Post by Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

We are excited to announce that IID professor Dr. Manoj Duraisingh and bioengineering professor Dr. Ahmad (Mo) Khalil have received the Star-Friedman Challenge grant for their collaborative project to engineer red blood cells to detect diseases. 🩸 The Star-Friedman Challenge grant supports “high risk, high reward,” scientific research. For the 2026 program, seven Harvard faculty projects were selected from 88 proposals. On one side of campus, Dr. Duraisingh’s lab studies host-parasite interactions during the blood stage of malaria infections, ➡️and on the other, Dr. Khalil engineers cells—such as white blood cells—to treat disease. Together, their cross-campus collaboration aims to enable red blood cells that can signal the presence of disease, 🚨 potentially enabling earlier, more accurate diagnoses and more targeted treatments. We are grateful to all the researchers and faculty who are asking creative questions and pursuing bold scientific ideas to try to better the world. Congratulations to Dr. Duraisingh, Dr. Khalil, and all of this year's Star-Friedman Challenge Grant recipients. 👏🎉 Learn more about the IID’s collaboration and all the 2026 awardees 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gKRhDAVK #RedBloodCells #DiseaseDetection #Collaboration