Through the Innovation Awards program, the Carney Institute seeks to support risky, early stage projects that are too new to attract external funding. Each $100,000 award funds the project for one year, renewable for a second year on a competitive basis. Junior Principal Investigators (those at the Assistant Professor level) receive a $32,000 supplement.

In this cycle, we received 18 highly meritorious applications spanning 10 departments across Brown University. After rigorous scientific and administrative review by a panel of experts mirroring the application pool, six awards were made (listed below in no particular order).

A common molecular mechanism for co-morbid epilepsy and autism
Judy Liu (Department of Neurology and Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry)

Computational methods for faster, more accurate, and more versatile segmentation software for serial electron-microscopic analysis
David Berson (Department of Neuroscience) and Thomas Serre (Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences)

Development of experimental models for rare genetic disorders in autism and schizophrenia
Eric Morrow (Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry and Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior) and Daniel Moreno-De-Luca (Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior)

Discovering the mechanisms underlying brain aging using direct reprogramming
Ashley Webb (Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry and Department of Neurology)

Luminance-dependent brain activation in seasonal affective disorder and depression
Linda Carpenter (Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior), David Berson (Department of Neuroscience) and Jerome Sanes (Department of Neuroscience) 

Understanding contributions of alternative splicing to appetitive memory
Karla Kaun (Department of Neuroscience) and Kate O'Connor-Giles (Department of Neuroscience)