This spring, the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology announced its 2024 recipients of award funding. These included 10 individual awards for physicians and scientists based at BWH and a collaborative award between a BWH investigator and a physician-scientist based at Mass Eye and Ear.
IGNITE Award
The goal of the IGNITE award program is to support medical advances in the health of women through scientific investigation. The award recognizes work that uncovers sex-specific and sex-differentiating factors that may affect novel therapeutics and disease diagnostics or biomarkers.
The IGNITE award program is within the First.In.Women Precision Medicine Platform and is funded by the BWH Women’s Health Advisory Board.
- Saranna Fanning, PhD, Department of Neurology, Casey Toolin McAuliffe Memorial IGNITE Award for “The Parkinson’s disease patient lipidome as a sex differentiator, diagnostic and therapeutic target”
- Aditi Hazra, PhD, MPH, Division of Preventative Medicine, Gayle Brinkenhoff IGNITE Pilot Award for Breast Cancer Research for “Leveraging artificial intelligence to improve shared decision-making among women of color diagnosed with non-invasive ductal carcinoma in situ”
- Shashi Kant, PhD, FAHA, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cardiovascular IGNITE Award for “Sex-differential role of Sortilin1 in the regulation of endothelium-dependent vascular homeostasis”
- Fei Liu, PhD, Department of Medicine, and Menglu Yang, MD, PhD, of Mass Eye and Ear, Connors BWH-MGB Collaborative IGNITE Award for “Finding new clues for Sjögren’s Syndrome: Investigating DNA in tears for better diagnosis”
Martignetti Award
The Martignetti Award was established in 2010 through the financial support of Beth and Carmine Martignetti. The award provides support for Connors Center investigators conducting research projects that advance women’s health.
- Samantha Meints, PhD, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, for “Understanding and addressing pain-related stigma among women with chronic pelvic pain”
ROSA Pilot Award
The ROSA Pilot Award amplifies and expands the research focus of the Center for Reproductive Outcomes of Stress and Aging (ROSA), one of 11 Specialized Centers of Research Excellence (SCORE) on sex differences nationwide. The mission of the ROSA Center is to catalyze the growth of women’s health and sex-differences research through cutting-edge and synergistic research projects. The award is funded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Bayer Pharmaceuticals.
- Holly Crowe, PhD, MPH, Division of Women’s Health, for “Migraine phenotypes and vasomotor symptoms across the menopausal transition”
- Delphine Franssen, PhD, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension, for “MKRN3 action on vasomotor symptoms in a menopausal mouse model”
- Encarnación Torres Jiménez, PhD, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension, for “Deciphering the thermoregulatory response to estrogen decline during menopausal transition triggering vasomotor symptoms”
- Matthew Weaver, PhD, Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, for “Does sleep mediate relationships between environmental exposures and stress, mood and well-being?”
WHISPR Award
Established in January 2018, the Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Stress Program of Research (WHISPR) seeks to advance understanding of how physiologic and psychological stress affects women’s health and disease, and vice versa, by supporting pilot projects, facilitating interactions among WHISPR investigators and other stress researchers and hosting an annual scientific symposium for the BWH academic community. The award is funded by the Gretchen S. Fish Fund for Women’s Health and Stress Research.
- Sergey Karamnov, MD, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, for “The role of socioeconomic and psychosocial stress determinants in postoperative atrial fibrillation: A female-specific risk score”
- Rose Olson, MD, Division of Global Health Equity and Division of Women’s Health, for “Uncovering the link between sexual assault and chronic pain conditions (CPC) in women”
