Here's how Brandeis students are innovating thanks to the 2018 SPROUT Grants

Photo/Mike Lovett

Professor Isaac Krauss, pictured left, is leading a team studying HIV with the help of a SPROUT grant.

The Brandeis Innovation Center announced winners of its 2018 SPROUT Awards.

The annual awards, which total over $90,000 in grants, support early-stage bench research that has strong commercial or social potential for projects centered on public health and the environment.
 
“SPROUT represents the best in Brandeis’ scientific innovation,” says Rebecca Menapace, the Associate Provost for Innovation and the Executive Director of the Office of Technology Licensing and the Hassenfeld Family Innovation Center. "We are honored to be able to support incredible breakthroughs in some of biggest health and environmental challenges of the 21st century."

The six teams to ultimately receive funding thanks to the SPROUT Awards are:

 - Reazur Rahman, Weijin Xu, and Joshua Lepson, who work in Nobel Prize Laureate Michael Rosbash's lab. The team won two grants for research on the genetic causes of ALS, Parkinson's and other neurological conditions.

 - Lizbeth Hedstrom, Deviprasad Gollapalli and their team also won a SPROUT grant for researching treatments for antibiotic-resistant chronic infections. By allowing antibiotics to attack even dormant bacteria, they aim to prevent lingering organisms that can evolve into resistant strains.

 - Isaac Krauss and Dung Nguyen, who are seeking an HIV vaccine using a specific vulnerability of the virus that is also present in cancers, also won a SPROUT grant.

 - GreenLabs, created by Brenda Lemos, David Waterman, which aims to reduce the amount of plastic lab waste.

 - The Drosophila "Flyght" Arena, created by Zachary Knecht, Tatevik Sarkissian, Eric Sun, which standardizes research that uses fruit flies for more reproducible results.

 - "Boosting rational drug design for Hepatitis B by large-scale production of the X antigen,” project led by Maria-Eirini Pandelia, Amy Milne, Chie Ueda, Michelle Langton, which aims to create more efficient ways to research and treat Hepatitis B.

Now in its ninth year, SPROUT is administered by the university’s Office of Technology Licensing and sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Hassenfeld Family Innovation Center.