Kristy Richards was a beloved colleague in BMS, and also a creative scientist, thoughtful mentor, and collaborative spirit, who sadly passed away in 2019.  Kristy was a trailblazer in comparative cancer research for canine and human lymphoma.  She divided her time between the Ithaca campus and Weill Cornell Medicine.  In addition to her research program, she provided clinical care as an oncologist in Manhattan, and had a major leadership role in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Biobank.  Kristy was a curious and determined clinician-scientist, she had an infectious passion for collaborative discovery, and she cared deeply about investing in the next generation of scholars.  Her passing was a tremendous loss to our community.  In 2023, the Department of Biomedical Sciences created the Kristy Richards Initiative, which is a collection of mini-initiatives to honor her legacy, and to promote collaborative science and the training and research success of the department.  The Kristy Richards Initiative includes:

1. Kristy Richards BMS collaborative paper of the year
2. Kristy Richards Scholar Exchange Fund
3. Annual Kristy Richards Memorial Lecture
4. Kristy Richards Early Career Faculty Support Group

The members of the Kristy Richards Program committee are Jess Hayward (BMS, committee chair), Anushka Dongre (BMS), Bob Weiss (BMS), Skylar Sylvester (DCS), and Marta Castelhano (Biobank).  For more information on any of these initiatives, please contact Jess Hayward (BMS) at jessica.hayward@cornell.edu.

The cancer metabolism focus group (CMFG) was started in 2023.  It is a collection of scientists from approximately 20 labs across Cornell-Ithaca who meet monthly to share and discuss the latest research in the area of cancer & metabolism.  Labs in the group represent at least four different colleges and eight different departments.  The idea for this center was borne out of the observation made in the Department of Biomedical Sciences that interest in cancer metabolism was steadily growing on campus during 2021-2023, with new hires in this area across several different departments and colleges.  The vision for the CMFG was to create a space for these groups to come together, learn from each other, and forge collaborative connections.  In particular, it was deemed that trainees should take the lead in presenting their own work or the latest cutting-edge published work in the field.

The members of the CMFG executive committee are Anushka Dongre (BMS, committee chair), Meng Wang (DNS), and Zeribe Nwosu (MBG).  For more information on how to get involved in the CMFG, please contact Anushka Dongre (BMS).

William (Bill) Hansel was a renowned reproductive physiologist at Cornell, who after 41 years on the faculty retired in 1990.  He then remarkably started a new career in cancer biology in Louisiana.  With the Hansel endowment fund managed by Dr. Joanne Fortune (BMS emeritus) and matching funds from the Department of Biomedical Sciences, the Hansel Distinguished Lecture (HDL) in Women’s Health was started in 2024.  The goal of the lectureship is to honor the legacy of Bill Hansel’s seminal work in translational reproductive physiology at the College of Veterinary Medicine, and to promote research in the critical area of women’s health on campus.  The initiative is intended to be complementary to the broader goals in women’s health research spearheaded by Paula Cohen (BMS), founding director of the Cornell Center for Reproductive Sciences (CoRe).

The members of the HDL executive committee are Paula Cohen (BMS, committee chair), Alex Nikitin (BMS), Runi Das (BMS), Alex Travis (PEH/BMS), and Xinbao Ding (BMS).  For more information on this initiative, please contact Paula Cohen (BMS).

The department started a special annual event series in 2023 called the Biomedical Sciences Distinguished Interdisciplinary Seminar Collaboration (BMS-DISC).  The goal is for each DISC event (maximum once per year) to bring our department together collaboratively with another prominent life sciences department/division on campus to build stronger connections and promote cross-disciplinary partnerships.  Programming for the event goes beyond a keynote lecture and includes journey-to-science sessions with graduate students and other small group meetings over the course of a few days that brings together BMS faculty and trainees with the collaborating departments.  The inaugural BMS-DISC was held in December 2023, with Biomedical Sciences and the Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS) collaborating to host Dr. Ana Domingos (Oxford, Dept. of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics).  For more information on this initiative, please contact Praveen Sethupathy (BMS).