Awards & Recognitions: September 2024

Honors received by HMS faculty, postdocs, staff, and students

Awards and Recognitions

3 min read

Gordon Hall

Ann Partridge, Harvard Medical School professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has received the 2024 ESMO Award by the European Society for Medical Oncology. The award recognizes an ESMO member who has made an outstanding contribution to the development of medical oncology.

Partridge was recognized for her work and commitment to advancing the field of breast cancer research, which has led to significant advancements in understanding breast cancer and caring for those who develop the disease. Her research focuses on improving the care and outcomes of patients with cancer, with an emphasis on treatment, survivorship, and psychosocial issues facing women with breast cancer.

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The ESMO Award was presented to Partridge on Sept. 13 at the 2024 ESMO Congress in Barcelona.

Adapted from ESMO press materials.

Marge Livingstone, the Takeda Professor of Neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS, has been awarded the 2024 António Champalimaud Vision Award for groundbreaking contributions to visual neuroscience. The award, presented by the Portugal-based Champalimaud Foundation, is the highest distinction bestowed in ophthalmology and vision science.

Livingstone was recognized with fellow awardees Nancy Kanwisher, of MIT, Doris Tsao, of the University California, Berkeley, and Winrich Freiwald, of Rockefeller University for their innovative contributions to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying facial recognition. Livingstone and her fellow awardees will share the Champalimaud Award’s 1 million-Euro prize.

Livingstone’s research has contributed to the understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying vision. Her work has shown that the first areas of the brain that process what we see — areas V1 and V2 — are organized into separate parts, specializing in color, shape, movement, and depth. This discovery provided the basis for numerous perceptual phenomena and led to a relevant hypothesis for understanding the cause of dyslexia.

Livingstone and her fellow awardees were honored during a ceremony at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon on Sept. 11 presided over by the President of Portugal.

Adapted from Champalimaud Foundation press materials.

Gordon Freeman, HMS professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Arlene Sharpe, the Kolokotrones University Professor and chair of the Department of Immunology at HMS, have been named to receive the 2024 David and Beatrix Hamburg Award for Advances in Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

The Hamburg Award recognizes an exceptional biomedical research discovery, translation, or public health intervention that has fundamentally enriched our understanding of biology and disease, leading to a significant improvement in human health and social well-being and reduction in global health inequities. The award comes with a $50,000 prize.

Sharpe and Freeman were chosen for their breakthrough work identifying costimulatory pathways that control the activation and inhibition of T-cell immune responses.

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Harvard Medical School researcher Joel Habener has won the 2024 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his discovery of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a molecule that has become the basis for therapies which have transformed the treatment of obesity.

Lasker awards, sometimes called “America’s Nobels,” are among the world’s most prestigious biomedical and clinical research awards.

Habener, professor of medicine at HMS and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital, shares the prize with biochemist Svetlana Mojsov, of Rockefeller University, and with Danish scientist Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, of Novo Nordisk.

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HMS Dean for Diversity and Community Partnership Joan Reede has been awarded the 2024 W. Montague Cobb Lifetime Achievement Award by the W. Montague Cobb/National Medical Association Health Institute (the Cobb Institute).

The award recognizes an individual who has made a significant impact on the lives and health of underserved populations and has championed health equity throughout their careers.

Reede was recognized for her commitment to fostering diversity and community partnership in the medical field as the inaugural dean for diversity and community partnership at HMS.

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