In this issue of Medicine@Brown, you’ll read about the 50th anniversary of the Brown-Tougaloo Early Identification Program. Established by the founders of the Medical School and leaders at Tougaloo College, this lasting collaboration has graduated dozens of alumni who have gone on to remarkable careers in medicine. You’ll also meet the first EIP legacy student: Makayla Hamilton MD’29, whose dad, Derrick, was a member of the MD Class of 2001.

We have been celebrating this milestone with a number of events at both institutions. At Founders Weekend in Jackson, MS, we presented a Distinguished Service Award to Robert L. Smith, MD, who was instrumental in establishing and sustaining the EIP over five decades. Dr. Smith, a family medicine physician in Mississippi, is a Tougaloo alumnus who has supported numerous students from both schools on their journeys to becoming physicians. We invite the community to the Brown celebratory reception that will be held on Nov. 12 at The Warren Alpert Medical School.

You’ll also read in this issue about the Starr Healthspan Innovation Alliance, created with a generous $37 million gift from The Starr Foundation. By combining investments in Brown University Health’s clinical trial infrastructure with cutting-edge research on aging-related diseases at the Center on the Biology of Aging, the Alliance aims to bring about novel treatments to help us all live healthier longer into advanced age.

That was just one of several grants received this fall to support research in the Division of Biology and Medicine. The Clinical and Translational Research Center, Advance RI-CTR, was renewed for the third time with a $26.5 million award; two COBRE grants were also renewed; and faculty have received multimillion-dollar site awards for a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center and an ARPA-H RNA-based medicines center.

Fueled by this robust philanthropic and federal grant support across our research enterprise, BioMed is moving forward with powerful momentum. It’s a deeply exhilarating moment for our entire community.