Awards & Recognition: May 2015

Joan Miller (left) and Patricia D'Amore. Image: Mass Eye and Ear ARVO Achievement Awards

Patricia D’Amore, the HMS Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology at Schepens Eye Research Institute, received the 2015 Proctor Medal at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Annual Meeting in Denver.

The Proctor Medal honors D’Amore’s outstanding research contributions in the basic or clinical sciences as applied to ophthalmology, including her research on vascular growth and development. D’Amore presented an award lecture titled “Regulation of Retinal Vascular Growth: Development, Pathology and Therapeutics.”

Joan Miller, the HMS Henry Willard Williams Professor of Ophthalmology and chair of the HMS Department of Ophthalmology at Mass Eye and Ear, received the ARVO Mildred Weisenfeld Award for Excellence in Ophthalmology.

The award recognizes Miller’s scholarly contributions to the clinical practice of ophthalmology. Miller is the first woman to receive this honor and is being recognized for her research on ocular angiogenesis and its impact on the lives of the vision-impaired. She presented an award lecture titled “Beyond VEGF.”

António Champalimaud Vision Award

Six HMS faculty are among researchers named 2014 Champalimaud Vision Award laureates at a special lecture and event at the ARVO meeting.

Honorees included Joan Miller, Patricia D’Amore, Evangelos Gragoudas, the HMS Charles Edward Witten Professor of Ophthalmology, and Anthony P. Adamis, HMS lecturer on ophthalmology, all at Mass Eye and Ear; also honored were Lloyd Paul Aiello, HMS professor of ophthalmology, and George King, HMS professor of medicine, both at Joslin Diabetes Center.

The António Champalimaud Vision Award is the highest distinction in ophthalmology and visual science and honors outstanding contributions to the preservation and understanding of sight.


Levi GarrawayLevi Garraway, HMS associate professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, was selected as a 2015 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator.

Garraway, the director of the Center for Cancer Precision Medicine at Dana-Farber, focuses on learning how tumors become resistant to cancer drugs. He conducts detailed studies to reveal how genetic and molecular alterations that lurk inside tumor cells cause cancers to grow and spread—and how this knowledge might lead to new, more precise therapies for cancer.

HHMI's mission is to advance biomedical research and science education for the benefit of humanity. The HHMI Investigator Program provides flexible, long-term support and encourages scientists to push their research fields into new areas of inquiry.


Seven HMS students have been named to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Research Fellows Program. This year, the program selected 68 students who are able to pursue biomedical research at academic or nonprofit research initiations anywhere in the United States. Mai Dao, Allison Dobry, Brian Li, Jessica Ruiz, Alireza Samiei and Sumi Sinha, will continue their research at HMS. Ryan Park, an HMS HHMI fellow from 2014-2015, was granted funding for an additional year in the program.

The HHMI Fellowship is given annually to the top medical and veterinary students from different schools in the United States to conduct full-time biomedical research. The $2.8 million allows students a full year of mentored research training with some of the nation’s top biomedical scientists.


Two HMS professors have been recognized as two of Boston magazines 50 “Most Powerful People,” for 2015.

Atul Gawande is the HMS Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the author of Being Mortal and a staff writer for the New Yorker. Elizabeth Nabel is HMS professor of medicine and president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital; in February, she was named the NFL’s first chief medical adviser.


Stephen C. Harrison. Image: Bachrach StudiosFor his groundbreaking work at the intersection of chemistry and biology, Stephen C. Harrison, the Giovanni Armenise – Harvard Professor of Basic Biomedical Science in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, will receive the 2015 Welch Award in Chemistry.

Harrison studies complex macromolecular structures such as proteins and nucleic acids to understand their biological functions. His work on the mechanisms of viruses and the human immune response to viruses has enabled discoveries that may yield better vaccines and treatments for diseases such as the common cold, influenza, HIV, West Nile virus, dengue and yellow fevers and Ebola.

“His breakthroughs in basic research have improved our understanding of the chemistry that underlies biological systems and led to important advances in preventing and treating disease,” said Wilhelmina E. (Beth) Robertson, chair of the Welch Foundation, which grants the $300,000 award annually to honor lifetime achievement in basic research in chemistry.

Harrison said he is particularly pleased to be recognized as a chemist. “Structural biologists are translators; we seek to describe the phenomena of cell biology in the language of chemistry. So I am both thrilled and somewhat awed to find myself considered a real practitioner of chemistry and included in a succession of remarkable previous awardees,” he said.


Bruce Spiegelman with Queen Mathilde of Belgium

Bruce Spiegelman, the HMS Stanley J. Korsmeyer Professor of Cell Biology and Medicine and director of the Center for Energy Metabolism and Chronic Disease at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has received Belgium’s most important international scientific prize for his contributions to understanding the mechanisms of metabolic disorders.

Queen Mathilde of Belgium presented Spiegelman with the 2015 Health Prize of the InBev-Baillet Latour Fund at a ceremony in Brussels on April 24. The Health Prize is awarded by the InBev-Baillet Latour Fund, which “aims to reward projects of high human value that hold hope and promise for the well-being of society.”

The prize includes a cash award of 250,000 euros, approximately $270,000. First awarded in 1970, the Health Prize is intended to promote basic research and its applications to human health.

Spiegelman’s work “has revolutionized our views on the control of energy metabolism and on fat tissue,” the citation said. In a series of discoveries, he showed that fat tissue secretes hormones and he identified PPAR γ, a master regulator of fat cell development, and two other regulatory proteins – PGC-1α and PRDM16. Recently he also identified a new type of fat cell, the “beige” adipocyte, with important metabolic functions.

“I’m pleased that our basic work on energy metabolism and fat cell development has been recognized both within and outside our field,” said Spiegelman in a statement.

“This reflects great work by many of my trainees over a long period of time,” he commented. “I hope that our research will open the door to new therapies in diseases like diabetes and cancer.”


Seven Harvard faculty are among the 84 newly elected members of the National Academy of Sciences who were recognized on April 28 for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Joining the academy from Harvard Medical School are the following:

Alfred Goldberg, professor of cell biology in the Department of Cell Biology

Jeannie Lee, professor of genetics and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator

Hao Wu, Asa and Patricia Springer Professor of Structural Biology and professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology