Justin Perry, PhD, cell biologist and immunologist of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s (MSK) Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI) has been named one of 64 recipients of the prestigious 2021 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award. As part of the award, Dr. Perry will receive $1.5 million in direct costs split into two multi-year segments.
Established in 2007, the Director’s New Innovator Award is a part of the High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, which supports highly innovative research from early stage investigators whose creativity and research have the potential to produce a major impact on broad, important problems relevant to the mission of NIH, including on topics related to behavioral, social, biomedical, applied, and formal sciences, as well as basic, translational, or clinical research.
“It is an honor to receive an NIH Director’s Award,” said Joan Massagué, PhD, Director of SKI. “Dr. Perry is an outstanding scientist and immunologist and I am confident that this will further his already important contributions to science.”
“The science put forward by this cohort is exceptionally novel and creative and is sure to push at the boundaries of what is known,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD. “These visionary investigators come from a wide breadth of career stages and show that groundbreaking science can happen at any career level given the right opportunity.”
Dr. Perry is an Assistant Member of SKI where his research focuses on understanding rapid-response circuits governing how a phagocyte manages excess biomass influx, immune function, and homeostasis. He received his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
“I’m extremely honored to be named a recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award,” said Dr. Perry. “It is wonderful that the NIH is supportive of our research and is putting faith in our work to better understand homeostatic apoptotic cell clearance.”
