|
 |
Most graduate students and postdocs in the biomedical sciences associate the name “Ruth L. Kirchstein” with a group of highly sought after awards offered by the NIH, the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA), responsible for 119 individual fellowships and 115 institutional training grants in Maryland out of over 15,000 nationwide.
Congress named the NRSA after Dr. Ruth Kirschstein in 2002. A resident of Bethesda for over 45 years, Dr. Kirschstein was the first woman director of an NIH institute, National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Before that, she made major contributions in the safe development of the polio vaccine. Among many of her accomplishments in her long career with the NIH, she organized funding for and mobilized a team of NIH scientists to research the emerging AIDS epidemic and to search for treatments.
Kirschstein was an advocate of predoctoral research training and for promoting diversity in the scientific community. Entering medical school in 1947, she faced discrimination for being a woman in a primarily male field and even reported receiving a rejection letter from one medical school stating, “We only take men.” While at the NIH, she made it a priority to recruit women scientists in an equal proportion to men, recommending them for peer review panels, and supporting their membership in the Institute of Medicine.
Dr. Kirschstein died in October of 2009, but her name will still usher some promising young scientists onto the path of a research career.
2011…
you are really a good webmaster. The web site loading speed is incredible. It seems that you’re doing any unique trick. Moreover, The contents are masterwork. you’ve done a magnificent job on this topic!…