This very special Gates Cambridge Alumni Reunion will take place in Boston and will also host the inaugural Lauren Zeitels Memorial Lectures at the Russel Museum on 2 June. The lectures will celebrate Lauren’s life and contribution to the Gates Cambridge community and many other communities she was involved in. We are also delighted to announce that Lauren's family will be joining us.

The Lectures will be given by two of Lauren’s mentors and colleagues with whom she worked closely on issues close to her heart: Dr Katrina Armstrong (Physician-in-Chief at the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital) and Dr Sarah Hemminger (Co-founder and CEO of Thread - formerly the Incentive Mentoring Program).

Dr Sarah Hemminger: The New Social Fabric

There is no doubt that Baltimore’s most vulnerable young people are disconnected and in crisis. Among students with early warning indicators and a Grade Point Average of less than 1.0, only six percent graduate from high school within four years. However, youth are not the only ones experiencing the negative impacts of modern day segregation. Social isolation has doubled in America in the past two decades causing a broader public health phenomenon where people of all races and classes are faced with higher levels of stress and a host of mental and physiological side effects. Thread understands that we all need deep interpersonal bonds to thrive. By building relationships across lines of race and class that radically and permanently alter the social support structure of everyone involved, Thread is harnessing the power of relationships to transform lives, neighbourhoods, and Baltimore.

Dr Katrina Armstrong: Towards a Culture of Inquiry on the Medical Services

Inspired by Lauren Zeitels and Victor Fedorov, the Pathways Consult Service is an elective in the MGH’s Internal Medicine Residency Program where a team of 2-3 residents devotes two weeks to investigating the pathophysiology of a single patient with unusual or unexplained symptoms. Pathways teams propose ways to harness new technologies like next-generation DNA sequencing, induced pluripotent stem cell culture, and proteomics to make new insights into the underlying biological pathways of their patient’s disease process. The Pathways Consult Service provides an unparalleled educational experience to residents, promotes cutting-edge scientific research, and has the potential to tangibly improve the health status of patients at MGH and beyond.

The Provost of Gates Cambridge, Professor Barry Everitt will open the event and Dr Rebecca Sanderson, Gates Cambridge Alumni Association Co-Chiar and close friend of Lauren Zetiels will give a memorial address.

Biographies:

Dr Sarah Hemminger is a social entrepreneur, scientist, and ice dancer who co-founded Thread with her husband Ryan Hemminger in 2004. Equipped with the fundamental understanding that we all need deep interpersonal bonds to thrive, Sarah knows that caring relationships have the power to radically and permanently alter the social support structure of everyone involved. She has fourteen years of experience in nonprofit management and expertise in the development, expansion, and replication of innovative, paradigm-shifting models of forming relationships across lines of difference between high school students, volunteers and collaborators. Sarah was awarded fellowships from Ashoka, Echoing Green Foundation, Open Society Institute, and the Albert Schweitzer Fellows Program, which support social entrepreneurs with innovative ideas. In 2010, Sarah received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University for her work on the role of the cerebellum and the primary motor cortex on the time scales of consolidation of motor memory. She received the prestigious Siebel Scholars Award for outstanding work in the field of technology and engineering. Her research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, and Cerebral Cortex and she has lectured internationally on her work. Sarah received her undergraduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 2002, and prior to pursuing her PhD, she worked as an engineer for Medtronic XOMED.

Dr Katrina Armstrong MD, MSCE, is the Jackson Professor at Harvard Medical School, and Physician-in-Chief, Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Armstrong is a graduate of Yale University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She was a resident and chief resident in Medicine at Johns Hopkins and completed a general internal medicine fellowship and Masters of Science in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1998, she joined the faculty at Penn and became Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine in 2008. At Penn, she also served as Associate Director of the Abramson Cancer Center and Co-Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. In April of 2013, she was appointed as physician-in-chief of the MGH Department of Medicine. Dr. Armstrong is an internationally recognized investigator in the areas of medical decision making, quality of care, and cancer prevention and outcomes. For her work, she received the Outstanding Junior Investigator of the Year Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, the Outstanding Investigator Award from the American Federation of Medical Research, the Alice Hersh Award from Academy Health, and election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and National Academy of Medicine. In addition to her career in health policy and disparities research, Dr. Armstrong is a dedicated practicing internist with a longitudinal primary care practice and rotations as the Bigelow visit on the inpatient general medicine services. Over her career, Dr. Armstrong has prioritized her role in medical education, including developing and leading courses on clinical decision making at Penn and at MGH and founding multiple innovative educational programs including the Masters program in Health Policy Research at Penn and the Center for Educational Innovation and Scholarship at the MGH. Diversity and inclusion have been central to Dr. Armstrong’s leadership over her career, including her award winning roles in the advancement of women, her commitment to programs to support diversity across faculty and trainees at the MGH, and her research leadership in health disparities and community based research. Dr. Armstrong oversees a Department of over 1,000 faculty members who span ten clinical divisions and six research units, as well as the Department’s educational program in undergraduate and graduate medical education.

Lauren Zeitels Memorial Lecture and Gates Cambridge Alumni Reception