The only national award to honor outstanding creative achievement by immigrants to America, The Vilcek Prize is accompanied by a $50,000 cash award. In conjunction with the prize, the Foundation is launching an annual lecture at New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Massagu, who was born in Barcelona, Spain, will deliver the first Vilcek Foundation Prize lecture on Thursday, March 16, at 4 pm, speaking on the subject of "Controlling Cell Behavior: From Cytostasis to Metastasis."
Having chaired Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Cell Biology program for nearly 15 years, today Dr. Massagu leads its Cancer Biology and Genetics program. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and was elected in 2000 to the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Massagu's work in this country has shed light on the molecular mechanism of action of a crucial family of growth factors that regulate cell behavior and embryonic development. Disruption of these pathways can underlie cancers, inherited disorders and other diseases. Dr. Massagu's work has also helped to elucidate genetic changes in cancer cells that determinetheir ability to disseminate to distant parts of the body. For this research, Dr. Massagu was honored in 2004 with Spain's most prestigious prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research, which is given annually to leading scientists from around the world.
Dr. Massagu is not the only member of his family to contribute to American society: upon moving to the United States, his wife Roser, also born in Barcelona, pursued degrees in education and psy
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Contact: Anne Edgar
anne@anneedgar.com
646-336-7230
The Vilcek Foundation
20-Jan-2006