The Brinster family, headed by Ralph and Elaine Brinster, has given much to the Penn community, from awarding esteemed prizes to global leaders in biomedicine to creating opportunities for high school students to participate in science programming. The family has generously continued their philanthropic partnership with Penn Medicine with a new gift to establish the Ralph and Elaine Redding Brinster High School Bioscience Outreach Fund at the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM). The endowed fund will support PSOM’s BioEYES Program, whose mission is to foster enthusiasm for science by offering local K-12 students opportunities to explore life science through real-world applications using a hands-on approach to learning.

The new fund will provide resources to transport local high school students to the annual Ralph L. Brinster Symposium and presentation of the Elaine Redding Brinster Prize in Science or Medicine. In addition to bringing students to the event, the fund will also support related science programming for high schools in Ridley, Pa., and West Philadelphia.

Ralph L. Brinster, VMD, PhD, is a geneticist at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Brinster is a National Medal of Science laureate and the Richard King Mellon Professor of Reproductive Physiology at Penn Vet. He is acknowledged as one of the seminal founders of the field of mammalian transgenesis. Elaine Brinster served as a nurse for over a decade at Philadelphia General Hospital in West Philadelphia.

A Prestigious and Inclusive Event

The Brinster family has a history of generous giving to Penn.

In 2019, the children of Ralph and Elaine established the Elaine Redding Brinster Prize in Science or Medicine with a $1.5 million gift. Two years later, the family donated an additional $1 million to create the annual Ralph L. Brinster Symposium, a celebration of breakthrough science across the spectrum of biomedical research.

The symposium, which is co-sponsored by the deans of PSOM and Penn Vet and is organized by the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Penn, annually invites a select group of global leaders in biomedicine to Penn to present their research. Awarded during the symposium, the Prize is presented annually to recognize an awardee for their outstanding discovery and its major impacts on biomedicine. This year’s Elaine Redding Brinster Prize winner was Stuart H. Orkin, MD, from Harvard Medical School. Recognized for landmark discoveries of the molecular basis of blood disorders and for using basic science findings in the development of therapeutic approaches, Dr. Orkin laid the foundation for the molecular study of blood cell formation which led to the approved treatments for Sickle Cell Disease and Thalassemia.

The 2024 Ralph L. Brinster Symposium, which took place March 13 at the Smilow Center for Translational Research, embodied the spirit of the family’s philanthropy.

For the first time since the symposium’s inception, high school students were able to attend the event in person. Thanks to the inspiring efforts of  Jamie Shuda, EdD, Director of Outreach, Education, and Research at PSOM, a group of 30 interested AP biology students from Elaine Redding Brinster’s alma mater, Ridley High School, were transported to campus for a day filled with hands-on science. The students toured two labs in Smilow, attended Dr. Orkin’s Prize lecture, and participated in a subsequent Q&A session. Students expressed their excitement for the event, noting they enjoyed meeting graduate students, finding connections between their classes and the “real world,” and visiting the labs. Dr. Shuda responded to the students by emphasizing the importance of trying new opportunities and working with others: “There needs to be collaboration in order to be successful. You learn from each other.”

Elaine Brinster noted that it was “gratifying to see how many students were interested in and attended the event.”

On March 6 students from Ridley High School were treated to a lecture from IRM faculty members Eugene Khandros, MD, PhD, and Scott Alan Peslak, MD, PhD, to prepare the group for the keynote lecture. In the future, this opportunity will be funded by the Ralph and Elaine Redding Brinster High School Bioscience Outreach Fund.

In addition to Dr. Orkin, the symposium featured several eminent speakers from across the biomedical sciences, including Titia de Lange, PhD, from the Rockefeller University; Carla Shatz, PhD, from Stanford University; Alejandro Sànchez Alvarado, PhD, from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research; and Marianne Bronner, PhD, from California Institute of Technology.