ALS Double Play was proud to present its first pledge payment to the University of Toronto for the Christopher Chiu Fellowship for ALS research.
ALS Double Play’s pledge of $150,000 to the University of Toronto will be for the benefit of the student award program for research fellows at the Tanz Centre for Neurodegenerative Research at the Faculty of Medicine. The Fellowship will be named after ALS Double Play’s past president and inspiration, Christopher Chiu, “The Christopher Chiu Fellowship for ALS Research.”
The ALS team at the Tanz Centre started in 2004 under the leadership of Dr. Janice Robertson. A world renowned ALS researcher, Dr. Robertson has assembled the leading minds in ALS research in an open and collaborative environment. As the head of one of the largest ALS Labs in Canada, Dr. Robertson was the recipient of a Premiers Research Excellence Award and a Canada Research Chair in ALS.
In close collaboration with Dr. Lorne Zinman, head of the largest ALS clinic in Canada, and Dr. Ekaterina Rogaeva, a geneticist at the Tanz Centre, Dr. Robertson has established the only comprehensive clinical database, blood and tissue sample collection in Canada. This is a critical achievement and indispensable to research and has formed the basis of numerous important global collaborations.
The work of Dr. Robertson and other ALS researchers in her team are published in high impact international journals. The team of scientists is regularly invited to give talks at international meetings and sit on international grant review panels as well as international workshops aimed at drug development.
Dr. Robertson takes this spirit of collaboration globally, forging partnerships with other leading ALS researchers in Japan, China, US, France and the UK.
The recipient of The Fellowship is Dr. Phillip McGoldrick. Dr. McGoldrick is a rising young star of ALS research. He obtained a first class honors B.Sc. in Neuroscience and his Ph.D. in the study of ALS from the Institute of Neurology, Queen’s Square London UK. Dr. McGoldrick chose Dr. Robertson’s laboratory as one of the best in the world to advance his career and he was successful in obtaining a prestigious and highly competitive Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American ALS Association. Dr. McGoldrick could choose any laboratory in the World, and to retain his talent at the Tanz Centre is critically dependent on philanthropic support.