FILE PHOTO / COURTESY MDI BIO LAB
Hermann Haller
Updated: 1 hour ago
$2M donation funds Bar Harbor bio lab’s first permanent faculty position
Photo / Courtesy MDI Bio Lab
A $2 million donation allows Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory to establish its first endowed faculty chair.
An anonymous donation of $2 million allows Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, a nonprofit hub for the science of aging and regeneration in Bar Harbor, to establish its first endowed faculty chair.
The George Wojtech Chair in Neurobiology is named for a New Jersey resident who battled with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
Establishing endowed faculty positions provides stable, long-term funding needed to attract and retain scientists and accelerate discoveries, Hermann Haller, the lab’s president.
The donation is timely for the lab which, like others around the country, are facing federal funding cuts. In recent weeks, Haller told Mainebiz there’s “a lot of uncertainty.”
The $2 million donation will go toward identifying therapeutic approaches to the treatment and prevention of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer's.
Emily Spaulding, an assistant professor at the lab, was appointed as the funding recipient. The Rockland native has been breaking ground in understanding the genesis of neurodegenerative diseases, through research and technically advanced imaging that has upended some conventional thinking about the inner workings of the cell, according to a news release.
The money provides “much-needed stability and assurance to my new laboratory,” Spaulding said.
ALS affects more than 200,000 people worldwide. It has no cure and there are few treatment options. And the types of physiological disruptions that contribute to ALS are often seen in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s. Together, the disorders affect millions.
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