Young Scientists Fund: Arming the Next Generation
The Daniel Heumann Young Scientists Fund (DHYSF) is a program within the Reeve Foundation research portfolio intended to make sure the next generation of spinal cord researchers is armed with the tools and training to take the science to the next level. Daniel Heumann, a member of the Board of Directors of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for research to develop therapies for spinal cord injury, beginning with his own Daniel Heumann Fund for Spinal Cord Research. "Back when I started my foundation 25 years ago, the spinal cord injury field was very much in its infancy. The support we provided typically went to young scientists." The field, he notes, had not yet developed a base of senior investigators -- it was too new. Heumann says his goal is to build capacity and attract the best young minds to the SCI challenge. "What we want to do is to help the younger scientists -- young people who have been scrutinized by the top-notch SAC at the Reeve Foundation -- on the road to setting up their own labs. The way they do that is to get their own NIH funding." Getting federal support is a difficult thing to do; the NIH wants ideas and projects that have some sort of track record. The DHYSF helps these young investigators get started and gather the data that might do that. "The Young Scientists Fund acts as a sort of early stage seed venture fund. We allow the early career scientists to take risks -- that's the whole point. The NIH doesn't want this sort of risk. But we do. If it pays off, investigators may well get NIH funding. For example, Heumann Foundation support helped George Smith, who now has a major lab at the University of Kentucky, and Stephen Davies, a researcher at the University of Colorado in Denver, who was a post doc in SAC member Jerry Silver's lab, become independent. Once he joined the Reeve board, Heumann kept the young scientists in mind. "I wanted to set up a separate fund to recognize and nurture young investigators. This is partly because I believe in my heart of hearts that tangible breakthroughs toward treatments or cures in SCI research are going to come from these young, creative, innovative and cutting edge people." The DHYSF typically supports one or two projects a year, each involving investigators with less than five years experience as a post-doctoral scientist. All projects are vetted by the Reeve Foundation Science Advisory Council. Heumann, now based in Ann Arbor, MI, was paralyzed in a car accident two weeks before starting college at Syracuse University. He went on to get a law degree from American University in 1998. Heumann has been a cure warrior since the mid 1980s. For him, though, the word cure itself has changed. "What is a tangible cure now?" he asks. "Does a cure mean being able to jump out of my wheelchair and run a marathon? No. For me, maybe getting back bowel or bladder function, or sexual function, that's what would be a cure." While the terminology evolves, Heumann wants to keep hope alive for people with SCI. "There are people out there, it's a huge group really, they are desperate for cures. While the Reeve Foundation pursues recovery and cure very responsibly, not emphasizing only one particular area of research, lots of people want that game-changing situation -- now. "Our job is to help people understand where we are with the science and where we need to go. It doesn't happen overnight. We need to continue to invest in the best and brightest young scientists. To me that's where the hope lies." |
