News

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center held its Academic Convocation and Commencement on May 13, 2026, celebrating new graduates and award winners. This year, 15 students earned doctoral degrees from the Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSK), alongside graduates from MSK’s clinical and translational research programs. During the ceremony, MSK leaders also honored our late Chairman Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., for his role in establishing GSK. “Over nearly four decades of service as a trustee on the MSK boards, Lou helped shape our long-term vision, demonstrating how sustained leadership and philanthropy can advance science, educate future leaders, and bring an institution closer to its goals of ending cancer for life,” said President and CEO Dr. Selwyn Vickers. “Today, [GSK] continues to embody his conviction that scientific excellence is strengthened by a deep commitment to the people behind it.” Congratulations to the 2026 graduates on their achievements.

At the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Dr. Peter Nguyen and his team are advancing SPEEDR, an innovative approach to building circularity into plastic life cycles. SPEEDR focuses on engineering microbes that can both degrade commonly used PET plastics and convert the resulting materials into PHB, a fully compostable bioplastic. Using a machine learning-guided enzyme engineering approach rooted in synthetic biology, the team is developing a system in which plastics can be repeatedly broken down and rebuilt. The Wyss Institute recently spotlighted this work, underscoring its potential to create a novel circular plastic lifecycle. Gerstner Philanthropies’ support of Dr. Nguyen’s research reflects our commitment to advancing scalable, science-driven solutions to address plastic pollution.

Gerstner Philanthropies acknowledges Chaminade High School’s recent piece honoring our founder, Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. We are grateful to the Chaminade community for sharing this reflection. As noted, Mr. Gerstner emphasized intellectual rigor, moral responsibility, and teamwork; principles that remained central to his longstanding connection to the school and to his efforts to expand access to quality education for all students.

We are grateful to the Department of Ophthalmology at Columbia University for sharing a thoughtful In Memoriam honoring our founder, Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. As the article reflects, Mr. Gerstner had a deep commitment to Columbia and to advancing biomedical science. He believed in supporting physician-scientists and early-career researchers to drive discovery and improve human health. We thank our partners at Columbia for this meaningful tribute and for continuing the work he cared about so deeply.

In partnership with Global Methane Hub’s Enteric Fermentation R&D Accelerator, Gerstner Philanthropies has awarded funding to Dr. Ratul Chowdhury of Iowa State University, to support research aimed at reducing methane emissions from livestock. The project brings together collaborators from Texas A&M University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop an AI-driven computational framework that identifies compounds capable of lowering methane production during digestion. By targeting the microbial processes behind enteric fermentation, the research seeks to discover safe, effective inhibitors that do not compromise animal health or productivity. Findings from this work will enable farmers to to customize the diet of ruminant animals to produce less methane during digestion.