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UCLA CTSI and the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Center have selected five projects to receive the CTSI and Iris Cantor Women's Health Center Awards to support research intended to understand human sex differences in health and disease and medical issues and diseases unique to women, as well as to develop and test clinical interventions for women.

CTSI and Iris Cantor Women's Health Center Pilot and Augmentation Awards provide researchers with a one-year award worth up to $30,000. Fellows are awarded a one-year fellowship for $20,000. Awards were open to researchers and candidates at Westwood/Santa Monica Campus, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, who perform women’s health research, and/or research where exploration of sex and gender-based differences is relevant.  

Below are the 2020-2021 awardees and their projects:

  • Katherine Chen, MD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Internal Medicine, UCLA
    "Health Disparities Among Women Displaced in California's Affordable Housing Crisis" (Pilot Award)
  • Zoe Guttman, PhD Candidate, Neuroscience, UCLA
    "Male-Female Differences in Ambiguity Aversion and Correlated Brain Function in Stimulant Use Disorder" (Pilot Award)
  • Airie Kim, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, UCLA
    "Sex Differences in the Role of Iron Regulation in Pulmonary Hypertension" (Pilot Award)
  • Milica Momcilovic, MD, PhD, Project Scientist, & David Shackelford, PhD, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, UCLA
    “Anti-estrogen Therapy to Improve Response to mTOR Inhibitors in Female Patients with Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC)” (Young Investigator Award)
  • Sissy Wamaitha, Postdocortal Fellow, & Amander Clark, PhD, , Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, UCLA
    Building a Nonhuman Primate Model for Overcoming Primary Ovarian Insufficiency with Regeneration from Pluripotent Stem Cells” (Augmentation Award)

For more information on these opportunities, visit the CTSI and Iris Cantor Funding Opportunity Awards.

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Image caption: UCLA