Wistar Institute Announces New Cotswold Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and Selected Fellow

PHILADELPHIA — (JANUARY 31, 2022) — The Cotswold Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship is a new fellowship totaling $500,000 over the course of five years to support a postdoctoral researcher studying immunology, cancer research, or vaccine biology at The Wistar Institute. This award was established as part of the Institute’s Bold Science // Global Impact campaign that launched in 2021 to support a postdoctoral fellow at Wistar who is not generally eligible for federal institutional training grants and contributes to international diversity.

The recipient of the newly created Fellowship, Minjeong Yeon, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dario C. Altieri, M.D., president and chief executive officer, director of the Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center, and the Robert and Penny Fox Distinguished Professor at The Wistar Institute. Yeon is researching the role of Parkin, a gene that has been linked to tumor growth and cancer cell metabolism, in cancer. Her goal is to help develop treatment options and therapies for late-stage prostate cancer.

Yeon earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Kangwon National University in South Korea where she studied anti-cancer drug resistance in gastric and lung cancers. To kickstart her postdoctoral career, she moved to the United States and joined the Altieri lab at Wistar in 2022. Ultimately, Yeon would like to run an independent research lab and promote international scientific collaboration between the United States and other countries.

“I am grateful for this opportunity from the Cotswold Foundation because it makes an immeasurably positive and exponential impact on my research,” shared Yeon about the award. “The Fellowship will allow me to travel to conferences, communicate my science, learn from researchers in my field, and explore new directions for my experiments. Through opportunities like this, early career scientists from different places can contribute their knowledge to the research community. Encouraging different backgrounds and experiences of scientists has a big effect on science.”

The Fellowship was established by I. Wistar Morris III and the Cotswold Foundation. Mr. Morris is a former Wistar Trustee and a descendant of the Wistar family. “I am so pleased to support The Wistar Institute, both because it is one of the transformative and leading biomedical research organizations in the country, and secondly, as there are long-existing family ties here,” said Mr. Morris of the Fellowship in the Institute’s 2022 Impact Report.

“Postdoctoral researchers are a critical part of Wistar’s biomedical research engine, and many come from around the world,” commented Altieri. “The Wistar Institute is committed to training and developing the careers of talented graduates such as Minjeong as they innovate in the cancer, immunology, and vaccine space. Because of the generosity of I. Wistar Morris III and the Cotswold Foundation, we are able to expand the field and depth of opportunity that we can offer our rising scientists.”

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The Wistar Institute, the first independent nonprofit biomedical research institute in the United States, marshals the talents of an international team of outstanding scientists through a highly enabled culture of biomedical collaboration and innovation, to solve some of the world’s most challenging and important problems in the field of cancer, immunology, and infectious diseases, and produce groundbreaking advances in world health. Consistent with a pioneering legacy of leadership in not-for-profit biomedical research and a track record of life-saving contributions in immunology and cell biology, Wistar scientists pursue novel and courageous research paths to life science discovery, and to accelerate the impact of early-stage discoveries by shortening the path from bench to bedside. wistar.org