Several Rita Allen Foundation Scholars have explored the genetic and cellular mechanisms that enable living things to adapt and survive in the face of an ever-changing environment. With support from the Foundation, these pioneering researchers have developed new ways to study the complex dynamics of DNA, track the activity of…
Susan Dymecki, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, has been named to the Rita Allen Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee. The Committee consists of leading scientists and clinicians from outstanding research institutions. Drawing on their collective experiences in medical discovery and development, members of the Committee…
“Scaling Civic Tech: Paths to a Sustainable Future,” provides analysis and interviews with nearly 50 stakeholders A new report offers an in-depth view into the emerging civic tech industry, revealing the opportunities and challenges faced by organizations working to connect citizens with their government when seeking to scale and…
Tae Hoon Kim began his training in bioinformatics before the term even entered common usage. As a college intern in the early 1990s at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, he learned state-of-the-art computational methods for analyzing DNA sequences. His work contributed to a new understanding…
Many in the philanthropic community are expressing concern about a growing disregard for truth and evidence in American society. Rejection of scientific evidence—whether on climate change, vaccine safety, evolution or nuclear power—highlights the need to better understand the complex dynamics at work, and what can be done to strengthen the…
Three Rita Allen Foundation Scholars have received awards from the National Institutes of Health for their proposals “to use highly innovative approaches to tackle major challenges in biomedical research.” Jeffrey Macklis (a 1991 Scholar, as well as a member of the Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Committee) and…
Adnaan Wasey to develop media formats to engage new audiences with science…
Peter Reddien delights in reviving what he calls “one of the grand problems of biology.” He applies modern molecular tools to study regeneration in planarian flatworms—a phenomenon first documented by scientists as early as 1766. These freshwater creatures, which are a few millimeters long, can replace a…
Johanna Joyce’s first task as a research scientist was to clone a chicken gene. This was in the 1990s, when she was an undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin. At the time, she says, “cloning a gene was a big deal—it seems trivial now.” Johanna Joyce(Photo:…
DataKind’s Jake Porway on defining problems, employing social design, and taking data science in new directions…