The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) has named MCB faculty Nicholas Bellono as a recipient of the 2019 Robertson Investigator Award. The award provides five years of funding to early career neuroscientists and stem cell biologists, enabling them to begin innovative projects.
“I’m very pleased to see Nick receive this very well deserved award,” says MCB faculty Florian Engert. “His ingenuity and creativity in isolating and pursuing novel avenues in research is truly impressive.”
Bellono says he is grateful to the NYSCF for their support. “This award offers the opportunity to be involved with an excellent community to learn interesting new biology and also provides important financial support,” he says. “Such conceptual and practical support will help further our studies regarding how organisms sense and respond to their specific ecological context.”
The Robertson Investigator Award is one of several prestigious awards and fellowships that Bellono has received within his first year and a half at Harvard MCB. Bellono says that the open-ended support from these grants will enable his lab to branch out in new directions and “establish an environment that emphasizes curiosity and creativity.”
He adds, “I’d like to especially thank [MCB Assistant Director for Sponsored Research] Nancy Hegarty and [MCB Scientific Director] Polina Kehayova for all of their help in navigating the grant application process during my first year as a faculty member.”
