The Newborn Brain Society is proud to announce the recipients of the 2025 Early Career Award, selected by the Quality Improvement and Research Committee.
Now in its fourth year, the Early Career Award supports promising investigators dedicated to advancing knowledge and care for the fetal and neonatal brain. Each recipient will receive a $10,000 grant to support their innovative research projects.
Learn more about the 2025 awardees, their backgrounds, and their projects below.
Daphney Clermont-Cheng, MD, MPH
Neonatal-Perinatal Fellow
Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States
Project: Epigenetic Biomarkers of Perinatal Brain Injury Secondary to Chorioamnionitis and Targeted Therapies
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Dr. Clermont-Cheng is a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics (Division of Neonatology). She earned her medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine, followed by a Master of Public Health with a concentration in biostatistics and epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She subsequently completed her pediatric residency at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
As a neonatology fellow, Dr. Clermont-Cheng is engaged in clinical care, research, and the education of residents and medical students. Her clinical and research interests center on mitigating risk factors for perinatal brain injury and improving long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes for vulnerable infants.
She is currently engaged in quality improvement initiatives aimed at optimizing postnatal management of very low birth weight infants to reduce complications of prematurity and support early brain development. Concurrently, her translational bench research investigates inflammatory and metabolic mechanisms underlying perinatal brain injury associated with chorioamnionitis and prematurity, with the objective of identifying neurorestorative therapeutic targets.
Support from the Newborn Brain Society Early Career Award will facilitate Dr. Clermont-Cheng’s development of an interdisciplinary, translational research program that bridges mechanistic discovery with clinical application, promotes collaborative neonatal neuroscience research, advances equity in neurodevelopmental outcomes, and aligns with the NBS mission to improve brain health for all newborns.
Hawley Helmbrecht, PhD
JHU Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States
Project: Identifying the Lifelong Role of Reactive Astrocytes in Posthemorrhagic Hydrocephalus of Prematurity
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Hawley Helmbrecht, PhD is a 3rd year postdoctoral fellow working under Dr. Lauren Jantzie, PhD and in collaboration with Dr. Shenandoah Robinson at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on the East Baltimore Campus. Dr. Helmbrecht completed her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in Chemical Engineering in the Disease Directed Engineering Lab working under Dr. Elizabeth Nance, PhD. Dr. Helmbrecht’s Ph.D. thesis work focused on data science and machine learning methods for quantifying complex, multimodal data including (1) classifying microglial morphology in pediatric brain injury models and (2) designing a drug-brain database for exploring drug development parameters while also pursuing engineering education research on improved methods for learning computational and wet lab techniques. Dr. Helmbrecht’s postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Jantzie focuses on the lifelong impacts of dysregulated CSF and immune cell dynamics in posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus.