Will Support Research to Improve Health Care, Patient Treatment

WASHINGTON, DC--Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) announced today that Dr. Andrew Goodman of Yale University received a prestigious Director’s New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  This five-year grant will support Dr. Goodman’s work to investigate personalized medicine, in which drug regimens are tailored to a person’s genetic makeup.  By improving our understanding of this relationship, this work has the potential to transform treatments and improve health care for patients.

“This highly selective, competitive award is wonderful news for Dr. Goodwin and as well as the entire Yale community,” DeLauro said.  “It is especially encouraging to see this support of an early stage researcher.  Dr. Goodwin’s work has the potential to improve treatments for patients in a really dramatic way.  I am pleased that the NIH has recognized the truly innovative spirit of his research.”

“This award is very important for my lab as a way to launching a new line of research that is highly interdisciplinary, and doesn’t have an obvious home in the funding landscape,” said Dr. Goodman, assistant professor of microbial pathogenesis at Yale School of Medicine. “This sort of funding is particularly important for younger investigators like me, who are usually urged to pursue rather conservative projects.”

“It is very rare for junior scientists to get the funding stability that they need to pursue their research without having to excessively worry about how they will support their work,” said Dr. Jorge Galán, chair of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale School of Medicine. “Secure funding is particularly important in the earlier stages of a scientist’s career, and has a lasting impact, because it is during this period that the pattern is set for how he or she pursues science. With such funding, your thinking is freer, you are more self-confident, and you pursue research in a more creative fashion. We cannnot think of a better person than Andy to receive this support.”