Congratulations to Ben Persily ’23, who was recently awarded the Milton Fisher Scholarship for Innovation and Creativity by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the region’s largest grantmaker and charitable endowment.
“It helps reassure me that other people recognize the value of the research I do and the potential impacts it can have on people,” shared Persily, expressing his gratitude for the award. “If people don't see the value in any particular research, then it becomes harder for that research to end up helping people.”
Unlike a traditional scholarship focused on academic achievement or financial need, the Milton Fisher Scholarship for Innovation and Creativity's specific goal is to reward and encourage students who display innovative and creative problem-solving skills in high school or their first year of college. The four-year renewable scholarship awards range from $1,000 to $5,000.
Persily was awarded for his work completed through King’s ASPIRE program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, leading to breakthroughs in correcting the genetic mutation that causes cystic fibrosis through stem cells.
Victoria Schulman, Director of Science Research at King, noted the importance of the work.
“The novel innovation here is that this approach to correcting congenital diseases can be used to address numerous genetically influenced diseases,” she said. “His creative new approach that rivals the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system has applications far beyond the single disease he studied.”
Persily, who is currently enrolled in the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of nine recipients of the 2023 award, beating out thousands of applications nationwide. He is the second King student to receive this impressive recognition, following John Russell ’22, who also received the award for his work in ASPIRE.
“My current goal is to pursue my PhD in the area of stem cell biology, developmental biology, and regenerative medicine,” wrote Persily. “From there, I hope to do some combination of academia and industry so I can continue my love of research while also ensuring that my research has applications that can help people.”
Alongside his studies, Persily is continuing his research work and helping to support local high school students.
“King, and especially ASPIRE, gave me the tools to begin conducting the research I've started at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Additionally, the leadership and teaching roles I took up at King have helped train skills that I can apply in college. For example, after leading the math help center for three years at King, I became a mentor for a high school math class, and now am in charge of all of the mentors at Penn going to high schools in West Philadelphia.”
The ASPIRE program is supported by the Advanced Mathematics and Science Study Program endowed fund established in 2018 by Margharet, Frank, Bea, and William Nash to support select students with demonstrated ability and interest in achieving true excellence within science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics in global competition preparation, and/or laboratory research experiences.