Solving the mysteries of bioscience
Foundational Science Fuels Breakthroughs
Inspiring Next-Generation Scientists
The Allen Distinguished Investigator program supports early-stage research with the potential to reinvent entire fields.
With grants between $1 million and $1.5 million to individuals and scientific teams, these researchers receive enough funding to produce momentum in their respective fields.
Allen Distinguished Investigators are passionate thought leaders, explorers, and innovators who seek world-changing breakthroughs. Their ideas are transformative and their scientific insights are game-changing. They share a pioneering spirit, the ability to imagine possible futures of science, and the ability to create new ways of thinking to share with the world.
Talent is everywhere. Allen Distinguished Investigators may come from small universities or large institutions, cities, or towns across the world. We explore the landscape of bioscience to identify distinguished leaders who will make a difference.
View past awardees
2023 Cohorts
Extracellular vesicles
Extracellular vesicles hold huge promise as a means of therapeutic delivery; however, their diversity and a lack of understanding of their basic biology are hindering progress. This cohort seeks to elucidate fundamental principles of the biology of extracellular vesicles in a variety of contexts, including the development of technologies to better visualize and track them in living organisms.
Projects:
Sex Hormones
Researchers in this cohort are uncovering the cellular and molecular actions of sex hormones outside of reproduction and reproduction-related development. Their work addresses a key need to deepen our understanding of how sex hormones affect many of biological processes. These new discoveries have the potential to impact human health, including diagnostics and treatment.
2022 Cohorts
Nutrient Sensing
Researchers in this cohort are developing new technologies to measure or visualize nutrient levels within cells. Their work addresses a key need in the field, namely the ability to capture detailed information about metabolites, chemical compounds, and other nutrients in live individual cells. These new techniques could propel understanding of the basic biology of cells as well as how metabolism or nutrition processing goes wrong in diseases like diabetes or malnutrition.
Protein lifespan
Proteins are the building blocks of life — nearly all cellular structures and processes are built and carried out by proteins. Do our proteins age like our bodies age? While scientists have discovered how cells turn over old proteins to create new forms, it’s not clear how lifespan varies among different kinds of proteins, what it means to have “old” proteins, or how the cellular environment could affect protein aging. Researchers in this cohort are building new technologies and designing experiments to address important questions around protein lifespan and aging.
2021 Cohorts
Neural Circuit Design
Researchers in the Neural Circuit Design cohort are studying evolutionary principles in the brain circuits that control movement, focusing on animals and systems that are not traditionally studied in the laboratory. Their studies will flesh out a more complete picture of the diversity of nervous systems and motor neural circuits in the animal kingdom, as well as pinpointing common and conserved principles of motion and motor control.
Micropeptides and immunity
Our genomes contain vast amounts of DNA that remain poorly understood. A recent arrival on the scene of genomic “dark matter”: micropeptides, tiny proteins coded by tiny genes that had long escaped notice due to their size but that appear to be present in large numbers in our genome and that of every other living thing. These small molecules likely play roles in many different biological processes; scientists are recently uncovering their influence in several different diseases and in the function of the immune system. Scientists in the Micropeptides cohort are shedding new light on how micropeptides influence immunology, in health and in disease.
Synthetic biology advances for human tissues
The field of synthetic biology has made incredible advances in recent years, and yet the complexity of mammalian biology presents an additional challenge for scientists aiming to engineer tissue or organoids in the lab. The investigators in the Mammalian Synthetic Development cohort are working to cross many of the barriers to mammalian synthetic biology, including several approaches to improve the development and engineering of organoids, lab-grown mini-organs typically derived from human stem cells. Their work spans many parts of the human body, including the liver, lungs, brain, and connective tissues.
The Allen Distinguished Investigator program was launched in 2010 by the late philanthropist Paul G. Allen to back creative, early-stage research projects in biology and medical research that would not otherwise be supported by traditional research funding programs. A total of 130 Allen Distinguished Investigators have been appointed during the past 12 years. Each award spans three years of research funding.
Will Bailis, Ph.D. | University of Pennsylvania
Yasmine Belkaid, Ph.D. | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Chris Bennett, M.D. | University of Pennsylvania
Michelle Digman, Ph.D. | University of California, Irvine
Nandita Garud, Ph.D. | University of California, Los Angeles
Aida Habtezion, M.D., MSc FRCPC | Stanford University
Ruaidhri Jackson, Ph.D. | Harvard Medical School
Russell Jones, Ph.D. | Van Andel Institute
Megan King, Ph.D. | Yale University
G.W. Gant Luxton, Ph.D. | University of California, Davis
Simon Mochrie, Ph.D. | Yale University
Maho Niwa, Ph.D. | University of California San Diego
Jennifer Prescher, Ph.D. | University of California, Irvine
Nikolai Slavov, Ph.D. | Northeastern University
Daniel Starr, Ph.D. | University of California, Davis
Carolina Tropini, Ph.D. | University of British Columbia
Katharine Ullman, Ph.D. | University of Utah
Gene Yeo, Ph.D, MBA | University of California San Diego
Samantha Morris, Ph.D. | Washington University in St. Louis
Joshua Rabinowitz, Ph.D. | Princeton University
Clive Svendsen, Ph.D. | Cedars-Sinai
Savas Tay, Ph.D. | University of Chicago
James Wells, Ph.D. | Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Chenghua Gu, Ph.D. | Harvard Medical School
Baljit S. Khakh, Ph.D. | University of California, Los Angeles
Marc Kirschner, Ph.D. | Harvard Medical School
Scott Manalis, Ph.D. | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Clodagh O’Shea, Ph.D. | Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Michael Rosen, Ph.D. | The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Christian Steidl, M.D. | BC Cancer Research Centre and the University of British Columbia
Matthias Stephan, M.D., Ph.D. | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington
Henrique Veiga-Fernandes, D.V.M., Ph.D. | Champalimaud Foundation
David Weinstock, M.D. | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Suneel Apte, M.B.B.S., D. Phil. | Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute
Jason Buenrostro, Ph.D. | Broad Institute and Harvard University
Fei Chen, Ph.D. | Broad Institute
Jan Ellenberg, Ph.D. | European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Charles A. Gersbach, Ph.D. | Duke University
Jeffrey Holmes, M.D., Ph.D. | University of Virginia
Steve Horvath, Ph.D. | University of California, Los Angeles
Ralf Jungmann, Ph.D. | Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and LMU Munich
Rachel Whitaker, Ph.D. | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Ethan Bier, Ph.D. | University of California, San Diego
James J. Collins, Ph.D. | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D. | University of California, Berkeley
Bassem Hassan, Ph.D. | Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière (ICM)
Fred “Rusty” Gage, Ph.D. | Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Daniel Geschwind, Ph.D. | University of California, Los Angeles
Jeffrey Iliff, Ph.D. | University of Washington School of Medicine & VA Puget Sound
Martin Kampmann, Ph.D. | University of California, San Francisco
Aimee Kao, Ph.D. | University of California, San Francisco
Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir, Ph.D. | University of Cambridge
Michael Keiser, Ph.D. | University of California, San Francisco
David Kokel, Ph.D. | University of California, San Francisco
William Lowry, Ph.D. | University of California, Los Angeles
Jeffrey Macklis, M.D., D.HST | Harvard University
Kathrin Plath, Ph.D. | University of California, Los Angeles
Thomas Reh, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Fred Rieke, Ph.D. | University of Washington
William Rooney, Ph.D. | Oregon Health & Science University
David Rowitch, Ph.D. | University of California, San Francisco
Erik Ullian, Ph.D. | University of California, San Francisco
Rachel Wong, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Feng Zhang, Ph.D. | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Long Cai, Ph.D. | California Institute of Technology
Michael Elowitz, Ph.D. | California Institute of Technology
Marshall Horwitz, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Neil Kelleher, Ph.D. | Northwestern University
Jay Shendure, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Bruce Chabner, Ph.D. | Massachusetts General Hospital
Markus Covert, Ph.D. | Stanford University
Evan Eichler, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Hana El-Samad, Ph.D. | University of California, San Francisco
Thierry Emonet, Ph.D. | Yale University
Adrienne Fairhall, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Jeff Gore, Ph.D. | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Suckjoon Jun, Ph.D. | University of California, San Diego
Chet Moritz, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Svante Pääbo, Ph.D. | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Tom Shimizu, Ph.D. | FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF)
Joshua Smith, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Christopher Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. | Harvard University
Steven Zucker, Ph.D. | Yale University
David Anderson, Ph.D. | California Institute of Technology
Ed Boyden, Ph.D. | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michael Dickinson, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Eric Klavins, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Christof Koch, Ph.D. | California Institute of Technology
Jennifer Nemhauser, Ph.D. | University of Washington
Mark Schnitzer, Ph.D. | Stanford University
Tony Zador, Ph.D. | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory