>> Winters Foundation 2025 Awardees

July 2025 – September 2025

Rohit Aggarwal, MD, MS // Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology
Development and Validation of a Revised Classification Criteria for Adult and Juvenile Idiopathic Inflammatory Myopathies
American College of Rheumatology
Start Date: July 1, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2027
Total Annual Costs: $65,000

Cristian Apetrei, MD, PhD (with Andrea Gambotto, MD) // Infectious Diseases
Microneedle patch delivery of replication-inducible monkeypox vaccine
R01 AI187223
Start Date: August 11, 2025
End Date: July 31, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $547,988

Randall Brand, MD // Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
PancreasFest 2025: Pancreas Disease Across the Lifespan
R13 DK145190
Start Date: July 22, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2026
Total Annual Costs: $23,600

Sonya Borrero, MD, MS // General Internal Medicine
Quantifying the Public Health Impact of State Contraception Coverage and Supply Policies
Arnold Ventures, LLC 25-14945
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: March 31, 2027
Total Annual Costs: $294,459

Stephen Chan, MD, PhD // Cardiology/Vascular Medicine Institute
Inflammation SFRN Collaborative Project
AHA 25ISFRNCP1501443
Start Date: July 1, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2028
Total Annual Costs: $199,100

Divay Chandra, MD, MS // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Developing Lithium as a Disease-Modifying Therapy for Emphysema Using a Precision Medicine Approach
R01 HL179364
Start Date: September 15, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $761,346

Yu-Chiao Chiu, PhD // Malignant Hematology and Medical Oncology
Open science platform for cancer dependency prediction and analysis using deep learning and large language models
R03 CA305794
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2027
Total Annual Costs: $237,007

Charles Dela Cruz, MD, PhD, and Corrine Kliment, MD, PhD (with Alison Morris, MD, MS) // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
2025 Pittsburgh Lung Conference: The Science of Medicine: Developing the Next Generation of Physician Scientists
R13 HL182216
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2026
Total Annual Costs: $35,000

Yohei Doi, MD, PhD // Infectious Diseases
Defining high-risk genomic groups of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia
R21 AI185663
Start Date: September 11, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2027
Total Costs: $481,214

Wei Du, MD, PhD // Malignant Hematology and Medical Oncology
DNA damage, immune response, aging and leukemia
Blood Cancer United Career Development Program
Start Date: July 1, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $120,000

Wei Du, MD, PhD // Malignant Hematology and Medical Oncology
A beneficial persistent DNA damage-induced immune response in aging
RF1 AG093995
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2029
Total Costs: $3,101,237

Will Garner, MD // Infectious Diseases
Allucent SRA00005973
Start Date: July 7, 2025
End Date: July 9, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $180,875

Mark Geraci, MD // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Owkin NOT00001451
Basic and translational research building predictive models for chronic and acute diseases
Start Date: July 1, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2030

Delphine Gomez, PhD // Cardiology/Vascular Medicine Institute
Epigenetic control of smooth muscle cell phenotype during microvascular remodeling
R01 HL146465
Start Date: April 1, 2019*
End Date: May 31, 2029
Total Annual Costs: $785,106

Aditi Gurkar, PhD // Geriatric Medicine/Aging Institute
Multi-omics Machine Learning for Inferring Metabolic-Epigenetic Interactions in the aging skeletal muscle
American Federation for Aging Research
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2026
Total Annual Costs: $5,000

Lee Harrison, MD (with Anne von Gottberg, MBBCh, PhD)// Infectious Diseases
Southern African-Pittsburgh Public Health Genomic Epidemiology Training Program (SAPPHGenE)
D43 TW011255
Start Date: March 26, 2019*
End Date: March 31, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $284,193

Ilana Hull, MD, MSc // General Internal Medicine
Effects of Xylazine Exposure on Maternal, Perinatal and Infant outcomes
R21 DA062129
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2027
Total Annual Costs: $246,727

Georgios Kitsios, MD, PhD // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
AIRWISe – Automated Interpretation of chest Radiographs for Weighting Infection Severity
Breathe Pennsylvania
Start Date: July 1, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2026
Total Annual Costs: $20,650

Thomas Kleyman, MD (with Annet Kirabo, DVM, MSc, PhD) // Renal-Electrolyte
ENaC regulation and its role in blood pressure homeostasis
R01 HL147818
Start Date: May 1, 1996*
End Date: June 30, 2029
Total Annual Costs: $749,328

Corrine Kliment, MD, PhD and Melanie Königshoff, MD, PhD // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Inhaled Stressors and Lung Aging
R61 AG095927
Start Date: August 15, 2025
End Date: July 31, 2027
Total Costs: $667,664

Corrine Kliment, MD, PhD // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Mitochondrial Derived Peptides in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
R21 HL179368
Start Date: July 15, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2027
Total Annual Costs: $258,516

Alison Kohan, PhD (with Craig Hodges, PhD)// Endocrinology and Metabolism
Deciphering the role of the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Receptor (CFTR) in dietary fatty acid transport in the small intestine
R01 DK143623
Start Date: September 15, 2025
End Date: July 31, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $812,621

Shihui Liu, MD, PhD // Infectious Diseases/Aging Institute
Highly tumor-selective pan RAS inactivators for targeting oncogenic RAS-driven cancers
R01 CA296154
Start Date: August 1, 2025
End Date: May 31, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $657,776

Enrico Novelli, MD, MS // Classical Hematology/Vascular Medicine Institute
ASH Research Collaborative Sickle Cell Disease Research Network
American Society of Hematology
Start Date: July 1, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2026
Total Annual Costs: $50,000

Anna Evans Phillips, MD, MS (with Virginia Stallings, MD) // Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
Malabsorption Blood Test (MBT) to Determine Exocrine Pancreatic Function and Related Quality of Life in Chronic Pancreatitis
R01 DK140381
Start Date: September 15, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2028
Total Annual Costs: $354,992

Joseph Pilewski, MD // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
A Phase Ic, Open-Label, Multicenter Study to Evaluate the Safety, Tolerability, and Activity of Inhaled GDC-6988 in Patients with Muco-Obstructive Disease
Genentech, Inc. SRA00005801
Start Date: August 5, 2024
Total Annual Costs: $206,967

Thomas Radomski, MD, MS // General Internal Medicine
EVOLV-Rx VA: Evaluating Opportunities to Decrease Low-Value Prescribing in Community Living Centers
I01 HX003849
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2029

Prabir Ray, PhD // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Training of Neutrophils to Defend Against a Lethal Bacterial Infection of the Lung
R21 AI193306
Start Date: July 10, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2027
Total Costs: $430,760

Babak Razani, MD, PhD // Cardiology/Vascular Medicine Institute
Sensing and Clearance of Damaged Lysosomes in Macrophages and Atherosclerosis
R01 HL125838
Start Date: November 4, 2014*
End Date: June 30, 2029
Total Annual Costs: $760,737

Leyla Sade, MD // Cardiology
Left atrial strain: A biomarker of cryptogenic stroke
GE Healthcare Ltd. SRA00004081
Start Date: August 21, 2025
End Date: August 20, 2027

Daniella Schwartz, MD // Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology
A Longitudinal Cohort Study of A20 Haploinsufficiency, a (not so) rare monogenic inflammatory disease
Rheumatology Research Foundation
Start Date: July 1, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2026
Total Annual Costs: $200,000

Lokesh Sharma, PhD (with Joshua Mattila, PhD) // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Identifying a protective role for interferon lambda in tuberculosis
R21 AI193390
Start Date: July 24, 2025
End Date: June 30, 2027
Total Costs: $413,002

Flordeliza Villanueva, MD // Cardiology
Treatment of post-infarction cardiac remodeling using image-guided delivery of microRNA-loaded microbubbles and ultrasound-mediated cavitation
R01 HL178726
Start Date: August 1, 2025
End Date: May 31, 2029
Total Annual Costs: $791,485

Jing Hong Wang, PhD, MD (with Heath Skinner, MD, PhD, and Jianhua Xing, PhD) // Malignant Hematology and Medical Oncology
Analysis of high dimensional genomic dataset to reveal mechanistic insights on divergent outcomes of head and neck cancer using system biology modeling coupled with experimental validation
R01 DE034974
Start Date: September 19, 2025
End Date: September 18, 2028
Total Costs: $1,899,042

Dhiraj Yadav, MD, MPH, and Frederico Toledo, MD // Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition & Endocrinology and Metabolism
UPMC Clinical Center for the Study of Diabetes after Acute Pancreatitis
U01 DK127377
Start Date: September 17, 2020*
End Date: July 31, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $508,800

Dhiraj Yadav, MD, MPH, and Frederico Toledo, MD // Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition & Endocrinology and Metabolism
UPMC Clinical Center for the Study of Chronic Pancreatitis and Diabetes
U01 DK108306
Start Date: September 28, 2015*
End Date: June 30, 2030
Total Annual Costs: $556,500

Kenta Yamamoto // Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology
Post-transcriptional regulation in T cells
F30 AI186235
Start Date: September 1, 2025
End Date: August 31, 2028
Total Annual Costs: $54,538

Lianghui “Lucy” Zhang, MD, PhD (with John Alcorn, PhD) // Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine & Vascular Medicine Institute
Pathogenic mechanisms of chronic lung sequelae following respiratory viral infection
R01 HL176849
Start Date: August 10, 2025
End Date: May 31, 2029
Total Annual Costs: $754,729

*Competitively renewed