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EDUCATION Dean’s Report 2017–2018 21
The Campaign for Harvard Medicine TAMI LIEBERMAN IS HARVARD MEDICINE
Tami Lieberman had always been fascinated by mathematics, medicine and evolution. It is no small wonder that she landed in the Systems Biology PhD program at Harvard Medical School—the one place that allowed her to pursue research at the intersection of all three disciplines. Through classes and mentorship from her HMS lab advisor and colleagues, Lieberman learned quickly how to apply computational approaches to biological problems. Her work in the lab of Roy Kishony, formerly professor of systems biology at HMS, focused on studying how bacteria evolve within people during chronic infections. “The program really launched my career,” she said. “It gave me the opportunity to combine evolutionary biology and medical microbiology in new ways, propelling me to the forefront of this new interdisciplinary field of within-person evolution and giving me a relatively unique perspective from which to ask questions about the human microbiome, which is the basis of my new lab.” A graduate fellowship from the Lynch Foundation, which covered full tuition plus a stipend, meant that Lieberman didn’t have to worry about how to pay for her education. A new $1 million gift from the foundation this year advances The World Is Waiting: The Campaign for Harvard Medicine and allows HMS to support two new Systems Biology PhD candidates each year. “These emerging scientists are an integral part of the lab. They are often underfunded and need help,” said Peter Lynch, president and chairman of the Lynch Foundation, member of the HMS Board of Fellows and co-chair of the HMS Discovery Council. Lieberman understands the funding challenges acutely. After earning her PhD at Harvard in 2014 and completing her postdoctoral training at MIT, she is on the cusp of launching her own lab at MIT, where she will need to cover 25 percent of her lab costs through grants. “Private funds are critical to early- and mid-career researchers because they support promising risks, whereas the NIH grant review process tends to favor established investigators with a proven track record of success,” she said. Nearly 10,000 alumni, faculty, staff, volunteers and friends have made a gift to support HMS’s transformative fundraising campaign. To learn more and make a gift during the final year of the Campaign, visit hms.harvard.edu/campaign. n