Introducing a New Editor
Diana Friedman joins The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine.
I am donating most of this issue's President's Letter to our dynamic new editor, Diana Friedman. She has fearlessly taken on a non-trivial challenge: to improve on the tremendous work of our former editor, Adrienne Burke, who, through sheer magic, made this magazine intellectually rich and stylistically and visually compelling on a shoestring.
Now comes Diana, who, as you will see, has committed to enhancing the intimacy of our magazine at a time when we have fully emerged from a dark period in the 194 years of Academy life and are on the cusp of an extraordinary era, leading directly into our Bicentennial Celebration in the spring of 2017. Diana's intelligence, curiosity, and great personal warmth will help her in her quest to serve your career and intellectual needs, as well as touch you emotionally. But she will need your help as well, through comments, ideas, critiques when needed, and the occasional praise when deserved. I know you will join me in welcoming Editor Diana Friedman.
Ellis Rubinstein
President & CEO
From the Editor
Dear Members,
I am thrilled to introduce myself as the new editor of The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine. My goal for this publication is two-fold: 1) to meet your needs for timely and scientifically relevant content and 2) to create an outlet for connecting with and learning from other Academy members—a member community that thrives in the pages of the magazine.
I hope to hear from many of you in the coming months, via e-mail, phone, or in person at Academy events, about your own ideas for the magazine.
The topic of this issue's cover story is translational science—through which basic science discoveries become clinical therapeutics. Translational science is both a hot topic in the science world and a fitting first topic for me to cover. My father was recently a participant in a phase II BRAF gene inhibitor trial for advanced melanoma at the NYU Cancer Institute. So, it was a great honor for me to interview Academy Member Napoleone Ferrara, who spearheaded much of the primary research on the role of vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, in angiogenesis, which led to groundbreaking clinical trials for cancerous tumors.
What Ferrara and other researchers gave my father was so much more than a drug. It was several months of seemingly healthy, high-quality life, in the midst of an otherwise relentless, multi-year disease process. It was hope, in a pill.
Ferrara and countless other scientists center their lives' work around, on the surface, something very minute—a specific protein or a gene. However, through translation, their work becomes about something much larger: life and its promotion.
Translational science is, therefore, more than a buzzword: it is a pathway to better living. I urge all of you to read our cover story and join the conversation. I welcome your feedback and I look forward to a fruitful relationship.
Warmly,
Diana Friedman
Executive Editor
212.298.8645
dfriedman@nyas.org