Celebration – From the Desk of Dr. Louis M. Weiner

Congratulations to Aykut Üren for receiving the Geza M. Illes Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Georgetown University School of Medicine’s 31st Annual Golden Apple Awards Ceremony. The award honors an outstanding first-year teacher “who serves as an inspirational role model in the field of gross anatomy.” This is a real testimony to his dedication and effectiveness as a teacher. It’s wonderful to know that a fine researcher such as Aykut is able to find the time and energy to make a contribution to training medical students. Speaking of Aykut’s research, he is hosting the Wnt 2009 Conference to be held on June 11-14 here at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall. Clearly he is able to do more than one thing well at a time!

I’ve been feeling a bit jet-lagged. I was in Whistler, British Columbia, co-chairing a Keystone Symposium on Antibodies as Drugs. The meeting was co-located with the Targeted Cancer Therapies Keystone Meeting so I had the wonderful opportunity to go to two meetings in areas of great interest to me. I am told that the skiing was great though all I remember of my down time was staring into a laptop screen editing core grant program write-ups. At least I didn’t break an ankle while using track changes.

Last Thursday afternoon, I chaired the Systems Medicine task force for the GUMC strategic planning initiative. We’re making good progress in understanding how to roll out systems medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center using G-DOC as a template. However we still have a lot of work to do.

I also chatted with Joe Teague and Elena Jeannotte about the upcoming Lombardi Celebration on November 7th. I am pleased to announce Tanya Potter Adler and her husband, Howard Adler, will be our co-chairs. Tanya is the daughter of Dr. John Potter, the founding director of Lombardi, and she is embracing her role with enthusiasm. We are grateful to her for taking on this responsibility.

On the media front, kudos to Todd Waldman for his remarkable appearance on CNN. In contrast to my interview on Fox 5 last Wednesday (only one sentence was picked up), Todd really had a chance to share his ideas, and to an international audience.

Finally, I plan to spend the weekend (when I’m not reviewing core grant write-ups) preparing responses to the various ARRA initiatives. I hope everyone is taking advantage of this remarkable funding mechanism. It is a great way to add depth and strength to our respective research programs.If you want to know more about the opportunities, please refer to the following links:

I’ve had a very busy week, but I believe I will be a lot busier between now and the end of May. Besides the massive amount of work required to get the core grant finalized – and I should note that I am not bearing this burden alone – we are currently being subjected to the perfect storm of funding opportunities from the stimulus package. Everyday it seems that another funding opportunity is released and I am impressed by the vigorous response that many of us at the cancer center are showing to the opportunities being presented. I must say it feels peculiar to have such a potential feast provided to us in the midst of an economic famine at the national and international levels. All I can be sure of is that I will be replacing my blackberry hunch with laptop postural fatigue over the next few months.

Peter Shields, Joe Teague, and I attended a cocktail party hosted by Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) to support the Capital Breast Care Center. The event was at the Senator’s lovely home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The attendees responded warmly to our remarks, though I was surprised that so few of them knew about the CBCC, or knew where it was, even though it’s in their neighborhood. This treasure has been buried, but we will do what we can to assure that everyone knows that it is a special resource to the residents of the District.

Please mark your calendars for the reintroduction of the Lombardi Celebration, formerly known as the Lombardi Gala, on November 7th. We have identified and look forward to announcing the names of this year’s co-chairs.

I spent the first two days of this week in New York City chairing a grants review panel for the Israel Cancer Research Fund. Israeli scientists provide us with clear evidence that it is possible to do wonderful science in a resource constrained environment that would make those of us at Lombardi feel as if we were working in opulent splendor.