Biomedical Awardees on the Frontlines of the COVID-19 Response
"As soon as we realized the role of these proteins...we were really in a good position to start to investigate which are the cells that this virus might actually target."
"As soon as we realized the role of these proteins...we were really in a good position to start to investigate which are the cells that this virus might actually target."
Several of our biomedical research awardees have found their work unlocking critical questions on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response.
- Excellence Awardee Jose Ordovas-Montanes (2019) of MIT and now Boston Children’s Hospital has identified specific cells in the body that appear to be targeted by the coronavirus, a development that could help in the search for finding a cure.
- Excellence Awardee Yonatan Grad (2015) of Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health was cited in the Boston Globe for his work to estimate the optimal social distancing time to both flatten the curve and reduce overall disease burden. CNN’s Anderson Cooper picked up the story in this interview with Grad.
- Odyssey Awardee Lydia Bourouiba (2019) of MIT was featured in the Boston Globe for her research on the fluid dynamics of sneezes which suggests a 6-foot berth may not be sufficient to prevent transmission.
- Food Allergy Science Initiative researchers Aviv Regev and Ramnik Xavier of The Broad Institute are measuring viral loads and profiling immune cells and responses to infection in an effort to answer some of the basic questions about COVID-19—particularly why some patients get so much sicker than others—and identify antibodies for therapeutic use.
