NIEHS figured strongly among recipients of awards announced May 7 by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, M.D, Ph.D. The 2019 NIH Director’s Awards recognized groups that collaborated across NIH, as well as noteworthy efforts by teams within one of the institutes or centers.
According to NIEHS and National Toxicology Program Director Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., the awards mark superior involvement and leadership in substantial projects. “I am proud and excited to see such an impressive list of accomplishments being recognized at the NIH level,” she said when announcing the awards to the institute.
NIEHS recipients and their projects are listed below. Awards will be presented July 15 in a ceremony in Bethesda, Maryland.
Tammy Collins, Ph.D., and Hong Xu, from the Division of Intramural Research, undertook the Postdoctoral Career Outcomes Initiative, showing exceptional creativity and initiative as they developed international standards for reporting postdoctoral career outcomes and a novel interactive dashboard for visualizing these outcomes.
Trevor Archer, Ph.D., from the Division of Intramural Research, was part of a NIH wide Equity Committee, which received recognition for establishing the NIH Equity Committee as a forum for identifying and disseminating best practices in intramural research resource allocation.
Monya Brace, Matthew Burr, Megan Irias, Julie Nixon, and Mitch Williams, as well as Terry Wells, who works at NIEHS as part of the NIH Office of Research Facilities, were recognized together as the Hurricane Florence Response Team, which demonstrated extraordinary leadership in preparing for and responding to Hurricane Florence.
Honglei Chen, M.D., Ph.D., Freya Kamel, Ph.D., Christine Parks, Ph.D., and Dale Sandler, Ph.D., along with other NIH researchers on the Agricultural Health Study Research Team, sustained collaboration across institutes and centers at NIH to lead efforts to understand the health of farmers and their families.
Jonathan Hollander, Ph.D., from the Division of Extramural Research and Training (DERT), was part of the NIH wide INCLUDE Project Leadership Team. Through extraordinary efforts, they developed and launched a NIH wide initiative addressing the health and quality-of-life needs for individuals with Down syndrome and its co-occurring conditions.
Laura Thomas, Ph.D., from DERT, served on the Sound Health NIH wide Leadership Team. The team demonstrated outstanding leadership and multipartner collaboration, with extraordinary efforts to advance the goals of the Sound Health Initiative.
Michael Humble, Ph.D., from DERT, was part of the NIH wide ME-CFS Working Group on Communication and Outreach, which supported awareness and activities that advance myalgic encephalomyelitis-chronic fatigue syndrome (ME-CFS) research.