The Naomi Berrie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Diabetes Research

Recognizing Cutting-Edge Diabetes Research

In 2000, the Russell Berrie Foundation established the annual Naomi Berrie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Diabetes Research. Over the past nine years, the Berrie Award has gained international recognition in the scientific community.

The Berrie Award fosters high-quality diabetes research by rewarding outstanding achievement and simultaneously increases collaboration and scientific exchange among major academic medical schools. Recipients are distinguished senior investigators from Columbia University and outside medical institutions.

2009 Naomi Berrie Awards: L to R: Dr. Domenico Accili, Mrs. and Dr. Bergman (Ph.D), Elizabeth Watson (Ph.D) and Dr. Rudy Leibel

Perhaps this program’s most exciting goal is to encourage and foster the careers of young investigators in the field of diabetes research. The prize ($100,000 over two years) supports a student or research fellow in the laboratory of each distinguished awardee. Eighteen fellows have received this support to-date.

Each year, Berrie Award winners are honored at the Frontiers in Diabetes Research Symposium. This well-attended event also serves as a forum for the dissemination of new information to a national and international audience of distinguished diabetes researchers and clinicians.

In 2009, Dr. Richard Nathan Bergman, PhD received the Naomi Berrie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Diabetes Research for his work with glucose and carbohydrate metabolism. Bergman is currently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Sourthern California.

Upon receiving the award Dr. Bergman stated, "It is a great honor for me and my colleagues to receive the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Award.  Columbia is a great University, and the Berrie Foundation and Center support and perform the very best in diabetes research, to reduce the suffering of diabetes patients and their families.  It is equally honorific to be listed among the previous recipients, who are among the best diabetes researchers in the world."

For more information about Dr. Bergman's work and to read the 2009 press release, please click here.