Tackling the ‘Impossible’

Spring 2023

 Last year, the Whiting School and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory partnered to create SURPASS, an initiative aimed at developing groundbreaking solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. In this first year, the program received 47 initial whitepaper submissions, seven of which were chosen as finalists. Of those, four were selected to receive funding.

The four winning proposals are:

• BEAST: Between Earth and Space, the Next Strategic Flight Regime, with principal investigators Kevin Hemker (Whiting School) and Melissa Terlaje (APL)

• CEREBRO: Enabling the Next Step of Human Evolution, with principal investigators Amy Foster (Whiting School) and Nicholas G. Pavlopoulos (APL)

• Organoid Intelligence: Synthetic Biological AI, with principal investigators Thomas Hartung (Whiting School/Bloomberg School of Public Health) and Erik C. Johnson (APL)

• Photoacoustic Retinal Prosthesis, with principal investigators Emad Boctor (Whiting School) and Seth Billings (APL)

SURPASS program organizers say these proposals have the potential to lead to larger translational efforts with external funding upwards of $100 million. The Whiting School is providing funding of approximately $3.75 million to be shared across the four selected projects over an 18-month period.

In At WSE