The 2nd annual Xconomy Awards Gala was a who’s who of Boston biotech. About 400 people from across the life science ecosystem came out to Boston’s Hynes Convention Center last month to celebrate the finalists over dinner and drinks, find out who got to take home the awards, and reconnect with friends and colleagues. It was an impressive showing of the city’s top talent.
Nancy Hopkins of MIT accepted her Lifetime Achievement award as the audience gave her a standing ovation. In her acceptance speech, she reflected on her career in genetics and cancer research and on her work advocating for women in science. She reminded the audience how little scientists knew about DNA and gene regulation just a few decades ago, and how much researchers have learned about cancer genetics since then. The retired MIT professor also told the story of how the university increased the number of women faculty over the last two decades—in large part due to her work in the 1990s documenting inequities between male and female professors. But she reminded the audience that much more work is needed on the diversity front, particularly in biotech. Hopkins even called on the venture capitalists in the room to make sure they tap into the full diversity of university life science faculty when building new biotech companies.
We’d like to thank our Platinum Sponsors: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Fish & Richardson, MassBio, Polaris Partners.
Gold Sponsors: Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Amgen, Dragonfly Therapeutics, Merck, Skyhawk Therapeutics, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Silver Sponsors: Blueprint Medicines, DivcoWest Real Estate Investments, Halloran Consulting Group, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, PRA Health Sciences, Stratacuity.
And thanks to David Fox Photographer for taking the photographs in the slideshow.
Stay tuned for the call for nominations for the 2019 Xconomy Awards!
