Mountain Brook resident named Pew Scholar biomedical sciences

Summer Thyme — a Mountain Brook resident and an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology at UAB — was recently named one of 22 early-career researchers selected to join the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences.

Thyme and the other scientists will receive research funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts over the next four years, according to a media release from UAB News.

The 2021 Pew Scholars were chosen from 198 applicants nominated by U.S. academic institutions and researchers.

“I am honored to be named a Pew Scholar, and I am thankful for the supportive environment of UAB and the Department of Neurobiology that helped make this possible,” Thyme said in the media release.

“UAB is a great environment to do cutting-edge science,” Thyme told Village Living in 2020.

The Pew Scholar grant support will provide Thyme with $75,000 a year for four years.

In her UAB lab, Thyme is developing methods for dissecting the genetic causes of neurodevelopmental disease through her study of zebrafish, which share about 70 percent of their genes with humans.

This is the fourth time that Thyme has received a prestigious award for early-stage investigators.

She received a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience in spring 2020, a Mallinckrodt Grant from the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation in St. Louis in fall 2020 and an Alkermes Pathways Research Award in 2021.

One of five Pew Biomedical Scholars who will make up the sixth class of the Kathryn W. Davis Aging Brain Scholars, Thyme is only the third UAB researcher to be named a Pew Scholar since the program began in 1985.

Only about 1,000 scientists overall have received awards from Pew, and only one application per institution is allowed annually.