The Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Award (EGSA), the Foundation's highest scientific honor, is an investment in the most promising HIV/AIDS researchers at a critical stage in their careers. These scientists, who represent the best and brightest investigators from the international medical science community, are selected on the basis of their knowledge, innovation, and dedication. By providing up to $682,500 in research funding over a five-year period, this award enables recipients to focus their long-term efforts on issues specific to pediatric HIV/AIDS.

The EGSA fosters an unprecedented spirit of collaboration among these scientists. Each year, the Elizabeth Glaser Scientists meet with our internationally renowned advisory board to stimulate ideas, report on current programs, and plan future research. Since the program's inception in 1996, the Foundation has built an invaluable network of scientists whose work in vaccine development, immune response, breast milk transmission, and other critical areas impacts the entire field of HIV/AIDS research. To date, the EGSA program has granted more than $22 million to 33 stellar scientists and clinicians.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Grace Aldrovandi, M.D., a 2004 EGSA winner, was a member of the research team whose paper on early cessation of breast-feeding was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And 2003 EGSA winner Paul Bieniasz, Ph.D., was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator for his pioneering work on the complexities of the relationship between human hosts and the HIV virus. Congratulations to Drs. Aldrovandi and Bieniasz on their accomplishments!

For more information, contact research@pedaids.org.

Download the Award application PDF.

2006 Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Awards
The Foundation would like to thank longtime supporter Jewelers for Children (JFC) for sponsoring Dr. Margaret Feeney's 2006 Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Award.

Congratulations to the 2006 EGSA recipients:

David Evans, Ph.D.
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, New England National Primate Research Center
"Oral Transmission of Single-Cycle SIV in Neonates"
Dr. Evans' project will examine the earliest viral and cellular determinants of oral SIV infection in neonatal macaques, and is designed to reveal new insights important to understanding the mechanisms of breast milk transmission of HIV-1 from infected mothers to their infants.

Margaret Feeney, M.D., M.Sc.
Massacusetts General Hospital
2006 Jewelers for Children Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Award
"The Immune Response to Acute Perinatal HIV Infection"
Dr. Feeney’s project will involve detailed longitudinal studies of the HIV-specific immune response and viral evolution during the early years following perinatal infection, and will build upon the existing collaboration with Dr. Celia Christie’s Perinatal AIDS Program in Kingston, Jamaica.

Alexandra Trkola, Ph.D.
Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology,
University Hospital Zurich
“The Humoral Immune Response to HIV”
Dr. Trkola’s project will examine the humoral immune response to HIV in natural infection in order to define which antibody responses successful HIV vaccines should elicit.

Award recipient archives