Newsmakers

Lei, Zhou win Weintraub Award

Graduate student Elissa P. Lei of the Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, and Zhaolan Zhou, former graduate student in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and currently a postdoc fellow at Harvard Medical School, have been selected to receive the 2002 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award. Lei and Zhou join 15 other graduate students from North America and Europe to receive the award. The recipients will present their work at a symposium May 3-4 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Korsmeyer wins Wiley Prize

Professor of Medicine Stanley J. Korsmeyer, a researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been named a co-winner of the inaugural Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences. Korsmeyer, the Sidney Farber Professor of Pathology, is being honored for his discovery of the relationship between human lymphomas and apoptosis, or programmed cell death. His experiments showed that cancer can develop when cancer-causing “oncogenes” block apoptosis, allowing for uncontrolled and chaotic cell growth. H. Robert Horvitz, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the co-recipient of the prize.

Freshman is honored at White House

On Wednesday, March 6, first lady Laura Bush welcomed Abbe Finberg ’05 of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the White House to congratulate her on being honored with a prestigious 2001 National Achievement Award (NAA) from the nonprofit organization Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic® (RFB&D®). As early as the Eisenhower administration, RFB&D’s NAA winners have been invited to meet with presidents, first ladies and cabinet officers in the nation’s capitol.

– Compiled by Andrew Brooks