Lawrence David, PhD, associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University School of Medicine, is one of six U.S. researchers named awardees of the prestigious Schmidt Sciences Polymath Program.
The awardees are being recognized for their boundary-pushing work to achieve scientific breakthroughs. Each will receive up to $2.5 million over five years to support their research. The six U.S. awardees join a global community of 21 Polymaths from six countries.
The Schmidt Polymath Award will support David’s work to seek new genomics methods to uncover healthier, more sustainable diets and food systems and make it feasible to obtain regular, objective, data on the diets of individuals and communities globally.
Earlier this year, David was named a 2024-25 Fullbright Scholar.
The Polymath Program provides significant, flexible multi-year grants to enable awardees to pursue risky, novel theories that would otherwise be difficult to fund.
This year, the program received 117 applications from 65 nominating universities and partners that were evaluated by senior scientists, prior Polymath awardees and other experts.
The six recipients were selected based on both their past achievements — including a demonstrated capacity for high-impact research and high-variance thinking — and their ideas for boundary-breaking future projects.
“Curiosity doesn’t operate in a silo, and neither should science,” said Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Sciences. “That’s why we support several initiatives to enable researchers to pursue interdisciplinary hypotheses, in collaboration. The Schmidt Sciences Polymath Program allows bold, creative thinkers to pursue knowledge across boundaries and in doing so, to help all of us better understand the deep interconnections between people, planet and universe.”