New York Social Diary: Spring Ahead
On Thursday, May 7th, the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance held its second annual dinner at the Park Avenue Armory, awarding its 2015 Prize in Cancer Research to exceptional innovative scientists in New York City. The evening started with a prestigious panel on Cancer Precision Medicine with Harold Varmus, Nobel Prize winner who has just joined the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College as the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine and was until recently the Director of the NCI for 5 years; Jose Baselga, Physician in Chief Medical Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Marc Rubin, who is the Founding director of the Institute of Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College; Mike Pellini who is CEO of Foundation medicine; and Andy Marshall, Editor of Nature Biotechnology.
The list of illuminous guests included Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, Dean of the Weill Cornell Medical College; Craig B. Thompson, President and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering; Harold Varmus, who’s working with the New York Genome Center and on the Weill Cornell faculty, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, President of Rockefeller University, Bruce Stillman, President of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Mike Dolsten, President of Worldwide Research and Development at Pfizer, Joan Massague, Director of the Sloan Kettering Institute, David Tuveson, Michel Sadelain, Iannis Aifantis, Bill and Karen Ackman, Olivia Flatto, Jamie Nicholls, and Kinga Lampert.
The Pershing Square Sohn Prize, now in its second year, is awarded to scientists based in New York City, a hub for a number of leading academic institutions, research facilities and hospitals. This highly competitive initiative was formed through a $25 million commitment by The Pershing Square Foundation, which partnered with The Sohn Conference Foundation, to help bridge the gap between academia and the business community and to support young scientists at a formative stage in their careers. In order to facilitate these collaborations, each Prize winner is given a mentor in the pharmaceutical industry and the opportunity to present his or her work to scientific and business audiences.
