2014 NEB® Passion in Science Awards®

What does Passion in Science mean to you? Learn how NEB celebrated 15 scientists' passion projects with the 2014 Passion in Science Awards.

Script

Passion in Science is an exploration of the unknown.

Passion in Science is giving back and making a difference in the world.

Passion in Science is understanding the human condition.

Louise Hughes:
Passion in Science is what gives purpose to my life. It's everything.

Karl Booksh:
I broke my neck playing flag football when I was 19. I'm the only tenured chemist at a research university that has gone through undergraduate and graduate with identifying as having a disability. That there was kind of no one else out there to assume a leadership position, and I realized that, more and more, this is what was keeping me awake at night, is this, "How do I get these students into the lab? How do I get their careers going?"

Louise Hughes:
My mother started to lose her sight due to early onset Alzheimer's disease, and I could no longer share some of my work with her. I was able to realize my idea of 3D printing objects, bringing microscopy to a group of people who've never had that experience before.

Lori Baker:
My training is in ancient DNA. If you can do something from a 70,000 year old bison, can you possibly look at this 14 year old bone? Because we need to identify this person that died in a conflict situation. And so the more I did that, the more interesting and enriched I felt.

Paul McDonald:
So, we made a lot of recommendations, and the suicide rate has come down in the active duty. There's still guard and reserve forces that are struggling, and there are still a lot of people that don't know where to go to get help.

Ite L.-Offringa:
It frustrates me greatly, to see people profiling a piece of lung because I mean, there are many, many different cell types in the lungs. The reason I chose lung cancer to work on, is because there's such a need. Women's foundations get passionate about funding breast cancer research or ovarian cancer research, but there are more women dying of lung cancer than of any of those cancers.

Andrew Markley:
You can go and return it back to the shipper, kind of like what NEB does with their return program. What I've done is help set up a styrofoam reuse and recycling program. We've collected a little under a thousand pounds of this stuff a month.

Peter Hotez:
We're now working to not make our vaccines in isolation, but with countries that don't have capacity for making vaccines, and teaching them how to make vaccines. It's nice to know there are others out there that feel the same way I do, which is making it one's life work to take science and apply it to something that goes beyond writing the paper or writing the grant.

Jim Ellard:
From the very beginning, New England Biolabs has embraced the core values of scientific pursuit, environmental stewardship, humanitarian efforts, and artistic expression. And those core values are ingrained in our culture, and so it just felt right to have an award ceremony to recognize and honor people that are our peers in our industry, but also share our similar philosophy.

Whitney Hagins:
When you mention NEB, people smile. It's a unique company that seems to have a really, really clear vision of what their role is in promoting science.

Karl Booksh:
You forget that there are companies, and the people out there that really, really want it to do good, and do well. And it can be done.

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