Irene Cheung, SM ’74, SD ’77, and Nai-Kong V. Cheung, MD ’76, PhD ’78

As a physician-scientist team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Irene Y. Cheung, SM ’74, SD ’77, and Nai-Kong V. Cheung, MD ’76, PhD ’78, say they have been fortunate to be able to pursue their goals and realize their dreams—a life journey that they began together decades ago, when they met as Harvard students. Now, hoping to assist future students on similar journeys, the couple have redoubled their recent efforts to support scholarship opportunities at Harvard Medical School, giving $1 million to establish the NK and Irene Cheung Family REACH Scholarship.

REACH, which since 2017 has committed $8.33 million to 113 students, decreases the loan burden for students who demonstrate qualities of Resilience, Excellence, Achievement, Compassion, and Helping the underserved. “This past year, Irene and I decided to put a major focus on assisting young scholars in pursuing their dreams, helping newcomers into the field of science and medicine,” says Nai- Kong Cheung. “The REACH program fits that bill.”

Andrea Ewing Reid, MD ’88, MPH ’01, associate dean for student and multicultural affairs in the HMS Program in Medical Education and director of the HMS Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs, says she’s grateful for the Cheungs’ contribution to REACH because it will directly impact HMS’s ability to recruit a diverse class. “There is tremendous competition for students accepted to HMS, and REACH allows us to close the gap and attract more of these fantastic students and to share their prodigious gifts with the broader HMS community,” she says.

With their contribution, the Cheungs have expressed a preference to support MD students in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), of which Nai-Kong Cheung is an alumnus. The program’s approach toward medicine resonates with the couple, who say that medicine should be, among other things, evidence-based (“built on modern science and engineering”); dynamic (“evolving as the science keeps correcting itself”); and should challenge conventional thinking (“a continual renaissance, not to dominate or exclude, but to be part of the whole, and to enrich the collective experience”).

Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD, co-director of the HST program and the Robert H. Ebert Professor of Medicine at HMS and Massachusetts General Hospital, says he is highly appreciative of and deeply grateful to the Cheungs for their generosity and support of the HST program. “This will allow us to attract and even better support students dedicated to becoming innovative and compassionate physician-scientists,” he says.

The full impact of the couple’s gift will be felt far beyond the School, says HMS Dean for Medical Education Edward M. Hundert, MD ’84. “Deep gratitude to the Cheungs is due not just from us and the students who will benefit directly from their generous scholarship,” he says, “but from all the future patients who will benefit from the care those students will provide and from the cures they will create over the course of their careers.”