Dr. Deidra Crews wins prestigious President's Frontier Award program
From JHU Hub article by Katie Pearce, September 25, 2019:
RENEWED SUPPORT FOR EXCEPTIONAL FACULTY CONDUCTING LEADING-EDGE RESEARCH
The university's President's Frontier Award program, which recognizes one faculty scholar each year with $250,000 in flexible funding, has been extended through 2024
Johns Hopkins nephrologist Deidra Crews is attempting to hunt down the origins of chronic kidney disease and better understand how intractable factors like poverty and limited access to food determine who gets the disease and how it progresses.
But she has encountered a particular barrier: Kidney disease research, she says, gets both limited exposure and limited funding, and her specific research specialty is one that often gets missed entirely.
Deidra Crews (left) hugs colleague Lisa Cooper after being surprised with the $250,000 President's Frontier Award presentation Monday morning. The award recognizes researchers who are poised to break new ground and be leaders in their field.
IMAGE CREDIT: WILL KIRK / HOMEWOOD PHOTOGRAPHY
That has started to change over the past year and a half, however. In January 2018, Crews became the fourth recipient of the university's President's Frontier Award, presented in each of the past five years to a faculty scholar who is on the cusp of transforming his or her field.
The award—initially funded for five years and recently renewed for an additional five years with a gift from Louis J. Forster, chair of the university's board of trustees—comes with $250,000 in flexible funding. The money can be used in whatever way the researchers choose in order to push their work forward.
For Crews, the award helped raise awareness of her area of study. Shortly after Crews received the award, The Baltimore Sun published an article about her work, and she won two significant national awards.
"It's really elevated exposure of the conditions I'm working on," she says. "That has helped move the dial on kidney disease, beyond my own professional career."
Crews has used the Frontier funds to devote more time to research, and to travel and foster new collaborations, including with University Hospital Limerick in Ireland. Last January, she organized a forum on food insecurity in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity.
She's also hired more staff for her lab as she continues work on studies like Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys and embarks on new projects—including one she's discussing with a Hopkins colleague to explore drone delivery of groceries to residents living in food deserts.
"The Frontier Award allows us to reach beyond federal funding," she says, "and be a bit more creative and exploratory."
FURTHER RESOURCES
Original article: https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/09/25/presidents-frontier-award-extended/