Kevin Eggan Wins Harold M. Weintraub Grad Student Award

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Announces Winners of Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (April 2, 2003) — Sixteen graduate students from North America and Europe, including Kevin Eggan of the Jaenisch lab, have been selected to receive the 2003 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, which is sponsored by the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The recipients, all advanced students at or near the completion of their studies in the biological sciences, will participate in a scientific symposium May 2-3 at Fred Hutchinson’s South Lake Union campus in Seattle, Wash.

Nominations were solicited internationally; the winners were selected on the basis of the quality, originality and significance of their work.

The symposium will include scientific presentations by the awardees as well as poster presentations by Fred Hutchinson graduate students.

The award, established in 2000, honors the late Harold M. Weintraub, Ph.D., a founding member of Fred Hutchinson’s Basic Sciences Division, who in 1995 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.

“Hal was one of the most outstanding scientists of his generation, as well as one of the most unpretentious. Hal had the knack of identifying the important questions in biology and designing experimental approaches that were creative, simple and elegant,” says Mark Groudine, M.D., Ph.D., director of the center’s Basic Sciences Division.

“By nurturing colleagues, students and postdocs, and helping all of us become better scientists, Hal was instrumental in establishing the collegial atmosphere at the Hutchinson Center. We believe having a symposium recognizing the achievements of young scientists is a great way to honor Hal and the recipients of this award,” Groudine said.

The award recipients will 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.

A complete list of 2003 Weintraub awardees follows. To receive a faxed research summary and CV of any of the recipients, please call Kristen Woodward in Fred Hutchinson Media Relations, (206) 667-5095.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, home of two Nobel Prize laureates, is an independent, nonprofit research institution dedicated to the development and advancement of biomedical technology to eliminate cancer and other potentially fatal diseases. Fred Hutchinson receives more funding from the National Institutes of Health than any other independent U.S. research center. Recognized internationally for its pioneering work in bone-marrow transplantation, the center’s four scientific divisions collaborate to form a unique environment for conducting basic and applied science. Fred Hutchinson, in collaboration with its clinical partners, the University of Washington Academic Medical Center and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, is the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in the Pacific Northwest and is one of 39 nationwide. For more information, visit the center’s Web site at www.fhcrc.org.

2003 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award Recipients

Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, N.Y.)
Jeffrey M. Levsky
M.D./Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology

Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas)
Sean E. McGuire
M.D./Ph.D. candidate, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)
Amy A. Caudy
Ph.D. candidate, Watson School of Biological Sciences

Duke University Medical Center (Durham, N.C.)
Charlotte Hubbert
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology

Harvard Medical School (Boston, Mass.)
Kevin C. Wang
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Neurobiology
M.D. candidate, University of California San Francisco Medical School

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, Md.)
Jennifer A. Hackett
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics

Rockefeller University (New York, N.Y.)
Karina Del Punta
Ph.D. candidate, Laboratory of Developmental Biology and Neurogenetics
Current postdoctoral fellow, Rockefeller University

Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.)
Gregory S.X.E. Jefferis
Ph.D. candidate, Neurosiences Program, Department of Biological Sciences

University of California (Berkeley, Calif.)
Iain M. Cheeseman
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Current postdoctoral fellow, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, San Diego

University of California (San Francisco, Calif.)
Sally Horne-Badovinac
Ph.D. candidate, Program in Developmental Biology

Matthew G. Miller
Ph.D. candidate, Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
Feng Shao
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Biological Chemistry

University of Southern California (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Yunmei Ma
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Uppsala Universitet (Uppsala, Sweden)
Andrey V. Zavialov
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology

Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, Miss.)
Zhirong Bao
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Genetics

Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.)
Kevin Eggan
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Biology

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a nonprofit, independent research and educational institution. Wholly independent in its governance, finances and research programs, Whitehead shares a close affiliation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through its faculty, who hold joint MIT appointments.