This news item is about: Dr. Maria Julia Bevilaqua Felippe, associate professor of medicine at the College of Veterinary Medicine, has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. The $1.5 million grant is presented over five years to stimulate highly innovative research and support promising new investigators who are studying biomedical or behavioral research conditions. A diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine, Felippe will use the funds to challenge current thinking on a disease that renders people and horses highly susceptible to recurrent bacterial infections: Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID).