College of Medicine Student Receives Harvard Hope Scholars Prize
By Office of Communications & Marketing | Sep 12, 2022
Congratulations to fourth-year College of Medicine student Christopher D. George, who is among this year’s Harvard Medical School Hope Scholars—an esteemed prize awarded to medical students of color who have extensively contributed to biomedical research. Chris, a Columbia University alum, grew up in Wakefield, a medically underserved neighborhood in the Bronx. His family’s difficulties in accessing medical care and resources led him to seek a career in medicine.
Chris has helped elucidate the impact of nocturia with Urology chair Jeffrey Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., and Medical Education chair Jason Lazar, M.D. MPH. Chris was also a 2021 Downstate Alumni Research Year Scholar, during which he analyzed actinic keratosis genetic risk, epidemiology, and longitudinal progression at Erasmus MC Dermatologic Cancer Institute in South Holland, Netherlands. For this project, he received research support from Dermatology Interim Chair Sharon Glick, M.D.
Chris, who looks forward to being a lifelong learner, educator, and physician-scientist, plans to complete a Ph.D. on the genetic epidemiology of keratinocyte carcinoma in a collaboration involving Erasmus MC, Harvard’s Department of Population Medicine, and the Kaiser Permanente California Division of Research.
The degree will be awarded by Erasmus MC, one of Europe’s most authoritative scientific university medical centers. His focus will be to understand unique skin cancer markers better and help guide the development of novel targeted therapeutics that further the goals of precision medicine.
The Hope Scholarship is part of the Biomedical Science Careers Program (BSCP), jointly sponsored by Harvard’s Minority Faculty Development Program, the New England Board of Higher Education, and the Massachusetts Medical Society. The scientific, academic, biopharma, and healthcare communities widely support the scholarship.
Each Hope Scholarship will be awarded $7,500 over two years for educational purposes; awardees will be formally announced in Boston on October 3 at BSCP’s annual fundraising event.