Growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, Elsa Flores was encouraged to follow her unflagging “curiosity about how things work.” Inspired by her father, an educator who studied biology and chemistry, Flores had always envisioned a career in science. But she felt uncertain about where to attend college—whether to…

Hilary Coller caught the biomedical research bug early—as a junior high school student she took part in research that resulted in a first-author scientific publication. Coauthored with her father Barry Coller, a blood and vascular biologist at The Rockefeller University, the paper explored a…

In 1990, Senthil Muthuswamy was a young graduate student in biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He had just moved to Canada from his native India after completing a bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and a master’s degree in genetics at…

Early-career biomedical researchers to examine the underpinnings of human behavior, cancer and chronic pain The Rita Allen Foundation has named its 2016 class of Rita Allen Foundation Scholars, recognizing seven young leaders in biomedical science whose research holds great promise for revealing new pathways to advance human health.

Bruce Stillman counts himself lucky to have been born in 1953, the year James Watson and Francis Crick announced their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, and to have embarked on his research career during the early days of recombinant DNA technology. “It was almost perfect…

Early on in his medical training, Douglas Fearon relished the “scientific problem solving” required to find effective treatments for patients. But as he progressed through his medical degree, internship and residency at Johns Hopkins University, Fearon also grew frustrated by the inability to truly cure diseases.

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…