PROVIDENCE – The National Institutes of Health has awarded Gilad Barnea, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Brown University, a nearly $1.3 million, four-year Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (EUREKA) grant, the school announced last week.

The NIH created the EUREKA program in July 2007 “to fund exceptionally innovative research that, if successful, will have an unusually high impact.” The agency awarded 38 grants worth $42.2 million in its first round of grants last year. The recipients included Michael J. Tarr, a professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown.

“EUREKA projects promise remarkable outcomes that could revolutionize science,” NIH Director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni said last September. “The program reflects NIH’s commitment to supporting potentially transformative research, even if it carries a greater than usual degree of scientific risk.”

Barnea received his EUREKA grant to support “development of a method to selectively monitor the activation of each of the five receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.” It could lead to more targeted treatments for mental illnesses and other diseases, according to Brown.

“It can make a big impact on the development of new drugs for multiple disorders,” Barnea said in a news release.