News

SUNY has announced the expansion of student emergency aid to all 64 campuses across New York State, supported by $600,000 in funding from the 2026–27 State Budget. The expansion builds on an emergency aid pilot launched in 2017 at seven SUNY campuses with $600,000 in grants from Gerstner Philanthropies and the Heckscher Foundation for Children. Designed to help students manage unexpected financial emergencies and remain enrolled, the program has since expanded across the SUNY system. The new state funding will ensure that students at every SUNY campus have access to emergency support when an unforeseen expense threatens to disrupt their education.

Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has announced the 18th cohort of the Louis V. Gerstner Scholars, honoring four outstanding early-career physician scientists: Joshua Cook, MD, PhD; Brian Gill, MD; Ian Mellis, MD, PhD; and Alexander Nectow, MD, PhD. Established in 2008, the program supports investigators conducting innovative translational research to improve human health. 2023 scholar Edmond Chan recieved the 2026 Gerstner Merit Award, which provides an additional year of funding to scholars demonstrating exceptional research progress. Since its inception, the program has named 72 scholars and awarded 11 Merit Awards. Congratulations to this year’s scholars and Merit Award recipient on this recognition and their commitment to advancing biomedical discovery.

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.