2023 Honorees

William C. Hahn, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Hahn is the William Rosenberg Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Hahn has made numerous discoveries that have informed our molecular understanding of cancer. His laboratory has pioneered the use of integrated functional genomic approaches to identify and validate cancer targets. The tools, models and approaches that his laboratory has developed are used worldwide to discover and validate molecularly targeted cancer therapies. Dr. Hahn received his A.B. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University in 1987 and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1994. Dr. Hahn has served as President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has been elected to the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Hahn has been the recipient of many honors and awards including the Wilson S. Stone Award from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center for outstanding research in cancer (2000), the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine (2010), the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from AACR (2015) and the Claire and Richard Morse Award (2019). He has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, American Association of Physicians, the National Academy of Inventors and the National Academy of Medicine.

Click here for video: Hahn Acceptance Speech

 

Nathanael Gray, Ph.D.

Dr. Gray is Professor of Chemical and Systems, Biology at Stanford University and the Stanford Cancer Institute Director of Cancer Drug Discovery. Previously, he was a Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and an Investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Prior to that, he was Director of Biological Chemistry at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. Nathanael’s research focuses on the discovery of small molecules that impact biological pathways important in cancer. These efforts have produced numerous first-in-class kinase inhibitors that have become widely used to understand complex biology and have also inspired drug discovery programs. Dr. Gray received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999 after receiving his BS degree with the highest honor award from the same institution in 1995. His research has been recognized by many honors including the Damon Runyon Foundation Innovator Award (2007), the American Chemical Society Award for Team Science (2010), the AACR Award for Outstanding Research in Biological Chemistry (2011), and the Meyenburg Cancer Research Award (2013). Dr. Gray is a founder of Syros Pharmaceuticals and a co-founder of the biotechnology companies C4 Therapeutics and Soltego.

Click here for video: Gray Acceptance Speech

 

Alexander Varshavsky, Ph.D.

Dr. Varshavsky is Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology at the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, CA, where the Varshavsky laboratory is studying the ubiquitin system, with an emphasis on N-degron pathways. During the 1980’s, Dr. Varshavsky and colleagues produced the first evidence that ubiquitin is required for the bulk of protein degradation in living cells. They also discovered the first degradation signals (degrons) in short-lived proteins and biological fundamentals of the ubiquitin system, including its first physiological functions and its crucial mechanistic attributes. Dr. Varshavsky received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1973 at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, Russia. In 1977, he emigrated to U.S.A. and became a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1992 he moved to Caltech as the Smits Professor of Cell Biology. At present, he is Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology at Caltech. Varshavsky is a recipient of more than 30 national and international scientific awards, including the Gairdner Award (Canada, 1999), the Lasker Award (2000), the Wolf Prize (Israel, 2001), the Griffuel Prize (France, 2006), the Gagna Prize (Belgium, 2006), the Warburg Prize (Germany, 2012), the Albany Prize (2014), and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2014). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Click here for video: Varshavsky Acceptance Speech