Funds at Work

The Nina Starr Braunwald Award provides a biennial award of $110,000 for two years to support the research career development of a woman cardiac surgeon who holds a full-time faculty appointment and who is within ten years of completion of thoracic surgery residency. Nina Starr Braunwald was the first woman to be certified by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. Throughout her professional life, Dr. Braunwald was an active academic surgeon in all aspects—clinical, surgery, teaching and research. She was closely associated with education, first at the National Heart Institute, then at the University of California at San Diego and finally at Harvard Medical School. Eugene Braunwald, MD and his family, friends and colleagues have established the Nina Starr Braunwald Fellowship Award in memory of his wife. The Nina Starr Braunwald Fund is dedicated exclusively to career development awards for young women in academic cardiac surgery.

The Nina Starr Braunwald Career Development Award is a very generous research award. Receipt of this award has contributed significantly to my ability to continue to pursue research efforts while concurrently practicing as a pediatric cardiac surgeon. The training in cardiac surgery and pediatric cardiac surgery is long, and oftentimes, one moves during various phases of the training process. Such moves and instability can make it difficult to continue productive research and can make it particularly difficult to be competitive for NIH funding when one finally begins their practice after training.

This award has allowed us to resume work on a project which is high risk but which could significantly change the way that we perform transplantation. We are approaching tolerance induction through a novel method in which we utilize the potential of an individual’s own hematopoietic stem cells for self/non-self determination as the guiding principle. Not only has this award allowed us to resume work on this project, it has allowed us to support a research fellow and medical student in their efforts, elements that are crucial to our goal of training future generations.

Kimberly L. Gandy, M.D., Ph.D.
Medical College of Wisconsin

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