This past Tuesday night in New York, Barry Diller, Chairman and CEO of IAC, presented architect Frank Gehry with The New York Stem Cell Foundation Humanitarian Award at Breaking Ground, at the NYSCF’s 4th Annual Dinner Celebration at The Rockefeller University. More than 300 attended.
Also, NYSCF Board Member Dr. Zach W. Hall presented The New York Stem Cell Foundation Leadership Award to Joel S. Marcus, Chairman and CEO of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. The award honors individuals in public life who have resolutely and courageously supported stem cell research;
Dr. Hall noted that Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. has become the nation’s most prominent developer of real estate for the life sciences.
Susan L. Solomon, CEO and co-founder of the foundation said that “This has been a watershed year for stem cell research and for NYSCF.”
She noted that in recent weeks several NYSCF-Druckenmiller Fellows have published research that is moving scientists toward understanding and curing some of the most devastating diseases of the day. “What we have been able to achieve – with the support of so many people in this room – is nothing short of astonishing, though there is much more to accomplish.”
Mr. Gehry received The New York Stem Cell Foundation Humanitarian Award, created to honor people, including non-scientists, who have resolutely and courageously supported stem cell research during a time of exceptional challenge for advanced scientific research in the United States.
As an architect, Mr. Gehry has always worked at the cutting edge of science and technology, and for more than four decades has been actively involved in the work of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, which supports critical research in the life sciences. Most recently, he worked with the foundation to create the Leslie Gehry Brenner Award for Innovation in Science to honor the memory of his daughter, who died in 2008 of uterine cancer. NYSCF saluted Mr. Gehry for his lifetime of support for advanced scientific research.
The program also featured remarks by NYSCF Board Member John Eastman and NYSCF Board Chairman Roy Geronemus MD.
Attendees included dinner co-chairs Chuck Close, Fiona and Stan Druckenmiller, Dorothy Lichtenstein, and Martha Stewart.
Also attending: Henry Buhl, Karen E. Burke, MD, PhD, Russ and Judy Carson, Lewis Cullman, Elizabeth Kabler, Evie Lipper, MD and Bill Speck, MD, Richard D. Kaplan and Edwina Sandys, Richard Meier, Alice Rogoff, Shirley Lord Rosenthal, and Ambassador Carl Spielvogel and Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel.
Honorary co-chairs included Senator Charles E. Schumer, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Senator Arlen Specter, Representative Michael N. Castle, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, and New York State Senator Thomas K. Duane.
Dinner committee members included Maryam and Jonathan Dickey, Jodie and John Eastman, Eileen and Richard Ekstract, Gail and Roy Geronemus, MD; Paul Healy, Debbie and Peter Kahn, Lynn Mackler, Carol Roaman, Lisa and Michael Schultz, Susan L. Solomon and Paul Goldberger, and Susan Towers.
The event took place in conjunction with NYSCF’s Fourth Annual Translational Stem Cell Research Conference [1] on October 13 and 14, 2009, which is devoted to demonstrating the potential of stem cell research to advance cures for the major diseases of our time. |
