Ragon Institute
Jul 18, 2013 Awards
This year, Dr. Todd Allen was one of nine Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers chosen to receive the MGH Research Scholar Award. The Research Scholar Award, established at MGH in 2011 by means of a $10 million anonymous donation, provides $500,000 of unrestricted funding over the course of five years to innovative investigators, giving […]
Jul 15, 2013
This year’s Ragon AIDS Walk Team broke all records for team members and amount of money raised for local support for Massachusetts HIV/AIDS services. Team Ragon walkers and runners: Colin Ogilvie, Kim Hassell, Jessica Johnson, Meghan Hart, and Molly Amero The team had a record 118 members made up of persons both from the […]
Jun 24, 2013 Features
A new Ragon study in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa is enrolling its sixth cohort of women this month in a longitudinal study in order to identify and analyze participants immediately after they are infected with HIV. Project staff is simultaneously providing job and life-skills training to the women in order to provide support to a community […]
Jun 5, 2013 Awards
Ragon Grant Manager Alex Cusson has been recognized by the Partners of Excellence program for taking to heart the Partners HealthCare goal for all employees of “Excellence Every Day”. In the three years that Alex has been a grant manager at the Ragon Institute, he has distinguished himself with a level of attention to […]
May 29, 2013
The Ragon Institute has been established in their new space 400 Tech Square, Cambridge for several months now and researchers and staff are settling in and enjoying the spacious modern facilities. One of the primary purposes of moving to a larger space was that it would allow Ragon to increase its laboratory resources. In […]
May 22, 2013
The Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard had the privilege to host the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) last week. The Director of ONAP, Dr. Grant Colfax, and the Senior Program Manager of ONAP, James Albino, toured the Ragon lab space and then participated in a roundtable discussion about current […]
May 16, 2013
For the second year in a row, African scientists learned biostatistical methods with the ultimate goal of empowering them to be part of the solution to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Biostatistics is the application of statistics to a wide range of topics in biology including medical research. The collection, summarization, and analysis of data from […]
May 7, 2013
The Ragon Institute is proud to launch the Penny Talks, a monthly seminar featuring Ragon/MGH faculty explaining, in layman’s terms, the vision behind their work. Few who met and worked with Penny Campbell could have forgotten her! Penny started at Ragon (then Partners AIDS Research Center) in 2001 as Grant Administrator to Drs. Walker and […]
May 6, 2013
On April 18, 2013, the HIV Pathogenesis Programme (HPP) graduated nine students from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) graduate program. Over the past recent years, the HPP program has consistently had students mentored by HPP and Ragon faculty represented in the UKZN College of Health Sciences graduation program, a culmination of a productive education partnership […]
Apr 25, 2013 Awards
A team of researchers led by Dr. Todd Allen of the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard was recently awarded a 5-year, $12.4 million HIV Vaccine Research and Design (HIVRAD) award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Ragon Institute is one of the institutions making Boston– with total grants of $1.78 […]
Apr 23, 2013
On a May afternoon in 2008, Bruce Walker and Terry Ragon [MIT Class of ] ‘71 paid a recruiting visit to MIT. Walker is a Harvard Medical School physician who has studied HIV for three decades; Ragon, the founder and CEO of a software company called InterSystems, was about to bankroll a new $100 million […]
Apr 9, 2013
Budding African scientists have an exciting new avenue through which they can enhance their research careers and further equip themselves to tackle the scientific challenges of our times, including two of the world’s most daunting public health challenges: TB and HIV. This week the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH), Massachusetts […]
Mar 25, 2013
“Decades of research and three large-scale clinical trials have so far failed to yield an effective HIV vaccine, in large part because the virus evolves so rapidly that it can evade vaccine-induced immune responses. Researchers from the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard University have now developed a new approach to vaccine […]
Mar 21, 2013 Ragon Culture
IDG’s Computerworld has honored Microsoft Research for their innovative approach to HIV research, applying the same high-powered computation systems which are used in spam filters to the problem of HIV. This work is a collaboration between Microsoft Research Distinguished Scientist, David Heckerman and Ragon Institute Director, Dr. Bruce Walker. In November 2011, Heckerman and […]
Mar 12, 2013 Ragon Culture
The Boston Globe today featured the Ragon Institute’s new lab space and highlights the potential impact of cuts in federal funding on HIV research: “A leading AIDS research center unveiled its new $30 million laboratory building in Cambridge Monday, where it aims to push ahead with efforts to develop an HIV vaccine and to […]
Mar 4, 2013
Recent news has reported a Mississippi child who was apparently “cured” of HIV by receiving treatment shortly after birth. Two years later, the child’s viral loads are undetectable, despite being off treatment for almost a year. Ragon Institute Principal Investigator Dr. Brian Zanoni speaks to NPR about what could have caused this and what […]