert S. Banh, PhD

“Codon- and nutrient-specific regulation of mRNA translation in pancreatic cancer” at New York University Grossman School of Medicine

Allison L. Didychuk, PhD

“Understanding the mechanism of genome packaging in oncogenic herpesviruses" at Yale University

Dian Yang, PhD

“Molecular recording of tumor evolution in response to macrophage modulations” at Columbia University

Xiaoyu Zhang, PhD

“Discovery of chemical probes that support targeted protein degradation in human cancer” at Northwestern University

Xin Zhou, PhD

“Designing signaling proteins to enact anti-tumor responses" at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Harvard Medical School

2021 Recipients

Leeat Keren, PhD

"Studying the tumor immune microenvironment in pancreatic cancer using multiplexed imaging" at Weizmann Institute of Science

Nora Kory, PhD

"Mitochondrial transporters in metabolite compartmentalization and homeostasis" at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Kara L. McKinley, PhD

"Physiology and pathology of the uterus" at Harvard University

Deepshika Ramanan, PhD

"Identifying functions of regulatory T cell subsets in intestinal inflammation and colorectal cancer" at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies

2020 Recipients

Lindsay B. Case, PhD

"Understanding the physical principles that regulate cell signaling" at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2019 Recipients

Tera C. Levin, PhD

"Master microbial manipulators: how hosts are shaped by bacterial interactions" at University of Pittsburgh

Esteban A. Orellana Vinueza, PhD

"tRNA dysregulation and cancer" at St. Jude

Alistair B. Russell, PhD

"Impact of heterogeneity on the cellular recognition of influenza" at University of California, San Diego

2018 Recipients

Ryan D. Baldridge, PhD

"Investigating the mechanism of retro-translocation by ERAD" at University of Michigan

Chao Lu, PhD

"Chromatin dysregulation as driver of oncogenesis" at Columbia University

Shruti Naik, PhD

"Immune-epidermal stem cell crosstalk in skin inflammation" at New York University School of Medicine

2017 Recipients

Gira Bhabha, PhD

"High-resolution studies of dynein structure and mechanism" at New York University School of Medicine

Andrew A. Bridges, PhD

"Bacterial cell fates: The role of quorum sensing in biofilm patterning" at Carnegie Mellon University

Jens C. Schmidt, PhD

"Single-molecule analysis of telomerase recruitment to telomeres" at Michigan State University

Jakob von Moltke, PhD

"Initiation of type 2 immune responses" at University of Washington

2016 Recipients

Ivana Gasic, Dr.Sc.

"Molecular elucidation of the interphase Microtubule Integrity Response (MIR)" at University of Geneva

2014 Recipients

David K. Breslow, PhD

Dissecting the role of the ciliary transport machinery in oncogenic signal transduction at Stanford University School of Medicine