Fellowship money funds a diverse group of junior faculty, a wide range of projects, and a variety of personal situations. Fellowship recipients Laurie Comstock and Mary Elizabeth Patti, of the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Joslin Diabetes Center respectively, are both mothers of young twins and have spouses in medicine. However, I'm gratefully aware that Dean Shore and the other women who entered medicine before me have ensured that the obstacles that may have stood in the way of their careers don't stand in the way of mine. Patti's office is wallpapered with pictures of happy children covered in flour, the birth announcements of her three children, and ultrasounds of babies in utero. This fellowship helped me to emerge from my mentor's lab and to direct my own project.
Society needs to value raising good kids as much as it does doing good research.
I want to be a good mother and a good doctor and scientist. The Fiftieth Anniversary Fellowship acknowledges the difficulty and importance of trying to do both. This research is often done outside the lab, in the community. Though the medical-school fellowships and the FAS committee pursue two different solutions to a common problem, their underlying goals are the same. All strive to ensure that the percentages of women entering the field are reflected in medicine and science's top ranks.