When philanthropist and alumnus Michael R. Bloomberg gave an unprecedented $350 million to the university in January 2013, he directed the majority of the gift to the creation of 50 Bloomberg Distinguished Professors who would become “human bridges” across the university, undertaking cutting-edge research and education in multiple schools or divisions.

By December 2018, the university announced a total of 38 BDPs—13 additional scholars since the second Ten by Twenty progress report was released in spring 2017—spanning all 10 Johns Hopkins divisions. They are helping catalyze major interdivisional endeavors, such as the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, Space@Hopkins, and the Center for Health Equity, bringing together faculty from across the university to find novel solutions to the world’s biggest problems. As leaders in their fields, the BDPs are strengthening our academic programs and our ability to recruit lateral faculty. And as teachers and mentors to our undergraduates, they are shaping the next generation of thinkers at the crossroads of the disciplines.

We are steadily attracting some of the world’s most creative thinkers to the Hopkins faculty who are engaged in finding innovative solutions for critical global issues as the BDP program unfolds. Among the BDPs hired since the last Ten by Twenty progress report are the program’s first humanists (Lawrence Jackson and Christopher Cannon), the first full joint appointments between the Whiting School and APL (Michael Tsapatsis) and the Krieger School and SAIS (Filipe Campante), and two top, international researchers in the burgeoning field of exoplanets (Sabine Stanley and David Sing).

Photo: Six of the most recently selected BDPs from across the disciplines. From left to right: Lawrence Jackson, Sabine Stanley, David Sing, Vesla Weaver, Richard Huganir, and Ioannis Kevrekidis.