The first-ever Mass General Brigham Celebration of Science was held at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School last week, and as the name of the event suggests, there was a lot to celebrate about the past year’s research excellence.
The half-day event featured 260 science posters (with 20 Posters of Distinction winners named); the presentations of three Martin Prize awards for the top papers in clinical (Tatsuo Kawai, MD, PhD and Leonardo Riella, MD, PhD), fundamental (Benjamin Kleinstiver, PhD) and outcomes/implementation (Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD) research over the past year; and updates and messages of support for research from Mass General Brigham leadership.
An expansion of the annual Celebration of Science that originated at Massachusetts General Hospital, this year’s system-wide event had over 940 registered attendees from across Mass General Brigham.
Despite the unprecedented threats to federal research funding at the start of 2025, MGB’s total research revenue reached $2.73B and the system is still the largest recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said Anne Klibanski, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mass General Brigham.
“Our research funding remains strong despite all these headwinds, and that is due to the collective strength of this research community,” Klibanski said.
For 2026, Klibanski said that she and other leaders are working to sustain the reach and impact of that research, while dealing with ongoing uncertainty about federal support for research and concerns about changes to federal reimbursement for clinical care, which could impact the funding available for research.
In her meetings with elected officials, federal policy makers and others, Klibanski has been emphasizing two key messages.
“Number one, we need to invest in and sustain our research infrastructure in our system, across our state and across our country,” she said.
“Secondly, we need to retain the meritocracy of funding. It's the meritocracy of funding that has characterized the NIH through so many decades of different leaders. That's based on science, and it really upholds the primacy of credentialed peer-reviewed research.”
The Benefits of Joining Forces
David Brown, MD, President of Academic Medical Centers at MGB and Paul Anderson, MD, PhD, Chief Academic Officer at MGB, both spoke about the power of collaboration that has united research programs across the MGB system.
“For many years, extraordinary research has of course occurred at the Brigham, at Mass General and at our smaller academic medical centers, McLean, Spaulding, Mass Eye and Ear, each with its own history, its own strengths and its own areas of excellence,” said Brown. “But what we're building now is something much more connected because the kind of work we recognize today require those connections.
“It doesn't happen in silos or solely in the confines of a traditional academic department. It happens across disciplines, across institutions, across teams linking fundamental discovery to clinical care and to population health.”
Anderson pointed out the significance of the rich history, culture and pride of hospitals like Mass General, the Brigham, Mass Eye and Ear and the McLean Hospital, which were all founded over 200 years ago.
“It's not trivial to bring all of these individuals together under one MGB. And yet in the last several years, we've done that,” Anderson said. “I think we've seen some of the fruits of this integration process, both in efficiency of delivering quality to our patients, efficiency of the use of research space, research equipment, et cetera. I think we'll see more advantages of integration as time goes on.”
Reasons for Optimism
While challenges and uncertainty will undoubtedly continue throughout 2026, there is reason to be optimistic as well, MGB leaders said.
“We are navigating a landscape right now which is both extremely challenging financially but also holding more promise than we have seen in so many years,” Klibanski said. “The scientific advances are occurring so rapidly and what we're seeing in terms of evolving patient needs and solutions provided and the emergence of incredibly powerful technology that we've heard about for so many years that are now right here, including artificial intelligence.”
Brown agreed. “This year's [Martin Prize] awardees exemplify that progress, work that's defining what is possible in gene editing, work that's advancing transplantation in ways that were until recently unimaginable and deepening our understanding of the biological basis of psychiatric conditions at a scale we've never before contemplated,” he said.
“This is research that doesn't just expand knowledge. It reshapes the future of medicine and how we think about how we can have impact on patients in the months, years, decades ahead.”
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