Valdivia Earns Recognition as 2004 Pew Biomedical Scholar

June 2004 — Fifteen of America's most gifted biomedical scientists, including Raphael Valdivia, an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the Duke University Medical Center, have been chosen as 2004 Pew Biomedical Scholars. Funded by the Trusts and administered through the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the prestigious scholarship program offers each scientist a total award of $240,000 to help support his or her research over a four-year period. The program also provides a unique community for the scientists, who work in laboratories across the nation, enabling them to meet regularly and to discuss ideas, challenges and obstacles across sub-specialties.

The Pew Biomedical Scholars program was launched in 1985 to provide crucial early support to investigators who show outstanding promise in the basic and clinical sciences. The program's premise recognized that resources awarded early in the scholars' careers could provide more independence to some of America's greatest emerging scientific minds, freeing them to focus earlier on their own areas of interest. Since 1985, the Trusts have invested close to $90 million to fund nearly 400 scholars. The Scholars selection process is very competitive as all the nominees are highly regarded in their fields. This year, 127 institutions were invited to nominate a candidate. The scholars were chosen by a distinguished national advisory committee chaired by Dr. Torsten N. Wiesel, president emeritus of Rockefeller University, and a 1981 Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine.