The International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) will award two competitive awards at its Annual Meeting this year in Orlando, Florida: Tthe ISBER Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking Award and the ISBER Distinguished Leadership & Service Award. Nominees are submitted by ISBER members to the ISBER Nominating Committee. The Committee considers all nominations and forwards its recommendations to the ISBER Board of Directors (BOD) who approve the final recipients.
ISBER is proud to announce the 2014 winner of the ISBER Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking Award: Dr. Yeonhee Lee. Dr. Lee is being recognized for her exceptional leadership of biobanking efforts in the Asia Pacific Rim. Dr. Lee was instrumental in the formation of the Asian Network of Research Resource Centers (ANRRC), which initially formed in 2009 after a memorandum of understanding was established between three major research institutions in Korea, Japan, and China. Dr. Lee led the ANRCC for the first three years, coordinated the first translation of the ISBER Best Practices to Korean and established an affiliate agreement between the ANRRC and ISBER. Throughout the years Dr. Lee has also participated in many of our ISBER committees and working groups, bringing her expertise in environmental biobanking and providing an Asia Indo-Pacific Rim perspective.
The ISBER Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking Award is sponsored for the second year by Taylor-Wharton to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of biobanking. Past awardees include Drs. Kurt Zatloukal, Carolyn Compton, Robert Hewitt, and Jim Vaught.
The second award is the ISBER Distinguished Leadership & Service Award. This award is designed to honor ISBER members who have demonstrated exceptional leadership to further the mission and goals of the society and/or made significant, long-standing contributions to the Society. Past awardees include Ms. Elaine Gunter, Mr. Phil Baird, Dr. Robert Hewitt, Ms. Marianna Bledsoe, and Dr. Fay Betsou.
ISBER is proud to announce Rita Lawlor as the 2014 recipient of the ISBER Distinguished Leadership & Service Award. Ms. Lawlor is being recognized for her amazing energy in leadership of our European chapter. She started two regional working groups and fostered relationships between these and global ISBER working groups. She has devoted tireless effort to ensuring transparency and communication between the ISBER and European, Middle-Eastern and African Society for Biopreservation and Biobanking (ESBB) leadership teams and in keeping regional and global activities coordinated, paving the way for the development of ISBER as a truly global society and demonstrating in practice how this can be achieved.
These awards will be presented to the recipients at the ISBER Business meeting on May 24, 2014. We hope you will join us in congratulating these very deserving recipients of our two top honor awards. Below are biosketches for the 2014 ISBER Awardees, Dr. Yeonhee Lee and Rita Lawlor.
ISBER Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking Award Sponsored by Taylor-Wharton
Dr. Yeonhee Lee is a professor in the Department of Bio & Environmental Technology and dean of the College of Natural Science at Seoul Women's University. She has been working as director general of the Korea National Research Resource Center (KNRRC) since 2008. After receiving her bachelor's and master's degrees from the Department of Microbiology, Seoul National University, she received her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1988. Dr. Lee established the Culture Collection of Antimicrobial Resistant Microbes (CCARM) in 1999 and has been conducting research on antimicrobial resistant bacteria and probiotics. As the director general of KNRRC, she played a leading role in organizing and launching the Asian Network of Research Resource Centers (ANRRC) in 2009 with RIKEN, the Bioresource Center (Japan) and the Institute of Microbiology (IMCAS, China). At present, the network of Asian resource centers, culture collections and biobanks has 192 registered members from 96 institutes in 14 countries. Dr. Lee served as the first president of ANRRC from 2010 to 2012. During her term, ANRRC became an affiliate partner of ISBER and signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation with ESBB. She is a co-organizer of the ISBER EnviroBio Working Group and has been a member of several ISBER committees such as Science Policy, Marketing and Program.
ISBER Distinguished Leadership & Service Award
Rita Lawlor graduated from Trinity College with a degree in computer science and accreditation in project management. She has a decade of experience in disaster recovery planning. She is pursuing a doctorate in Oncological Pathology. She was a founder and is the current project manager of the ARC-NETApplied Research on Cancer Centre in Verona, Italy and runs its Research Biobank. Her current research interests are molecular diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets and the role of cancer heterogeneity and molecular characterization of samples in the application of precision medicine. Ms. Lawlor manages the Italian project on rare exocrine and endocrine tumors of the pancreas for the International Cancer Genome Consortium (www.icgc.org). Her practical experience in biological sample banking ranges from tissue collection and data harmonization to xenograft production and disaster recovery. She is a member of the Italy Veneto Region Biobanking Working Group for defining standards for biobanks in the region. The group is also working to create a biobank network in the Veneto region. Ms. Lawlor has been a member of ISBER since 2009 and was one of the founding members of ESBB. She was the first elected president of ESBB for 2012–2013. In this role, she was an ISBER Ex-officio Council member. She has worked on both ISBER and ESBB Program Committees and was one of the local organizers for the ESBB 2013 Annual Meeting in Verona, Italy. She was one of the initiators of the ESBB ESBBeranto (data metrics) and Africa Biobanking working groups within ESBB.
Congratulations to these two outstanding awardees, Dr. Yeonhee Lee and Rita Lawlor.
