Global Health Innovator William H. Foege to Receive Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage

The Georgia Institute of Technology has named William H. Foege as the recipient of the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage. A transformational leader in global health policies who made possible the eradication of smallpox and other diseases worldwide, Foege will be honored during the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Founder's Day events March 14-15, 2012.

“Dr. Foege’s ability to develop and implement innovative health strategies has alleviated much human suffering in our world today and for generations to come,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson.  “It is our privilege to honor Dr. Foege for his deep moral commitment to humanitarian progress and his lifetime of service through Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen Prize for Social Courage.”

During a career spanning 60 years, Foege championed domestic and international health policies emphasizing disease eradication and control, and issues of child survival and development, injury prevention, population control, preventive medicine, and public health leadership, particularly in the developing world.  Through leadership roles at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Carter Center and the Task Force for Child Survival, Foege guided early response to the HIV/AIDS crisis; oversaw the eradication of Guinea worm disease, polio and measles, and the elimination of river blindness overseas; and advocated policies that vastly accelerated childhood immunization in developing countries. He is also credited with bringing to life visions for global health at both The Carter Center and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage recognizes individuals such as Foege who, by standing up for clear moral principles in the social arena, have positively affected public discourse at the risk of their own careers, livelihoods and even their lives. The Prize is supported in perpetuity through a commitment by the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation.

“Like former Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr., Dr. Foege has envisioned a better world and created communities for realizing that dream in the face of seemingly insurmountable problems,” said Jacqueline J. Royster, dean of the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.  “His courage to do the right thing and his steadfastness, sometimes in the face of staunch opposition, has saved millions of lives and reshaped the global dialog about what is possible in health and social progress.”

As a young epidemiologist working in Nigeria in the 1960s, Foege discovered the power of the surveillance/containment vaccination strategy for eradicating smallpox.  He braved civil war there to ensure that the last pocket of the disease was eliminated.  Elsewhere in Africa and India, he overcame resistance to the new vaccination strategy, ultimately enabling the world to rid itself of this devastating disease.

Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to head the CDC, Foege enlarged the organization’s mandate beyond infectious diseases to encompass the full spectrum of human health.  In 1984, Foege co-founded the Task Force for Child Survival and Development as a working group for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, The World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the Rockefeller Foundation. The forerunner of today’s Task Force for Global Health, the Task Force under Foege increased childhood immunizations worldwide from 20 percent to 80 percent, and expanded its mandate in 1991 to engage challenges such as malnutrition and hunger.

Foege remains active in many organizations.  He is on the Advisory Board for the Emory University Global Health Institute and is a professor emeritus, at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.  He attended Pacific Lutheran University, earned a medical degree from the University of Washington and a Master of Public Health from Harvard University.

More information on the Allen Prize can be found at the following link: http://www.ivanallenprize.gatech.edu/home/

http://www.foundersday.iac.gatech.edu

Survey Reveals Scientists Have Trouble Accessing Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines

The promise of stem cell research for drug discovery and cell-based therapies depends on the ability of scientists to acquire stem cell lines for their research.

A survey of more than 200 human embryonic stem cell researchers in the United States found that nearly four in ten researchers have faced excessive delay in acquiring a human embryonic stem cell line and that more than one-quarter were unable to acquire a line they wanted to study.

"The survey results provide empirical data to support previously anecdotal concerns that delays in acquiring or an inability to acquire certain human embryonic stem cell lines may be hindering stem cell science in the United States," said Aaron Levine, an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Results of the survey were published in the December issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology. Funding for the study was provided by the Kauffman Foundation's Roadmap for an Entrepreneurial Economy Program.

Levine administered the web-based survey in November 2010 to more than 1,400 stem cell scientists working at U.S. academic and non-profit medical research institutions. Almost 400 respondents from 32 states completed the survey. Of those, 205 respondents reported using human embryonic stem cells in their research, and their responses were used in this study.

The surveyed scientists cited four main reasons for their problems accessing human embryonic stem cell lines: difficulty obtaining material transfer agreements, failure to acquire research approval from internal institutional oversight committees, cell line owners that were unwilling to share and federal policy considerations.

"Bureaucratic challenges may be inevitable in this ethically contentious and politically sensitive field, but policymakers should attempt to mitigate these issues by doing things like encouraging institutions to accept third-party ownership verification and providing clearer guidance on human embryonic stem cell research not eligible for federal funding," said Levine, who is also a member of the Georgia Tech Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.

The broad patents assigned to the initial inventors of the method used to isolate embryonic stem cells and numerous narrower patents claiming specific human embryonic stem cell-related techniques are also factors complicating access to human embryonic stem cell lines, according to Levine.

When survey respondents were asked how many of the more than 1,000 existing human embryonic stem cell lines they used, 76 percent reported using three or fewer lines and 54 percent reported using two or fewer lines in their research. More than half of the 130 respondents cited access issues as a major reason they chose to use specific cell lines in their research.

"These results illustrate that many human embryonic stem cell scientists in the United States are not conducting comparative studies with a diverse set of human embryonic stem cell lines, which raises concern that at least some results are cell-line specific rather than broadly applicable," said Levine. "Federal and state funding agencies may want to consider encouraging research using multiple diverse human embryonic stem cell lines to improve the reliability of research results."

Embryonic stem cell lines are being used to develop new cellular therapies for various diseases, to screen for new drugs and to better understand inherited diseases. It's crucial that diverse lines are available for this research to ensure that all individuals benefit from the results.

While availability was cited as the most common factor affecting scientists' choices regarding which cell lines to use, other considerations included suitability for a specific project, familiarity with specific lines, a desire to reduce complications in the laboratory, cost, the extent of relevant literature and the preferences of scientists' colleagues.

Three of the initial human embryonic stem cell lines derived at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1990s were the lines most commonly used by respondents. Cell lines H1, H9 and H7 were used by 79, 68 and 26 percent of respondents, respectively. Scientists also reported using more than 100 other lines, but each of these was used by fewer than 12 percent of respondents.

"Other research communities in the life sciences have experienced material access problems and they addressed them, in part, by creating centralized information and data sharing hubs, including public DNA sequence databases, tissue banks and mouse repositories. The stem cell research community has taken promising steps in this direction, but this analysis should encourage the community to continue and, if possible, accelerate these efforts," added Levine.

Written by Abby Robinson, Research News & Publications Office

Related Links

• Nature Biotechnology paper
• Aaron Levine
• School of Public Policy
• Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience

Georgia Tech is Collaborating with South Africa on Measuring Science, Technology, and Innovation

Susan Cozzens, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Public Policy, has been working with South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) on measuring science, technology, and innovation. 

Cozzens met with HSRC leadership and researchers in South Africa this fall as a follow-up to HRSC CEO Olive Shisana’s visit to Georgia Tech in November 2010 to explore possible collaborations. 

The 2011 meeting focused on areas of common interest between Georgia Tech and the HRSC such as measuring and developing science, technology, and innovation indicators. Discussions included innovation in the informal sector (businesses that operate outside government regulation); the need to benchmark and develop policy briefs on the impact of R&D and innovation surveys on the knowledge-based economy; and the role of women in science and technology. Projects are also being developed on factors that contribute to effective public service delivery in cities.

Cozzens was in South Africa in connection with her research on nanotechnology in society, and is pursuing collaborative work with HSRC researchers on the impacts in the South African economy of nanotechnology applications in water, energy, and agrifood.

Fred Rossini, Influential Former Liberal Arts Faculty Member, Passes Away

Frederick Anthony Rossini, a Georgia Tech faculty member in social sciences during the 1970s and 1980s, passed away November 15 in Athens, Georgia. 

A leading force in the College of Sciences and Liberal Arts (COSALS), the forerunner to today's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Rossini was among those who advocated a focus on science and technology policy for liberal arts at Georgia Tech.  He played a key role in establishing the Technology and Science Policy (TASP) Master's Program, which evolved into today's public policy degrees. 

The son of Frederick D. Rossini, one of the preeminent thermodynamicists of the twentieth century,  Rossini's research interest was technology forecasting, assessment, and management.  During his years on faculty at Georgia Tech, he served as director of the Technology, Policy, and Assessment Center (TPAC).  He worked with Tom Stelson, Vice-President for Research at Georgia Tech, then moved to George Mason University as Vice-Provost and then Provost.  He was a co-founder of the International Association for Impact Assessment.

A memorial service for Dr. Rossini was held in Athens on December 10. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Dr. Rossini's name may be made to The Fund for Southern Communities or Citizen Advocacy Athens-Clarke.

Read Obituary for Dr. Rossini

Brittain Fellows Shine

Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow Makes Bestseller List

Second-year Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Andy Frazee’s first book of poetry, The Body, The Rooms, ranked #17 on Small Press Distribution’s (SPD) poetry bestseller list for October.

Founded in 1969, SPD is currently the only distributor in the country dedicated exclusively to independently published literature, serving over 400 small and independent presses. As such, it stands as one of the most respected and important distributors of poetry in the US.
 

Brittain Fellow Composes 'Verbal Score' for Artist's Film at MOCA GA

John Harkey, a first-year Brittain Fellow in Georgia Tech's Writing and Communication Program, recently collaborated with artist and filmmaker Micah Stansell, whose work "The Water and the Blood" is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia (MOCA GA).

Drawing equally from his own and from others' writings, Harkey composed a voice-over script for Stansell's 20-minute film which is an immersive cinematic installation.  Eight separate but synchronized projections, each one 10-feet high, seamlessly surround visitors on three walls. Harkey's collage of language, read by Michael Adare, is keyed to the work's array of episodes, providing a "verbal score" for the kaleidoscopic film (the only audio in the room itself is a dreamy ambient score; to hear Harkey's voice-over, visitors put on a pair of wireless headphones that are provided at the gallery's entrance). Read Jerry Cullum's review of the work in "Arts Critic Atl". 

The Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellows are instructors in the Writing and Communication Program within the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture.