Photo: Courtesy Yuan-Xiang Tao How can we help the ones we love, when we see them suffering? Yuan-Xiang Tao was motivated to dedicate his career to chronic pain research and developing novel therapeutics early in his youth, after watching his father battle liver cancer. Tao’s father passed away in…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how do you create an image of real-time interactions inside the nervous system? “For the brain and spinal cord, that's a little challenging. Our goal is to shed light on this ‘black box.’ For a very long time, we simply…
The Rita Allen Foundation and the Center for Cooperative Media are pleased to announce recipients of the Cross-field Collaboration Civic Science Journalism pilot initiative to seed and support new civic science journalism efforts and relationships. This new initiative stems from pioneering work that the Foundation and partners have been leading to create a culture of…
The Civic Science Fellows program is announcing opportunities to become a Civic Science Fellow host partner for our next cohort, which will begin in March 2024. Innovative organizations are invited to apply to the Civic Science Fellows program to build engagement around anticipatory, emerging topics in science and technology, where…
Elissa Hallem wasn’t always immersed in the world of parasitic roundworms. In fact, she spent much of her early research career studying Drosophila, the common fruit fly. Inspired to pursue research after participating in Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth program, Hallem began volunteering in Larry Zipursky’s…
Writing in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Elizabeth Christopherson and Sam Gill, presidents of the Rita Allen Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation, respectively, call for science philanthropists to help create lasting public confidence in science by working to address sources of mistrust, “including the lack of diverse perspectives and connection…
Maitreya Dunham gained research experience in many different fields as a student, from genetics to immunology to cancer, but one mighty model organism stuck with her as she set up her own lab to study experimental evolution and genetics: Saccharomyces cerevisiae. “That was one thing about the cancer world…
Carl F. Nathan, R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor and chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been elected to the Rita Allen Foundation Board of Directors. Nathan, whose term begins immediately, is one of the world’s premier researchers in immunology and microbiology. His research explores…
“One night, Jorge Lopez, my mentor in Guatemala during medical school, was playing the piano at a social gathering. While playing, he turned to me and said, ‘Can you imagine how many action potentials are triggered from my fingers and how many in your brain to interpret all this as…
“When I was a kid, it was math that always really fascinated me—I loved logic games. Sitting around doing puzzles with my dad or math questions, that got me going in that direction of problem solving,” remembers Rahul Kohli. As a high school student, Kohli began to see connections…