The New York City-based Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2021 Clinical Scientist Development Awards.

This year's cohort of seventeen scientists will receive grants of $495,000 over three years to advance research and support their transition to independent clinical research careers. Since the program's founding in 1998, the foundation has awarded more than $160 million to advance the clinical research of early-career physician scientists.

For the fifth consecutive year, the number of applicants was roughly the same between men and women, following a 2015 internal effort to achieve a more gender-neutral selection process. This year, 53 percent of the awarded projects are led by women, and 30 percent of recipients identify as Black or Hispanic/Latinx. The latest cohort includes Diane Chan (Massachusetts General Hospital), whose research is aimed at leveraging non-invasive gamma entrainment to prevent Alzheimer's Disease; Jennifer M. Rosenbluth (University of California, San Francisco), who is conducting research on reversing aging-associated cell lineage changes in the breast to prevent cancer; Laura Vella (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia), who is conducting precise measurements of vaccine readiness after chemotherapy and transplantation; and Brian P. Hafler (Yale School of Medicine), who is researching single-cell reconstruction of astrocytes in human age-related macular degeneration.

"We are thrilled to congratulate this year's Clinical Scientist Development Awardees, who rose to the top of a very competitive pool of applicants," said Sindy Escobar Alvarez, program director for medical research at DDCF. "This is an especially great feat when considering the particular variety of pressures the pandemic has imposed upon physician scientists. With recognition of the invaluable insights their interactions with patients bring to clinical research, we are excited to follow these researchers' work, which — whether pertaining to infectious or genetic diseases, cancers, or Alzheimer's Disease — holds the potential to make vital contributions to human health."