Nominations are open starting today for the Stem Cell Person of the Year Award for 2016. Please email me your nominations: knoepflerATucdavisDOTedu.
This is a unique award as it is given to an individual who has taken risks to help others within the stem cell field and they based their actions on outside-the-box thinking.
Another unusual aspect is that anyone is eligible for the prize whether you are a scientist, physician, patient, writer, student, etc. There are also no geographic restrictions.
The winner receives recognition as a positive leader in this arena and a $2,000 cash prize that I award myself out of pocket.
Nominations will close one month from today on October 15th.
The nominations I receive will then be subject to an Internet vote and the top 50% will be the finalists, from which I will choose the winner. While I alone choose the winner, I often get feedback from leaders around the globe in the stem cell and regenerative medicine field.
Previous winners include these stellar stem cell leaders:
- Top stem cell scientist Jeanne Loring in 2015. Note that Jeanne deferred getting her $2,000 prize money, which I then gave to Summit for Stem Cell, an amazing patient-based stem cell organization.
- Pioneering vision and pluripotent stem cell clinical researcher, Masayo Takahashi in 2014.
- Neural stem cell scientist and very effective Italian politician Elena Cattaneo in 2013.
- Stem cell patient advocate Roman Reed in 2012.
Who will win the Stem Cell Person of the Year Award for 2016? Send me your nominations.
perhaps Jun Takahashi, who is developing an iPSC-based therapy for Parkinson’s disease.
That’s a good nomination.
Probably not widely known outside if the field of xenogenic organ transplantation and cloning, but I nominate Prof. Hiroshi Nagashima, Meiji University, Tokyo, another true translational scientist (with a wicked sense of humor!)
Thanks to everyone so far for the great nominations!
Paul
Hi, there are many outstanding candidates indeed.
This year the term perhaps best goes for Nissim Benvenisty (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) for development of Haploid human ES — a major acheivment and contributions for many years to come.
http://benvenisty.huji.ac.il/
Cheers,
R
I nominate Professor Dr. John Pimanda (University of New South Wales, Sydney) for the following work:
http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/health/medical-scientists-develop-%E2%80%98game-changing%E2%80%99-stem-cell-repair-system
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/E2306.abstract
http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-stem-cell-repair-system-that-can-regenerate-any-kind-of-human-tissue
This could maybe become a game changing therapy for humans.
I nominate Arnold Caplan from Case Western Reserve.