Julianne Pelaez, a biology postdoctoral associate researcher, was recently awarded the Hanna Gray Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a“transformational award for early career researchers who show exceptional promise of becoming outstanding leaders in academic science.” The HHMI writes that “Fellows receive funding for their postdoctoral training and during their early years as independent faculty. In addition to financial support, Hanna Gray Fellows join the vibrant multigenerational HHMI community, where fellows learn with experts and each other how to build healthy research environments that are creative, bold, inclusive, and effective.” Pelaez was awarded $1,500,000 over the course of up to eight years, to support her work on insects’ taste receptors.
She spoke to Brandeis University, saying that the way insects sense chemicals in their environment “could have tremendous ecological, economic and human health impacts — and could potentially lead to a way of preventing the spread of insect-borne infectious diseases.” She added that this award “serves as validation that the research that we are doing is not only interesting but important — and that the work I am doing as a mentor and leader in my scientific community is valued. It has also meant a lot to me personally, as someone who comes from humble beginnings and never imagined they could have a career as a scientist. I hope to use this fellowship to support many other young scientists in pursuit of similar dreams and goals.”
According to her profile on the HHMI’s website, she “wants to understand how genetic diversity among insect taste receptors causes structural differences in these receptors that ultimately drive divergent behaviors within and across species. Combining gene-editing, electrophysiology, and structural biology, she hopes to gain insights into how taste receptors function more broadly across insects – from pollinating honeybees to disease-spreading mosquitoes.” Prior to her time in Brandeis University’s biology department, she received her doctorate in integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley
