When I was a little kid, everyone feared polio and they were right to. Polio is highly infectious and mainly effects young children. Here in the US we no longert worry so much about polio thanks to the discovery of a vaccine by Jonas Salk and it's improvement by Albert Sabin.

Now why do you care? Well two reasons-- the first is that at the age of 5 I was the first kid in my county to get the vaccine and my picture was all over the local papers. I felt I was very brave and famous and, oh yes, obnoxiously proud of myself. My older sister was furious!. She had been in the clinical trial and she got the placebo. Not only did she not get her picture in the paper, she had to to get a second series of shots-- this time with the real stuff. It took her years and years to forgive me.

But, once again, I've been digressing. The real reason I'm writing this is because yesterday, the Sabin Vaccine Institute gave out two awards to two really interesting women.

They gave their 16th Gold Medal in Vaccinology to the "Dr. Ruth of Malaria" Dr. Ruth Nussenzweig. While we are a little grumpy that it took them so long to give the award to a woman, we're impressed it was her. Her work has paved the way for the development of several new malaria vaccines. Their 1st Young Investigator Award went to Dr. Katherine O’Brien who leads the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health’s Infectious Disease Group.

Congratulations to all!