Three Engineering Faculty Win Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Award
Named as Allen Distinguished Investigators, Elham Azizi, Jose L. McFaline-Figueroa, and Mijo Simunovic will focus on how sex hormones influence early organ development.
Elham Azizi
Herbert and Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cancer Data Research (in the Herbert and Florence Institute for Cancer Dynamics and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center) and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
José L. McFaline-Figueroa
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Mijo Simunovic
Affiliated faculty with the Department of Genetics and member of the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative
Three faculty from Columbia Engineering -- Elham Azizi, José L. McFaline-Figueroa, and Mijo Simunovic -- have won a $1.5 million grant from the Paul G. Allen Foundation to study how sex hormones influence early organ development. This collaborative project, led by Simunovic, is one of seven research projects funded by the Foundation to develop technologies, design approaches, and uncover insights into fundamental areas of human biology. Together, these awards represent a total of approximately $10.5 million in funding from the Foundation to support cutting-edge, early-stage research projects that promise to advance the fields of biology and medicine.
How sex hormones influence early organ development is not fully understood, but it is believed that they play an important role as a signaling molecule in early development. As Allen Distinguished Investigators, Azizi and Simunovic, who are also affiliated with Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and McFaline-Figueroa will work together to study sex hormone morphogenesis.
In this project, the researchers will develop an in vitro platform that combines stem cell models of human development, high-throughput genome editing at the single-cell level, and novel machine-learning approaches to precisely define how sex hormones participate in cellular differentiation during organ development. This new embryomimetic platform has the potential to reveal unexpected connections between sex hormones and biochemical signaling, which could integrate sex hormone signaling within the broader efforts of mapping the human body.
The Allen Distinguished Investigator program was launched in 2010 by the late philanthropist Paul G. Allen to back creative, early-stage research projects in biology and medical research that would not otherwise be supported by traditional research funding programs. Including the new awards, a total of 130 Allen Distinguished Investigators have been appointed during the past 12 years. Each award spans three years of research funding.