The Office of University Postdoctoral Affairs (OUPA) is pleased to announce the 2026 recipients of the Brown Postdoctoral Excellence Awards. Please join us in congratulating this year’s recipients! The Postdoctoral Excellence Awards annually recognize three postdoctoral scholars who demonstrate excellence in research or teaching and go above and beyond to create an inclusive environment for postdoctoral trainees at Brown. The awards are sponsored by OUPA, and nominations were welcomed from all members of the Brown community.

Researchers from Brown University and the University of Rochester will lead a multi-institution project to test whether reducing DNA-triggered inflammation can help older adults stay healthier for longer.

Acre Therapeutics is a winner of the 2025 NIA Start-Up Challenge, and was awarded $65,000 by the National Institute on Aging.

Clarivate has named Nicolas Fawzi to their 2025 Highly Cited Researchers List. This annual list recognizes exceptional scientists whose research contributions have demonstrated significant influence in their fields.

At Brown’s Center on the Biology of Aging, researchers are driving a broader effort to understand how people can live longer, healthier lives by focusing on extending the human healthspan—the years generally free from serious chronic disease—as they develop therapeutics, launch industry ventures, and advance early-phase clinical trials for age-related diseases.

With support from the National Institutes of Health, the COBRE Center for RNA Biology in Health and Disease will create a critical mass of trained RNA researchers and fund cutting-edge RNA technology for scientific use.

Brown University will name its emerging research center focused on RNA science breakthroughs the Giuliani RNA Center, in recognition of a generous gift from health care investor and Brown trustee Giammaria Giuliani and his wife, Sabrina.

On Wednesday afternoon, Haifan Lin, the director of the Yale Stem Cell Center, discussed his innovative research findings in stem cell gene expression and regulation at Brown’s 2025 Mac V. Edds Lectureship.

Brown University biologists found that when a protein called AIMP3 was removed from heart cells in mice, it led to severe heart problems.

In 1993, scientists discovered a gene variant that increases the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease. While it’s now known that more than two-thirds of Alzheimer's patients carry this genetic risk factor, there is still no treatment to prevent them from developing the disease.

Dr. Vivian Cheung is hopeful that’s about to change.

The 21 NIA Start-Up Challenge Stage 1 finalists represent a multidisciplinary group of researchers and entrepreneurs who have innovative ideas for science-driven technologies and products that have the potential to advance the fields of aging and age-related diseases. They are engaged in a wide range of research and development to create everything from digital health solutions to devices to therapeutics for aging Americans, including interventions for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD).

The world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society honored Brown faculty members from molecular biophysics and biochemistry and evolutionary biology for significant and lasting contributions to their fields.