Postdocs receive Weintraub Award

Two Harvard affiliates recently joined 14 other graduate students from North America and Asia to be named 2006 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award recipients. The award is sponsored by the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and nominations are solicited internationally with winners selected on the basis of the quality, originality, and significance of their work.

The Harvard winners are Ryan Phan, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland; and Brenda Bloodgood, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard’s Department of Neurobiology.

The recipients will participate in a scientific symposium May 5-6 at the Hutchinson Center. Recipients will also receive a certificate, travel expenses, and an honorarium from the Weintraub and Groudine Fund, established to foster intellectual exchange through the promotion of programs for graduate students, fellows, and visiting scholars.

Established in 2000, the Weintraub Award honors the late Harold M. Weintraub, a founding member of the center’s Basic Sciences Division who died from brain cancer at age 49. Weintraub was an international leader in the field of molecular biology; among his many contributions, he identified genes responsible for instructing cells to differentiate, or develop, into specific tissues such as muscle and bone.