- Rita Allen Foundation

All Scholars

Since 1976, the Rita Allen Foundation has awarded millions of dollars in grants to early-career biomedical scholars. These grants allow Rita Allen Foundation Scholars to establish labs and pursue research directions with above-average risk and promise. See below for a full list of Scholars, or read more about the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars program.

1985

Bruce P. Bean
Harvard Medical School
Brent H. Cochran
Tufts University School of Medicine (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Stanley M. Goldin +
Harvard Medical School

Stanley M. Goldin

Stanley Goldin earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has served on the Harvard Medical School faculty since 1979. Formerly an associate professor and the director of Harvard’s Pharmacological Sciences Training Program, he is now on faculty of the National Science Foundation-funded Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative, an inter-institutional research collaborative devoted to elucidating brain mechanisms, spawning new therapies for brain disorders.

Goldin is a senior inventor on 25 U.S. biotechnology patents; his laboratory originated award-winning research techniques and devices that have been fruitfully employed to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying brain waves and brain oscillation circuitry—processes now known to play an important role in long-term brain changes (neuroplasticity) and memory formation. As a scientific cofounder of the biotechnology company Cambridge NeuroScience, he also led research producing a novel neuroprotective compound reaching advanced clinical trials for stroke and traumatic brain injury. His honors include a McKnight scholarship, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Searle Scholars Award, and the Clapp and Poliak Award for Engineering Design. Goldin is now finishing a book, Ascent of the Human Brain, on modern neuroscience’s impact on our understanding of human consciousness and evolution.
Winship Herr +
University of Lausanne (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)

Winship Herr

Winship Herr obtained his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University, where he worked with Walter Gilbert. Following six months in the laboratory of Frederick Sanger at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, Herr joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in 1983. He was appointed to the laboratory staff in 1984, and remained until 2005, when he joined the University of Lausanne. In 1998, Herr spearheaded the establishment of the Watson School of Biological Sciences and the accreditation of CSHL as a Ph.D. degree-granting institution. He served as the school’s founding dean from 1998 to 2004. Besides being a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar, Herr is a former National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow, Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow and CSHL Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Biological Sciences. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and has received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the Watson School of Biological Sciences.

Herr is interested in how the two complete sets of instructions contained within the genomes we inherit from our parents direct a single cell—the zygote—to become an adult human being. This process results from controlled patterns of gene expression that are maintained, as well as changed, during many rounds of cell division, differentiation and death. Control of gene transcription is fundamental to these processes—with genetic and epigenetic defects in transcriptional regulation often leading to human diseases, including cancer. To investigate transcriptional regulation, Herr’s laboratory studies HCF-1, a key regulator of human cell proliferation. Within our cells, HCF-1 resides at many transcriptional start sites, recognizing promoter-specific transcription factors and recruiting enzyme complexes involved in chromatin structure regulation (e.g., states of histone acetylation and methylation) for activation and repression of transcription.
Carl S. Parker +
California Institute of Technology

Carl S. Parker

Carl Parker earned his B.A. from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the faculty at Caltech in 1981.

Research in the Parker lab focuses on the molecular mechanisms cells use to respond to physiological stress such as heat shock. He and his collaborators are interested in understanding how heat, for example, is transduced into a massive transcriptional activation response that results in the synthesis of heat shock proteins.

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