In Review - Brain-Body Crosstalk in Health and Disease: Multidisciplinary Pilot Awards and Challenge Symposium

The Frankel IHBH and Biointerfaces Institute will award four (4) $80,000 FY27 Multidisciplinary Pilot Awards. This award is designed to support projects that may be too innovative, emerging, or speculative for traditional funding sources but still have strong potential to produce high-impact findings and support future extramural applications.

The Brain-Body Crosstalk in Health and Disease Symposium and Award Ceremony will take place on Thursday, October 22, 2026, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM EST.

Director's Innovation Fund Early Career Faculty Recipients

Alison Affinati, MD, Ph.D. for her project: Central Nervous System Control of Sympathetic Nervous System-Mediated Hypertension

Toshiro Hara, Ph.D. and Sasha Cai Lesher-Pérez, Ph.D., for their project: Modeling Brain Endothelial-Astrocyte Interactions using Vascularizing Microgels

Laurie Svoboda, Ph.D. for her project: Sex-specific effects of developmental Pb exposure on regulation and function of SERCA2a in mouse heart

Andrew Tidball, Ph.D. for his project: Develop a Novel Ventriculoid Model for Understanding Hydrocephalus

Innovative Multidisciplinary Pilot Award 2025 Recipients

The Stanley and Judith Frankel Institute for Heart and Brain Health and the Michigan-Biology of Cardiac Aging (M-BoCA) program of the Frankel Cardiovascular Center, are delighted to announce the recipients of this year's Innovative Multidisciplinary Research Pilot Award are:

Andre Monteiro Da Rocha, Ph.D. (Internal Medicine – Cardiology) and Kenneth Cadigan, Ph.D. (Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology) for their proposal: “Wnt and aging-associated diastolic dysfunction”

Matthias Truttmann, Ph.D. (Molecular and Integrative Physiology) and Andrea Thompson, MD, Ph.D. (Internal Medicine – Cardiology) for their proposal: “Novel FICD inhibitors to improve cardiomyocyte and motor neuron proteostasis”

Key Member Benefits and Opportunities

We believe that input from and engagement of the broader clinical and scientific community working in related fields at the University of Michigan will be essential to the success of the Frankel IHBH. We are actively developing programmatic initiatives to catalyze collaborative interactions, including joint recruitment, pilot funding, and early career faculty scholar support, as well as social and scientific gatherings. 

Our mission will benefit enormously from the outstanding expertise of scientists and clinicians already working in these areas at the University of Michigan as well as the highly collaborative institutional culture. 

• Access to Frankel IHBH research funding opportunities for multidisciplinary research and early career faculty.

• Invitation to scientific and social research gatherings, sponsored seminars, and speaker events to foster multidisciplinary collaborative science.

• Access to state-of-the-art research equipment, analyzers, surgical animals models core, biorepository storage, computational and bioinformatic platforms and support.

We hope you join us!