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Kirsch Investigators Program

We invest in people who have the expertise and experience to conduct leading-edge, basic biomedical research. By funding these stellar individuals, we hope there will be breakthroughs that will lead to the prevention and/or cure of major diseases.

2000 Investigator Award Recipients

The highly-competitive Kirsch Investigator Awards debuted in June 2000. The Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board established the criteria and eligible institutions, and selected the recipients from the 20 nominees from the California Institute of Technology, the Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine and University of California, San Francisco. We committed $2,160,000 to the Kirsch Investigators Program with these initial awards.

• Ben A. Barres, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, Stanford School of Medicine

• Elizabeth H. Blackburn, PhD, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco

• Ronald A. DePinho, MD, American Cancer Society Research Professor, Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Harvard Medical School; Director of Transgenesis and Gene Targeting, Dana Farber Cancer Institute

• Alexander J. Varshavsky, PhD, Smits Professor of Cell Biology, California Institute of Technology

Plan for the Upcoming Year

The Program will expand to five new Investigator Awards, and our financial commitment to the new Investigators and their research will equal $2.7 million over three years. The Scientific Advisory Board will expand the number of eligible institutions to broaden our reach into the basic biomedical research community.


Scientific Advisory Board: (top row, left to right) Harry B. Greenberg, MD; Robert J. Glaser, MD; Stanley N. Cohen, MD. (Bottom row, left to right) Gordon N. Gill, MD; Judith L. Swain, MD. Not pictured: Baruch S. Blumberg, MD, PhD.