Awards

Several hundred National Cancer Institute staff converged on NCI’s Shady Grove campus last month to celebrate the annual NCI Director’s Awards ceremony in a way they hadn’t been able to for the past several years: together.

Coworkers and colleagues greeted each other in person while enjoying refreshments and watching pre-recorded award videos from senior NCI leaders in a hybrid, open-house version of the 2022 awards ceremony.

What do Nikola Tesla; National Science Board vice chair and former astronaut Ellen Ochoa, Ph.D.; and NCI Frederick’s own Howard Young, Ph.D., have in common? They’re all fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Young is among the newest additions to the esteemed group, recently elected as a 2022 fellow alongside 504 other distinguished contributors to the sciences.

NCI Frederick’s Werner H. Kirsten Student Internship Program (WHK SIP) was recognized in May by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Science Foundation with a 2020 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM).

Nominations for the 2021 Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNL) Achievement Awards are now underway. This program honors and recognizes staff members for outstanding contributions to the FNL mission over the past year. Nominations will be accepted through March 13. This is an entirely peer-nominated awards program, and all employees are encouraged to nominate their colleagues.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer recently awarded the Frederick National Laboratory and National Cancer Institute Technology Showcase a 2021 State and Local Economic Development Award. The FLC is a nationwide network of more than 300 federal laboratories, agencies, and research centers that promotes federal technology transfer.

National Cancer Institute Director Norman “Ned” Sharpless, M.D., had a message for NCI staff on Monday as he welcomed them to an unorthodox installment of the annual NCI Director’s Awards via video from a bedroom-turned-office inside his house. “The show must go on because you have made sure that the work of the NCI continued and even flourished during a difficult time for our nation and our world,” he said.

COVID-19 has paused or postponed many traditions this year, but it didn’t stop the National Institutes of Health from awarding NIH Director’s Awards to 660 employees and contractors. The ceremony, usually held in Bethesda, Maryland, went virtual. Several NCI at Frederick and Frederick National Laboratory employees were among this year’s recipients.

A broadly based team from Frederick National Laboratory, NCI’s Technology Transfer Center, and NCI’s Office of Scientific Operations has been recognized with a 2020 NCI Director’s Award. The award, from the “Making an Impact” category, recognizes the team’s work to establish the annual Technology Showcase, an event that fosters scientific collaboration as well as licensing of NCI technologies.

At the annual Spring Research Festival on Fort Detrick, they placed first in the First-in-Development Cell Biology category. At the Frederick County Science and Engineering Fair, they won the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Award of Excellence in Computer Science and placed second in the Molecular and Cell Biology category. 

Yet despite these accomplishments, Alexis Adkins and Jacqueline Chung said they didn’t consider themselves “real scientists.” Maybe that’s because they lacked a science degree—or, until very recently, even a high school diploma. However, they are indisputably real scientists. 

Howard Young, Ph.D., has received many awards during his tenure at NCI at Frederick—but the latest could be among the most meaningful. At the recent NCI Principal Investigators Retreat, Young was given the 2019 Mentoring Award by the Women Scientists Advisors (WSA), a group that supports and promotes career development for women in science.