Associate Professor Susan Shao and Assistant Professor Lucas Farnung are two of the inaugural recipients of the Blavatnik Institute Early Career Investigator Awards. These distinguished awards — made possible through the extraordinary generosity of the Blavatnik Family Foundation — exemplify HMS's shared mission to advance health worldwide through pioneering research, new therapies, and innovative tools to diagnose, prevent, and treat disease.
The BIECIA program was established as part of the historic gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation to support exceptional early-career faculty. In association with the Blavatnik Therapeutics Challenge Awards, which has supported 20 innovative research projects since 2020, the BIECIA program reflects the commitment to transforming translational research within the Harvard Medical School community.