Boettcher Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Award

Five outstanding biomedical researchers at the University of Colorado are part of the Boettcher Foundation’s 2024 class of Boettcher Investigators, recipients of grant funding through the Boettcher Foundation’s Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Awards Program.

CU’s new Boettcher Investigators and their research topics are:

CU Anschutz Medical Campus

• Benjamin J. Kopecky, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Division of Cardiology, Section of Heart Failure/Transplant: Dissecting the smooth muscle cell pathobiology driving cardiac allograft vasculopathy.
• Jennifer McKey, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Section of Developmental Biology: Investigating the contribution of follicle activation in the perinatal ovary to the establishment of female fertility.
• Jessica Nelson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology: Molecular-genetic mechanisms underlying establishment of sensory thresholds.

CU Boulder

• Andrew Quesada Tan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Physiology and Director of the Sensorimotor Recovery and Neuroplasticity Lab: Identifying predictive biomarkers for intermittent hypoxia induced motor recovery and learning in persons with incomplete spinal cord injury (isci).

CU Colorado Springs

• Marissa Baranauskas, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Human Physiology and Nutrition: Implications for the timing of energy availability on menstrual cycle function.

The Boettcher Foundation Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Awards Program supports early career investigators whose research has a direct impact on human health. The biomedical research supported pursuant to this grant program will be designed to find ways to prevent disease and improve human health through basic and applied biomedical research. The intent of the program is to fund meritorious research that has the potential for new discoveries or advances a discovery to the proof of its potential value as an application to improve human health. This research will improve the understanding, treatment, and prevention of human disease. Awardees will carry the prestigious title of Boettcher Investigator.

CU’s seventy Boettcher Investigators have been awarded a total of $16,380,000 since the program was initiated in 2010. See all CU Boettcher Investigators.