Exponent Philanthropy is showcasing words of wisdom from inspirational funders—adding new videos every month through June 2016 

Growing up, Susan Dymecki loved biology, math and engineering. But from the time she donned skates at age 13, she was consumed by an entirely nonacademic passion: ice dancing. She competed nationally throughout high school, and after enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania, took a leave of…

A conversation with Arnold Levine, Honorary Chair of the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars 40th Anniversary Meeting and former Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee Arnold Levine got his start in science as a microbiologist, applying new tools from the nascent field of molecular biology to examine how…

Robert Weinberg began his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the intention of preparing for medical school, but before long he was dissuaded from this path. “I heard that doctors had to stay up all night,” he says, “so I switched to becoming a biologist.”…

A conversation with Kathleen Foley, Rita Allen Foundation Medical Adviser and 1978 Rita Allen Foundation Scholar Kathleen Foley was just beginning to delve into the emerging field of pain assessment and treatment when she was selected as a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar in 1978. As a member of the…

As an undergraduate studying biophysics, Jon Levine didn’t see himself going into medicine. He trained as a neuroscientist, first earning a Ph.D. at Yale, and then beginning a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, on the genetics of flight in fruit flies. It was 1972, and…

With epidemics and outbreaks of Ebola virus, Zika virus, West Nile virus and others posing serious threats, many virologists are scrambling to learn how to better fight these human pathogens. Luis Villarreal has studied viruses for nearly 50 years, and considers them much more than infectious agents. For…

Public Agenda this week released the first-ever comprehensive analysis of participatory budgeting in the U.S. and Canada. Participatory budgeting (PB) is one of the fastest-growing forms of public engagement in local governance. Public Agenda’s report is a great explainer on how communities are doing PB, who is participating…

Nerve cells in the spinal cord are known to be critical for processing and responding to touch and pain signals, but deciphering the precise mechanisms of these activities has been a challenge. A new miniaturized microscope allows researchers to see the activation of individual spinal cord neurons in real time…

When asked to describe her research, Titia de Lange says she has been “working on the same simple question for 25 years.” That’s a modest account of a dogged dedication that has revealed information critical to understanding both genome maintenance and cancer development. De Lange studies how…