One year ago, the Poster staff and colleagues at NCI and Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research bid a heavy-hearted farewell to Rich Folkers, formerly the Poster senior editor and NCI Frederick communications manager. He passed away in April 2025 at the age of 65. One year has given us time to reflect on his life and legacy. Both made a difference to us.

After a productive year in business, the NCI Frederick Media Laboratory is closing again. The service, with its longtime goal of sustainability, was in the hands of Nancy Martin and Dan McVicar, Ph.D. The move comes on the heels of Martin’s retirement from NCI. In light of the change, Poster recognizes her steadfast dedication for the past year.

When people reminisce about the late David Derse, Ph.D., several words invariably get mentioned. Scholar. Mentor. Insightful. Caring. Many who knew him fondly recall him as an exemplar of the intellectual and compassionate sides of science. The same has been said about Carol A. Carter, Ph.D., SUNY distinguished professor at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, who recently came to NCI Frederick to deliver a scientific lecture in Derse’s honor.

On April 9, 1984, a special package from Bethesda arrived at Building 560 on the Frederick Cancer Research Facility (FCRF) campus. In an unusual move, it came not by courier but by scientist, who carried it directly to a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory, at the time one of FCRF’s few facilities for working with highly dangerous biological entities. Exposure to the box’s contents meant likelihood of a protracted death. Julian Bess Jr. remembers when Larry Arthur, Ph.D., brought that box containing two sealed flasks of HIV-infected cells into their laboratory.

Mickey Williams, Ph.D., jokes that he was “somewhat doomed to become a molecular biologist” from the very start, born within mere hours of a milestone in the field. The same day in 1953 that Francis Crick and James Watson heralded their discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure — “the secret of life,” Crick triumphantly called it at The Eagle pub in Cambridge—Williams’ own life began in a maternity ward half a world away.