Vallee Scholars

Recognizing that outstanding, young, independent investigators are the source for future advances in the biomedical sciences and of their need for flexible, unrestricted funding to conduct their research, the Vallee Scholars program makes grants of $300,000 – to be spent over a period of four years - to junior faculty carrying out basic biomedical research. This award is available only to investigators who have been nominated by institutions that have been selected by the Vallee Foundation Board of Directors. One

nomination will be accepted per institution. The candidate must have received his/her PhD, MD, or other professional degree, within ten years of the application deadline and, by the same date, have been in an independent research position (tenure track or equivalent) for six years or fewer. FAQ

The Vallee Foundation welcomes outstanding scientists regardless of race or gender but is mindful of the lack of diversity within the scientific research community as a whole and is committed to furthering the careers of historically under-represented minorities.

Please note that the nomination and application deadlines have been changed as follows:

Timetable

December 1, 2020 Deadline for institutions to submit a nomination letter
February 1, 2021 Deadline for nominees to complete online applications.
September 2021 Awards will be announced by early September, with funding provided soon thereafter.

The following institutes will be invited to apply for a 2021 Vallee Scholar Award:
   •   University of California, San Francisco
   •   California Institute of Technology
   •   University of Cambridge
   •   Duke University
   •   EPFL Switzerland
   •   Harvard Medical School
   •   University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
   •   IST Austria
   •   Karolinska Institutet
   •   Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   •   University of Munich
   •   University of Oxford
   •   Pasteur Institute
   •   Princeton University
   •   Stanford University
   •   Washington University School of Medicine
   •   Weizmann Institute
   •   Yale University
   •   University of Zurich

Alphabetical by last name	Alphabetical by host	Chronological
Tanmay Bharat, PhD Group Leader Royal Society / Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Fellow Rather than living as single, isolated cells in liquid cultures, most bacteria on this planet form macroscopic, surface-attached, multi-cellular communities known as biofilms. Bacterial biofilms play a role in many diseases and medical conditions including cystic fibrosis, bone, wound and urinary tract infections. Bacterial cells in a biofilm community show increased tolerance to antibiotics, making medical treatment difficult. Understanding this fundamental bacterial developmental process is therefore critical to understanding the colonization process of pathogenic bacteria. read more	Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford	2018
Joseph Bondy-Denomy, PhD Assistant Professor Joseph Bondy-Denomy's research focuses on characterizing CRISPR-Cas function in pathogenic microbes and searching for viral and bacterial proteins that modulate or redirect CRISPR-Cas. read more	University of California, San Francisco	2019
Sandeep Robert Datta, MD, PhD Assistant Professor of Neurobiology The brain extracts salient information from the environment, and converts this information into adaptive action. Our laboratory seeks to understand this process by characterizing the genetic and functional architecture of innately-relevant neural circuits, and by relating neural activity within these circuits to changes in patterned behavior. read more	Harvard Medical School	2014
Danelle Devenport, PhD Associate Professor of Molecular Biology The cell is the fundamental building block of all organs and tissues, but it is their higher order assembly into complex patterns that enables tissues to perform specialized functions. Long-range directional signals and cell-to-cell communication coordinate cellular behaviors globally, across entire tissues. Our research focuses on understanding how cells send, receive, and interpret directional cues via the planar cell polarity pathway (PCP), and in response, coordinate globally aligned behaviors over extremely long distances. read more	Princeton University	2014
Lisa Giocomo, PhD Assistant Professor of Neurobiology Lisa Giocomo is exploring the neural mechanisms that underlie cognitive behavior by studying navigation in the brain. read more	Stanford University School of Medicine	2019
Yiyang Gong, PhD Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering Yiyang Gong's long-term vision is to create neural recording and control tools that simultaneously probe many neurons to decipher population codes behind complex behaviors. read more	Duke University	2016
Viviana Gradinaru, PhD Professor of Neuroscience and Biological Engineering Division of Biology and Biological Engineering Viviana Gradinaru and her research group at Caltech are developing technologies for neuroscience (optogenetics, tissue clearing, and viral vectors) and using them to probe circuits underlying locomotion, reward, and sleep. read more	California Institute of Technology (Caltech)	2017
Johannes Gräff, PhD Associate Professor of Life Sciences Johannes Gräff is interested in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory formation, storage and decline. read more	Brain Mind Institute of the School of Life Sciences at EPFL, Switzerland	2019
Jérome Gros, PhD Assistant Professor of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Embryonic development requires that the behavior of thousands of cells be finely orchestrated in concert with signaling pathways. While much work has focused on the genetic and transcriptional control of morphogenesis, how cell dynamics and behavior are controlled has remained more elusive. In order to understand how structures and organs form, it is crucial to understand how cells, the building blocks of tissue, assemble in real time, as morphogenesis is taking place. read more	Institut Pasteur, Paris	2014
Mark Harnett, PhD Assistant Professor read more	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	2018
Melissa Harrison, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Biomolecular Chemistry Melissa Harrison and her group are focused on understanding the fundamental molecular mechanisms by which the embryonic genome is rapidly remodeled to create the pluripotent state. read more	University of Wisconsin Madison School of Medicine and Public Health	2016
Weizhe Hong, PhD Associate Professor of Biological Chemistry and of Neurobiology The central goal of Weizhe Hong’s laboratory is to study general principles of how social behavior is regulated in the brain. read more	University of California, Los Angeles	2020
Shalev Itzkovitz, PhD Assistant Professor The Itzkovitz group combines diverse computational and experimental methodologies, ranging from single molecule transcript imaging, single cell transcriptomics, mouse models and mathematical models to uncover design principles of mammalian tissue organization. read more	Weizmann Institute of Science	2017
Daniel Jarosz, PhD Assistant Professor, Departments of Chemical & Systems Biology and Developmental Biology Daniel Jarosz, PhD, is trying to understand how molecular mechanisms contribute to evolution, disease, and development. read more	Stanford University	2017
Martin Jinek, PhD Assistant Professor In recent years, the prokaryotic CRISPR-Cas systems have been repurposed for a wide range of genome editing and gene expression control applications. CRISPR-based genome engineering is poised to become a transformative technology in synthetic biology, biotechnology and molecular medicine. Martin Jinek's research is focused on protein-RNA interactions and macromolecular complexes that control gene expression and genome defense. read more	Institute of Biochemistry, University of Zurich	2015
Thomas Kehl-Fie, Phd Assistant Professor of Microbiology Affiliate Member of the Carl R Woese Institute for Genomic Biology Due to the continued emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance, more than 10 million people per year are expected to die worldwide from infectious diseases by 2050. Elucidating how bacteria overcome the host’s defenses has the potential to identify new opportunities for therapeutic intervention and blunt the growing threat of infection. read more	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	2017
Alexei Korennykh, Phd Associate Professor of Molecular Biology Innate immunity is a rapid protective response found in all mammalian cells. Alexei Korennykh's long-term goal is to define how mammalian cells use RNA cleavage mechanisms to maintain homeostasis and control their fate under normal conditions, during stress, and in diseases. read more	Princeton University	2016
Andrew Kruse, PhD Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Transmembrane signaling plays a central role in virtually every aspect of human physiology. Andrew Kruse's research aims to elucidate the molecular basis of membrane protein signaling through the use of biophysical techniques and structural biology, which complement more traditional cell-biological approaches. read more	Harvard Medical School	2016
Dan Landau, MD, PhD Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Member of the Meyer Cancer Center, Core Member of the New York Genome Center, read more	Weill Cornell Medicine	2020
Christopher E Mason, PhD Associate Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Neuroscience, and Computational Genomics WorldQuant Foundation Research Scholar Christopher Mason develops and applies advanced techniques in genomics technology and integrative bioinformatics to discern the functional elements of the human genome and how they are disturbed in cancer and neuro-development, as well as how they respond to severe environmental pressures such as space travel. read more	Weill Cornell Medicine	2014
Darcie L Moore, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Neuroscience Darcie Moore's research focuses on the regulation and movement of proteins during the earliest steps of neural stem cell neurogenesis. read more	University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health	2020
Samantha Morris, PhD Assistant Professor of Genetics and Developmental Biology Samantha Morris, PhD, is focused on understanding how cell identity can be manipulated via direct lineage reprogramming. read more	Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis	2017
Kai Papenfort, PhD Professor of Microbiology Kai Papenfort's research focuses on the regulatory roles of non-coding RNAs and how these control complex microbial behaviors. read more	University of Jena	2019
Eunyong Park, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Eunyong Park is interested in understanding molecular mechanisms of protein translocation—transport of polypeptides across lipid membranes. read more	University of California, Berkeley	2018
Fabiana Perocchi, PhD Emmy Noether Research Group Leader; Group Leader Mitochondria are dynamic organelles capable of decoding intracellular signals into markedly different actions, from energy production to cell death, using calcium ions as messengers. Fabiana Perocchi is developing computational and experimental strategies to predict, test and reverse the effects of genetic and chemical perturbations on mitochondrial calcium signaling to spotlight key checkpoints that could be targeted pharmacologically. read more	Helmholtz Zentrum, München; Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich	2015
Rickard Sandberg, PhD Professor of Molecular Genetics Rickard Sandberg’s group is developing and applying improved single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies for a better understanding of how our genome is controlled within cells and across cell types of our bodies. read more	Karolinska Institutet, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology	2015
Sichen (Susan) Shao, PhD Assistant Professor read more	Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School	2018
Pontus Skoglund, PhD Group Leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory Pontus Skoglund's lab uses ancient genomics to study evolution at key periods in the human past. read more	Francis Crick Institute	2020
Kirsty Spalding, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Cell & Molecular Biology Obesity is increasing in an epidemic manner in most countries and constitutes a public health problem by enhancing the risk for diseases such as diabetes, fatty liver disease and atherosclerosis. Together these diseases form a cluster referred to as the metabolic syndrome. read more	Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm	2013
David Tobin, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Tuberculosis causes more than one million deaths per year worldwide. Our laboratory combines model organism genetics, high-resolution intravital microscopy and human genetics to understand the host immune response to mycobacterial infection. read more	Duke University Medical Center	2013
Jared Toettcher, PhD Assistant Professor Jared Toettcher's is using cellular optogenetics to crack the code of how cell signaling patterns control cell fate. read more	Princeton University	2019
Josien van Wolfswinkel, PhD Assistant Professor of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Josien van Wolfswinkel's research focuses on the regulation and maintenance of a pluripotent stem cell population. read more	Yale University	2018
Michael Yartsev, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Bioengineering, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute read more	University of California, Berkeley	2020
Feng Zhang, PhD WM Keck Career Development Professor of Biomedical Engineering, MIT James & Patricia Poitras Professor in Neuroscience, MIT Principal Investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, The Broad Institute Core Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard HHMI Investigator Feng Zang’s group is developing and applying molecular and optical technologies for probing brain function in health and disease. read more	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	2013
Li Zhao, PhD Assistant Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics and Genomics read more	The Rockefeller University	2020

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Vallee Scholars