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Chance to branch off in new directions
Seven novel research projects awarded grants by Star-Friedman Challenge
The quest for scientific truth leads Harvard researchers to a wide array of pursuits: sea slugs that steal body parts from other animals, microwave resonator telescopes powerful enough to detect traces of the Big Bang, and lab-grown human kidneys.
These are examples of seven novel research projects that are grant recipients of this year’s Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research.
The program provides seed funding for Harvard faculty to conduct research in the life, physical, and social sciences. Star-Friedman supports promising research that might not be funded by traditional sources and encourages investigators to explore new directions branching off their previous work.
The program was established in 2013 by a gift from James A. Star ’83 and expanded five years later by support from Josh Friedman ’76, M.B.A. ’80, J.D. ’82, and Beth Friedman. The 2025 winners were recognized in a ceremony at University Hall on Wednesday.
Cellular basis of organelle theft
Corey Allard, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School
Project: How do some species make use of body parts purloined from other animals? New insights may come from sea slugs that have evolved the ability to steal organelles (specialized structures within cells) from other species.
For example, so-called “solar powered” sea slugs from the genus Elysia pilfer the chloroplasts of algae cells and then use them for photosynthesis for up to one year. Other sea slugs from the genus Berghia pilfer the stinging organelles of sea anemones and place them on their own backs to deter predators.
Allard and colleagues will investigate the biological mechanisms that allow these slugs to maintain the stolen organelles.
Goal: The long-term aim of this “slug-inspired” research is to engineer cells capable of maintaining foreign organelles. The work also may offer insights into preventing diseases caused by intracellular parasites such as tuberculosis and malaria.
Sensing water and the evolution of terrestrialisation in invertebrates
Josefina del Mármol, Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School
Project: One of the great events in the history of life occurred when aquatic animals colonized land. The del Mármol team will investigate one facet of this mystery: How did ancient invertebrates adapt the sensory organs required for living on terrestrial environments?
Insects — the largest group of species on Earth — are believed to have evolved humidity receptors from organs called ionotropic variant receptors. These organs still exist in aquatic arthropods that have no history of living on land and thus never had the need to monitor air humidity.
This study will examine how these organs function in species still living in water, specifically American lobsters.
Goal: The team seeks to reveal how invertebrates evolved the ability to monitor the humidity of air. The del Mármol lab specializes in studying olfaction in invertebrates, and this new area of research — the neurobiology and evolution of sensory organs in early terrestrial animals — represents a new direction.
Shedding light on the Big Bang with a novel microwave resonator
John M. Kovac, Professor of Astronomy and Physics
Project: The Big Bang is still making waves — and a Harvard research team hopes to detect more of them.
The Kovac group has built telescopes at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station that are capable detecting faint radiation from the Big Bang 14 billion years ago.
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the universe and contains clues about its history. One theory predicts that primordial gravitational waves have left faint patterns of polarization.
The development of telescopes capable of observing these patterns is a top priority for the scientific fields of high-energy physics and cosmology.
To map the microwave sky, these telescopes must detect slight variations in thermal brightness in an environment billions of times brighter. This requires precise microwave optics cooled to cryogenic temperatures — a steep technical challenge.
Goal: The team proposes a novel use of optical resonant cavities (an arrangement of componentsthat repeatedly reflects the targeted spectrum) to study microwave photons.
Similar technologies already have been used in other fields: Laser cavities have helped detect gravitational waves and microwave cavities have helped search for dark matter particles.
The group already has built a promising prototype and hopes to extend this work to a broader range of frequencies and temperatures and to identify the most promising materials.
Validating child-friendly measures of global brain energetics to address new questions in the study of obesity, diabetes, and the role of nutrition in healthy brain/cognitive development
Christopher Kuzawa, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology
Project: The human brain is a greedy organ. In adults, it accounts for only 2 percent of our bodyweight but consumes about one-fifth of our energy. In children, the brain is even more demanding: It consumes about two-thirds of resting energy around age 5.
After the brain has nearly reached full size, the peak energy demand occurs during an intensive phase of creating new synapses and pruning them between ages 4 and 6. During this time, body growth slows and body fat drops to its lowest stage in the human lifespan.
When brain energy demand subsides, children start to regain body fat — a phenomenon known as the “adiposity rebound.” These processes have implications for public health: Kids who experience the rebound earlier tend to become heavier adults.
Better understanding of these dynamics also may shed light on chronic disease such as adult diabetes and long-term outcomes such as schooling and income.
Goal: Investigating these questions requires more “kid-friendly” techniques for measuring brain energy consumption. The preferred technique — PET scans with radioactive tracer dyes — is not practical for children.
Instead, Kuzawa and colleagues propose using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to measure cerebral blood flow as a proxy for brain energy consumption.
But the accuracy of this technique must be validated by comparison to other methods and the investigators propose to do so in a study with 25 adults. If successful, these kid-friendly MRI methods could be used to investigate childhood brain energetics and the implications for public health.
Biofabrication of human kidney tissues for therapeutic use
Jennifer A. Lewis, Hansjorg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering, and Jianming Yu Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science
Leonardo Riella, Harold and Ellen Danser Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Medical Director of Kidney Transplantation, Massachusetts General Hospital
Project: Chronic kidney disease affects more than one in seven U.S. adults, or more than 35 million people. More than 800,000 Americans suffer from end-stage renal disease and require dialysis or kidney transplant. But demand for transplants is about four times higher than the number of kidneys donated per year.
Goal: Lewis and Riella hope to develop a revolutionary new treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease, seeking to engineer lab-grown kidneys from human stem cells.
They will employ induced pluripotent stem cells to fabricate human kidney organoids in the lab then transplant small versions of these human kidneys into mice to study their function.
If successful, these techniques would represent a step towards fabricating kidneys for human patients.
How to regenerate a limb? Integrating analyses of metabolism and developmental biology
Jessica Whited, Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute
George V. Lauder, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Henry Bryant Bigelow Professor, Museum of Comparative Zoology
Project: Salamanders have an enviable ability: They can regrow severed limbs. This remarkable trait is a classic example of regeneration often described in biology textbooks, yet little is known about the energetic costs.
Whited and Lauder seek to understand the molecular and metabolic changes that occur during limb regeneration. Focusing on a species of salamander called axolotls, they aim to answer a fundamental question: How much does it cost to regrow a limb?
The investigators posit that salamanders fuel the generation process by boosting their metabolic rate by autophagy, a process in which cells break down their own components and use the molecules as fuel.
Goal: The work will illuminate the biological regulators of limb regeneration and why they work in some species but not others. The researchers hope the work will generate insights that might be applied to human patients who have lost limbs.
Turn the best photovoltaics into new high Tc superconductors; realize unconventional superconductivity in twisted perovskites
Suyang Xu, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Ashvin Vishwanath, George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics
Project: Can the most promising photovoltaic materials be turned into high-temperature superconductors? This question drives a new collaboration between a theorist and experimentalist of quantum materials.
Goal: Metal halide perovskites have been demonstrated to be an extremely efficient material for solar cells. Now the two investigators propose using these materials for high-temperature superconductors.
They propose that the twisted bilayer of metal halide perovskite may serve as a platform for high-temperature superconductivity. In their proposal they assert, “This seemingly crazy idea is not only possible … but promising.”
In the partnership, Vishwanath will perform theoretical calculations while Xu will lead the experiments. If successful, this application would be a groundbreaking discovery. The researchers also will test theoretical questions and potentially bridge two emerging fields.
