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The Legacy of Leo Lefrançois
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Leo Lefrançois was the Chairman of the Department of Immunology and Director of the Center for Integrated Immunology and Vaccine Research at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He passed away on July 20th, 2013 while hiking a path in the Dolomites, Northern Italy. But, he was not just the holder of these titles. He was a remarkable scientist, committed not just to producing cutting edge science, but also to supporting young scientists and the future of research in the U.S. In his own words: |
| "NIH funding right now is in a serious crisis. (...) Layoffs of personnel are happening across the country due to loss of NIH grant funding. Interim paylines at NIAID are at 6% and some other institutes are no better or worse! The system will soon implode at these funding levels and we will lose many investigators particularly at the junior faculty level. As a seasoned investigator, I have seen budgets rise and fall, but the future for funding looks poor for the foreseeable future, regardless of the outcome of the election. As scientists, we need to be advocates for funding, but we need the NIH to back us, not tell us that everything is rosy. We need the NIH leadership to step up and tell Congress that a disaster is in progress that will further distance us from the rest of the world in science and lead to further job losses and reduced domestic spending. Perhaps those in power do not realize that the grant money we receive is spent primarily on people and supplies, the latter purchased from many American companies. There are long-term consequences that will result from the ongoing crisis that soon will be irreversible." | |
| Leo left this statement as a comment in an NIH page, in October 2012. You can read it here. | |
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| Like many other young immunologists, I read countless papers from Lefrançois’s group during my Ph.D. studies. They are all great papers, and I’m still reading through them. His lab was tremendously productive and with 183 high quality papers in PubMed, it is guaranteed that you will find interesting reading. | |
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| Leo had a long and fruitful collaboration with BioLegend, and this will be the inaugural year of the Lefrançois-BioLegend Memorial Award, at IMMUNOLOGY 2014™, The American Association of Immunologists Annual Meeting. We wish to celebrate his career and discoveries, and also contribute to passing along his legacy to young scientists. You can read further about Leo’s life and career in these sites: Leo Lefrançois in memoriam, from his friends and family Obituary in Nature immunology, by Michael J. Bevan: https://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v14/n10/full/ni.2706.html You can give us your comments too: mtam@biolegend.com Contributed by Miguel Tam, Ph.D. |
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