We at Xconomy were thrilled to see such a great turnout at our first-ever Awards Gala—350 people from the Boston life sciences community filled a Hynes Convention Center ballroom. As Bob Buderi, our founder and editor-in-chief, said in his opening remarks on September 26 before a sold-out crowd: We clearly struck a chord.
Top scientists, CEOs, and many others from across the life sciences ecosystem came out to celebrate the Award winners and finalists. The atmosphere was festive, with rock music, a cool lightshow, and suspenseful silence that fell across the room as everyone waited for our emcees, Susan Windham-Bannister (president and CEO of Biomedical Growth Strategies) and Rob Perez (founder and chairman of Life Science Cares), to open the envelopes and reveal the winners.
In accepting their Lifetime Achievement Awards, Lita Nelsen, who recently retired as head of the MIT Technology Licensing Office, and George Whitesides, a chemistry and materials pioneer at Harvard University (and co-founder of Genzyme), reflected on their long careers.
We paused for a few moments to pay tribute to the life of Henri Termeer, the longtime Genzyme CEO who passed away earlier this year. Alison Lawton, who worked closely with Termeer for more than 20 years at Genzyme and who sits on the boards of some of the startups Termeer co-founded, gave the tribute and led a toast as everyone stood and raised their glasses. Lawton, chief operating officer of Aura Biosciences, spoke about how focused Termeer was on patients and how he took the time to chat with his employees in the cafeteria and to mentor budding CEOs.
We’d like to thank our Platinum Sponsors: ICON and Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Gold Sponsors: Arrakis Therapeutics, Sanofi, Syros, Wyss Institute.
Silver Sponsors: Dragonfly Therapeutics, GE, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, LEO Science & Tech Hub, Shire, Stratacuity, Tesaro, Veritas, Wuxi AppTec.
And thanks to Alex Gagne and Rythum Vinoben for taking the photographs in the slideshow.
You can read more about the Awards finalists in a series of articles listed here, and stay tuned for videos, profiles, and Q&As with the winners. Also, please keep an eye out for nominations for next year’s Awards—and we look forward to seeing you at the 2018 Awards Gala.
