Celebrating Juneteenth through actions and recognition

Dr. Cadet is the chief and senior investigator of the molecular neuropsychiatry branch at the National Institute of Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He completed his medical degree at Columbia University, did a residency in neurology at Mt. Sinai medical center and in psychiatry at Columbia before joining the NIDA at NIH.  Dr. Cadet’s research focuses on studies of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of psychostimulant addiction and toxicity, providing an understanding of how methamphetamine self-administration is accompanied by markers of toxicity in striatal dopaminergic systems. His work has established the important role of catecholamines, especially, dopamine in activation of neurodegenerative processes in the mammalian brain. He has discovered that methamphetamine preconditioning protects against toxicity by upregulation of neurotrophic factors such as BDNF and/or downregulation of glutamatergic systems, secondary to epigenetic modifications (histone hypoacetylation and DNA methylation).

Dr. Canady became the first African-American woman neurosurgeon in the United States in 1981. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in zoology, and it was during her undergraduate studies that she attended a summer program in genetics for minority students and fell in love with medicine. She graduated cum laude from the College of Medicine at the University of Michigan. She initially wanted to be an internist but became intrigued by neurosurgery during her first two years of medical school. It was a career path that some advisers discouraged her from pursuing, and she encountered difficulties in obtaining an internship. But she persisted. Eventually, Canady was accepted as a surgical intern at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1975, breaking another barrier as the first woman and first African American to be enrolled in the program.  In 1976, Canady began her residency in neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota, which she competed in 1981. Following a fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Canady returned to her home state of Michigan and joined the Neurosurgery Department at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital. Later, at age 36, she became the Chief of Neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, where she cared for young patients facing life-threatening illnesses, gunshot wounds, head trauma, hydrocephaly, brain tumors and spine abnormalities.

Dr. Daly received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in biochemistry at Queens College and New York University. She completed her Ph.D. at Columbia, becoming the first Black American woman to obtain a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States. She served as an instructor in Physical Science at Howard University, an Associate at the Columbia University Research Service of the Goldwater Memorial Hospital, as an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as an American Heart Association Investigator and was an elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Daly carried out research on the causes of heart attacks. Her work provided new insights into the relationship between high cholesterol and arterial blockages, opening inquiry into how foods and diet affect cardiovascular health. Dr. Daly taught biochemistry courses and championed efforts to get students of color enrolled in medical schools and graduate science programs. 

Dr. Downes is an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  He completed his B.S. at Johnson C. Smith University, his Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the faculty at U Mass. His primary research interests are in motor behavior and epilepsy with the goals of understanding how genes and neural networks in the brain and spinal cord control movement and development of therapeutics to treat epilepsy. His lab uses the zebrafish model employing integrated genetic, microscopic imaging, and behavioral approaches to study the neural networks that control movement using high-throughput platforms to identify new therapeutic strategies.

Dr. Eberhardt received a B.A. from the University of Cincinnati and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She was a faculty member at Yale University in the Departments of Psychology and African and African American Studies before joining Stanford where she currently is a professor in the Department of Psychology and co-director of SPARQ, a university initiative to use social psychological research to address pressing social problems. Dr. Eberhardt investigates the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime. Through interdisciplinary collaborations and a wide array of methods, from laboratory studies to novel field experiments, she has revealed the extent to which racial imagery and judgments permeate our culture and society shaping actions and outcomes within the domain of criminal justice. She works with law enforcement agencies to design interventions to improve policing and to help agencies build and maintain trust with the communities they serve.

Dr. Gibbons is director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health, the third largest institute at the NIH, with an annual budget of more than $3 billion and a staff of over 900. Prior to being named director of the NHLBI, Gibbons served as a member of the NHLBI Advisory Council. Before joining the NHLBI, Gibbons served as the founding director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute, chairperson of the Department of Physiology, and professor of physiology and medicine at the Morehouse School of Medicine, in Atlanta where he directed NIH-funded research in the vascular biology, genomic medicine, and the pathogenesis of vascular diseases leading to many discoveries related to the cardiovascular health of minority populations. Dr. Gibbons earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School in Boston. He completed his residency and cardiology fellowship at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Prior to joining the Morehouse School of Medicine in 1999, Gibbons was a member of the faculty at Stanford University and at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gibbons received numerous honors, including election to the National Institute of Medicine, selection as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Minority Faculty Development Awardee; selection as a Pew Foundation Biomedical Scholar; and recognition as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association.

Dr. Lubin is an associate professor of Neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine. Dr. Lubin received her undergraduate degree from Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama and her Ph.D. in Cell/Molecular Biology and Immunology from Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. She has also worked as a research assistant at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dr. Lubin completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, followed by joining the faculty as an assistant professor of Neurobiology at UAB before being promoted to Associate Professor. Dr. Lubin is a recipient of a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NIMH) and FASEB Award. She is the director of the UAB NINDS supported Neuroscience Roadmap Scholar Program.   Her research addresses the molecular and genetic basis of learning, memory and related disorders. She focuses primarily on the role of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms in the on and off regulation of gene transcription during the consolidation of memory.

Dr. Reece is the executive vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore; the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, and Dean of the School of Medicine. He is also professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medicine, and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Originally from Jamaica, West Indies, Dr. Reece completed a Bachelor of Science degree with honors (Magna Cum Laude) from Long Island University; a M.D. degree from New York University School of Medicine; a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica; and a MBA degree from the Fox School of Business & Management of Temple University. He completed an internship and residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Reece has published more than 500 articles and 12 books.  He has served as Chair of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges as well as on advisory committees for the FDA, the Institute of Medicine, the NIH, the Secretary of Health & Human Services Committee on Infant Mortality and the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. 

Dr. Rotimi is the Director of the Trans-National Institutes of Health (NIH) center for research in genomics and global health. Dr. Rotimi obtained his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Benin in Nigeria.  He started his education in the United States at the University of Mississippi, where he obtained a master’s degree in health care administration and then a second master’s degree and a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. Dr. Rotimi was the director of the National Human Genome Center at Howard University before embarking on a new journey at the NIH.  Dr. Rotimi was instrumental in establishing the trans-institute Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health, with its mission to advance research in the role of culture, lifestyle, and genomics in disease etiology, health disparities, and variable drug response. His lab develops genetic epidemiology models and conducts epidemiologic studies that explore the patterns and determinants of common complex diseases in human populations with particular emphasis on populations of the African Diaspora.  He published the first genome-wide scan for hypertension and blood pressure in African Americans and type-2 diabetes in West Africans. One important piece of this study is that Dr Rotimi and his team compiled genomic data from ~6,000 individuals and came up with 21 different global genetic ancestries. The research demonstrated that more than 97 percent of humans have mixed ancestry, indicating that the traditional race labels such as “Black,” “white,” and “Hispanic” are insufficient ways to classify humans.  He also determined that Black men and women in the United States had significantly higher rates of hypertension compared to the Caribbean, which had higher hypertension rates than West Africa suggesting that environmental factors, including psychosocial stress, play a large role.  Dr. Charles Rotimi is an elected member of to the National Academy of Medicine; he is a Senior Investigator within the Intramural Research Program at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the NIH and has won the NIH Director’s Award for leading the establishment of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Initiative and he is the first person of African ancestry to be elected to the Board of the American Society of Human Genetics.

Dr. Wright's father was one of the first African American graduates of Harvard Medical School, and he set a high standard for his daughters. Wright studied medicine at Meharry Medical College and Harvard Medical School. After spending time as a residential doctor at Bellevue and Harlem Hospital she would decide to dedicate herself to medical research. Dr. Wright spent her career building on the foundational work of her father in chemotherapy. During the late 1940s, she and her father began to test chemotherapeutic formulations for treating leukemia and cancer of the lymphatic system. She is credited with developing a technique that tests the effects of drugs on cancer cells, using human tissue as opposed to lab mice.  Dr. Wright was the first to identify methotrexate as a foundational chemotherapeutic against cancerous tumors.  Her work with this form of chemotherapy proved to be the stepping stone for combination therapy as well as the individual adjustments due to patient toxicity. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Dr. Wright to the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke. In 1967, she was named professor of surgery, head of the Cancer Chemotherapy Department, and associate dean at New York Medical College, becoming the highest ranked African American woman at a nationally recognized medical institution. In 1971, she became the first woman president of the New York Cancer Society.