The Maria I. New International Prize for Biomedical Research was created in honor of the esteemed career of the late Maria I. New, MD, who was one of the world’s foremost pediatricians and a beloved member of the Mount Sinai community. It is awarded annually to distinguished biomedical researchers for lifetime scientific achievements that have led, or may lead to, new ways to prevent and treat human disease. The award is generously endowed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and economic historian Dr. Daniel Yergin, and his wife, foreign policy expert Dr. Angela Stent.
The prize winners, who are selected by an international jury of prominent science community members, are awarded $20,000. The prize is administered by Mount Sinai’s Center for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology, in conjunction with the Department of Pediatrics, Department of Medicine, and Department of Pharmacological Sciences, under the dedicated leadership of Mone Zaidi, MD, PhD. Dr. Zaidi, who chaired the jury that awarded the Maria I. New International Prize, is Director of Mount Sinai's Center for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology, and the Mount Sinai Professor of Clinical Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai.
About Maria I. New
Over the past half-century, Dr. Maria I. New earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading pediatric endocrinologists. Her studies on the genotypes and phenotypes of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) have led to treatments to prevent the disorder before the baby is born. CAH is a condition that presents as a dysregulation in the adrenal system, causing varying degrees of gender ambiguity, reproductive difficulties and urological impairments in females as well as precocious sexual development in males. Severe forms of CAH cause a deficiency in cortisol production which, without hormone replacement therapy, leads to an inability to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure and respond to illness and stress, while another form leads to a deficiency in aldosterone production which causes the life threatening inability to retain sodium and regulate potassium levels. Furthermore, her groundbreaking identification of a new form of hypertension, “apparent mineralocorticoid excess,” resulted in a new area of receptor biology.
After joining the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City in 2004, Dr. New continued her work as a Professor of Pediatrics and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences. She was also the Founding Director of Mount Sinai’s Adrenal Steroid Disorders Program.
As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, among several other prestigious academies, Dr. New demonstrated a lifetime dedication to biomedical research and clinical care, and her training of a generation of pediatricians and endocrinologists continues to have a far-reaching impact on the lives of patients and the medical community at large.
2024 Prize Winner
Christine E. Seidman, MD, the recipient of the Maria I. New International Prize for Biomedical Research, is the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine and Genetics at Harvard Medical School and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She also serves as Director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
