Feinstein Institute hands out award

Bill San Antonio

The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and the monthly medical journal Molecular Medicine announced Thursday that the first Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine will go to Dr. Carl Nathan, the chairman of the department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, for his work in immunology. 

The award includes a $20,000 prize and is conferred semi-annually by the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Molecular Medicine published by the Feinstein Institute, according to a North Shore-LIJ Health System news release.

“Anthony Cerami’s work exemplifies the principle that basic research can be inspired by challenges in medicine and in turn can drive improvements in medical practice,” Nathan said. “It is a special privilege to count him as a friend and to receive the award that bears his name.”

“There is almost no chance in formal scientific publications to tell a personal story, certainly not one that spans more than 50 years,” Nathan added. “I hope this Cerami Award monograph and those that follow will give encouragement to younger scientists that what may seem to be a wandering or invisible path may turn out to be the fastest route to a new place, and that coming on a new place in science, and impacting medical practice, is an incomparable experience.”

Anthony Cerami is the founder, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Araim Pharmaceuticals. He is also the Hermann Boerhaave visiting professor at Leiden University Medical School in the Netherlands.

According to the news release, the Cerami Award is meant to document the story behind discoveries in medicine and health care to inspire future generations of scientific researchers and investigators. 

“The Anthony Cerami Award in Transitional Medicine was created to recognize investigators who provided the crucial early insight and ideas that are the essence of discovery, creating new fields and research trajectories followed by the persistent clinical investigation that ultimately changes how disease is prevented, diagnosed and treated,” said Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, the president of the Feinstein Institute, the editor-in-chief of Molecular Medicine and a Cerami Award committee member. “Carl Nathan epitomizes the insight, genius and resolve that are at the heart of the discovery process.” 

Nathan has also written a monograph that appears in the October edition of the journal, titled “A Journey in Science: Promise, Purpose, Privilege,” in which he wrote, “There are many privileges in research. The most obvious is to choose your own path. The most important is to communicate, potentially with anyone, in terms that allow verifiable understanding. Communication in music, art, literature and dance is limitless in intensity, but indeterminate in accuracy. Van Gogh’s paintings move me, but there is no way to tell if I understand what he wanted to say. In science, we can repeat the experiment. If we get the same result, we understood, and we can build on that.” 

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