The Maria I. New International Prize for Biomedical Research was created in honor of the esteemed career of Maria I. New, MD, one of the world’s foremost pediatricians and a devoted 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 supported 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 has earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading pediatric endocrinologists. Her studies of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH)—a deficiency in the adrenal system that causes gender ambiguity in females and precocious sexual development in males—have led to treatments to correct the disorder before the baby is born. Her groundbreaking identification of a new form of hypertension, “apparent mineralcorticoid excess,” has resulted in a new area of receptor biology.
Since joining the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City in 2004, Dr. New has continued her work as a Professor of Pediatrics and of Genetics and Genomic Sciences. She is also the Founding Director of Mount Sinai’s Adrenal Steroid Disorders Program.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, among several other prestigious academies, Dr. New has 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.
2023 Prize Winner
Jean-Laurent Casanova, MD, PhD, the recipient of the Maria I. New International Prize for Biomedical Research is the Levy Family Professor at The Rockefeller University, where he heads the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases, and has been appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He also heads the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases at the Imagine Institute in the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris, which is affiliated with the INSERM and University Paris Cité.
