The recipient of the Roy and Diana Vagelos Leadership Award is a role model for their peers and possesses the ability to inspire others to be better and do better by encouraging creativity, cooperation, promoting respect for others, emphasizing collaboration, demonstrating initiative, and adapting to new and changing needs and circumstances. This outstanding leader has a keen sense of organization and embodies leadership in all that they endeavor, combining clarity in thought with humility of character. Scholars in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge/Wellcome Trust Scholars Program who demonstrate exceptional leadership are nominated by their peers making this award a particularly special honor to receive. The ceremony to announce the winner was held during the NIH Global Doctoral Partnerships Research Workshop, titled Global Team Science: Bridging Borders from Bench to Bedside at Keble College, the University of Oxford July 26-28, 2022.
This year, the inaugural Roy and Diana Vagelos Leadership Award was bestowed upon Katherine Masih. Katherine Masih is an NIH-Cambridge MD/PhD Scholar in the Class of 2019. Her mentors are Dr. Javed Khan at the National Cancer Institute and Prof. Richard Gilbertson at the University of Cambridge. She is a medical student at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. Katherine was nominated for this award by three of her peers. One nominator wrote “Katherine has done a wonderful job as a student leader. She demonstrates the utmost professionalism in how she handles situations and in how she communicates, and she is also very kind and welcoming to all students. She creates a strong sense of community in the program.” Katherine served as the Chair of the Student Leadership Board from 2021-2022, Vice Chair from 2020-2021, and Logistics Director for the Workshop Committee from 2019-2020. She has worked with her peers and the Scholars Program administration and faculty to advance several important initiatives including MD/PhD communication with medical schools, creating an alumni professional mentorship program, serving as an editor of the student handbook, and the reorganization of the Student Leadership Board. Katherine’s research accomplishments are in parallel with her exceptional leadership qualities. In 2021, Katherine was recognized with the Translational Science Award endowed by Dr. Richard and Vera Siegel. This award recognizes advances in the field of medical science that move fundamental discoveries from bench to bedside. Katherine’s work uncovered a novel epigenetic signature that has the potential to be used as a clinical pre-treatment biomarker to predict response to CD19-targeting CAR T-cells in children with leukemia.
The International Biomedical Research Alliance was pleased to share the announcement of the renaming of this award to honor Alliance Emeritus Director Roy Vagelos and his wife, Diana, for their combined accomplishments as visionary leaders in education, science, and industry. Dr. Vagelos’ contributions to biomedical research have transpired over the course of a wide-ranging career where he excelled as an NIH researcher, Chair of Washington University’s Biological Chemistry Department, and Chair and CEO of Merck & Co., – a company recognized as America’s most admired under his leadership. He is currently the Chair of the Board of Directors of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and an Emeritus Director of the International Biomedical Research Alliance.
Diana, a force for good in her own right, is an accomplished philanthropist and community leader. She has worked as a catalyst for improvement in the areas of scholarships, financial aid, the arts, and facilities improvement in higher education. She serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Barnard College. While they are unable to be on hand at the Gala Dinner for the announcement of the award renamed in their honor, they were humbled to have this award re-named in their honor. Dr. Vagelos commented: “I have tried to help capable people who demonstrate special talents throughout my career. Diana has done similar things since the time she was in high school. We are honored and delighted to be associated with this award.”
Katherine said, “I was incredibly surprised and honored to have been selected for the inaugural Roy and Diana Vagelos Leadership Award. The OxCam Program has gone through significant change and growth during my tenure, and I am grateful to the faculty for being so receptive to and implementing new programs and changes presented by scholars. The progress we’ve accomplished would not be possible without the other brilliant, dedicated, and enthusiastic student leaders I’ve had the pleasure of working with and learning from over the past three years. Thank you to Dr. and Mrs. Vagelos, the OxCam Program, the Alliance, my mentors, Javed and Richard, and fellow scholars for the unwavering support and this honor.”
Katherine is currently writing up her thesis work aimed at understanding interactions between tumors and immune cells in childhood malignancies. After graduating from Cambridge in Spring 2023, she will return to Miami for her final year of medical school and will apply to residencies in pediatrics. She aspires to be a physician-scientist specializing in pediatric oncology, using multi-omic approaches to gain insight into the mechanisms driving these tumors in the laboratory and to translate these discoveries into novel therapeutic strategies for children with cancer.