The Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research Names its 2023 Fellows
NEW HAVEN, CT– June 27, 2023 – The research landscape has changed greatly since the Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research (JCC) first awarded fellowships to postdoctoral scientists almost 80 years ago. What has remained constant is the quality and potential impact of the science it supports, and this year’s class of fellows is no exception.
Twenty-seven new fellows were selected from a competitive field based on their doctoral research accomplishments, innovative research plans, and their chosen scientific mentors. Awardees are conducting research in a broad range of biomedical disciplines, from designing novel cancer immunotherapies that can better target solid tumors to understanding the complex neurological processes that underlie pain and anxiety to sleep disorders.
“The Jane Coffin Childs Fund has been successful since its launch in catalyzing the careers of scientific leaders who have gone on to make major scientific contributions that have advanced human health and fundamental science” said Sue Biggins, PhD. “It is a point of pride to see the impact and outcomes that the funding of nearly 1700 Postdoctoral Fellows has produced since the first Fellows were funded in 1944.”
Biggins, former JCC Fellow, Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Director of the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutch in Seattle, is chair of JCC’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Fellows are funded for a three-year term and receive flexible stipend support, which contributes to the attractiveness of the fellowship. As in past years, the JCC partnered with HHMI and Merck Research Laboratories in continued support of the Fellows program. In total, over $7M is committed by the Jane Coffin Childs Fund and partners to the 2023 cohort of Fellows. The next round of applications for the 2024 cohort will open in October 2023.
“The Jane Coffin Childs Fund welcomes the 2023 cohort of Fellows to our distinguished network of scientists around the world and are proud to be able to advance the careers of these exceptional individuals.” said Dr. Anita Pepper, the JCC’s executive director of the Fund.
The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research was established by the Childs Family in 1937, to honor the memory of Jane Coffin Childs. Inspired by the founding purpose to support research into the causes and treatment of cancer, the Fund’s mission has broadened to support fundamental scientific research that advances our understanding of the causes, treatments, and cures for human disease. More information about the fund and the fellows it supports can be found on the website https://www.jccfund.org/.
Profiles for 2023 Fellows:
Gwendolyn Beacham
Siyu Chen
Katherine Deets
Rocky Diegmiller
Martin Douglass
Leah Elias
Sheng Feng
Michelle Fry
Naomi Genuth
Nitsan Goldstein
Chantal Guegler
Changkun Hu
Allison Kann
Xinyu Ling
Jose Orozco
Mark Plitt
Chinmay Purandare
Sahana Rao
Alexandra Schnell
Honglue Shi
Adam Wei Jian Soh
Xulu Sun
Jeffrey Swan
Mabel Tettey
Petra Vande Zande
Pablo Villar
Kevin Wu
Contact Information:
Anita Pepper, Ph.D.
Executive Director
jccfund@yale.edu
