Brookings Scholar Wins Prestigious NIH Science Award

Brookings Senior Fellow Joshua M. Epstein has been awarded a 2008 National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award by NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, who conferred the Award today at the Fourth Annual NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Symposium. Dr. Epstein is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and Director of The Brookings Center on Social and Economic Dynamics (CSED).

Now in its fifth year, the NIH Director's Pioneer Award is among the most competitive and prestigious awards in American research, designed to support scientists of extraordinary creativity for high-risk projects with the potential to have a transformative impact in the biomedical or behavioral sciences. Dr. Epstein’s Pioneer Award provides $2.5 million in direct costs over five years for his research.

“Josh Epstein's award highlights Brookings’ commitment to high quality research,” Brookings president Strobe Talbott said. “This award confirms what we already knew: that Josh Epstein is a pioneer of increasingly advanced and impact-driven science that has very important implications for our national and economic security.”

Dr. Epstein is a renowned leader in the field of agent-based modeling, which applies computer simulation to explain and project the dynamics of infectious diseases such as smallpox and pandemic flu, and chronic diseases such as obesity and smoking. These techniques are being used to design novel public policies for diseases mitigation and disaster preparedness at all scales and levels of government, from local to global.

“Nothing is more important to me than stimulating and sustaining deep innovation…These highly creative researchers are tackling important scientific challenges with bold ideas and inventive technologies that promise to break through barriers and radically shift our understanding,” said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni.

Epstein will use his Pioneer Award to focus on both the epidemiology of public health behaviors (such as vaccine refusal) and the role of behavioral factors in the progress of infectious and chronic diseases. Epstein has championed the view that these behavioral factors are integral to the dynamics of disease, but have been largely ignored in previous models. His methods will permit their incorporation, with potentially major implications for the public health field.

“I am profoundly honored to receive this prestigious award,” Epstein said. “I am also pleased that it will highlight the diversity of work undertaken at Brookings, and will underscore how scientific research can help policy makers arrive at informed decisions.”

Most recently, Epstein's Center won the 2008 Modeling & Simulation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Analysis from the National Training and Simulation Association for the Large-Scale Agent Model. In addition to his work at Brookings’ CSED, Epstein is lead investigator for Modeling and Simulation at the Johns Hopkins University Center of Excellence for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER) and is director of the Global Epidemic Model for the National Institutes of Health's Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS). He is External Professor at The Santa Fe Institute and Visiting Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.