Dr. Dura-Bernal's lab is part of a team awarded a 2024 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award, led by Columbia University. These  awards “support exceptionally innovative, high-risk, and/or unconventional research projects with the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms fundamental paradigms.” The proposal titled “Astrocytes as the integrators of neuromodulator signals” and has wide-ranging implications for brain function and disease. His lab will develop a pioneering computational model of cortical circuits that incorporates detailed astrocyte morphologies and neuron-astrocyte molecular signaling pathways.