Three Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center investigators — including the Center’s new President, Craig B. Thompson — have been featured with singer-songwriter Debbie Harry to lead the Geoffrey Beene Gives Back® 2010 Rock Stars of Science™ campaign in GQ magazine’s December “Men of the Year” issue. Geoffrey Beene Gives Back is the philanthropic arm of the designer menswear brand, founded by the late Geoffrey Beene.
The Rock Stars of Science, or Rock S.O.S™, is a multimedia print and online philanthropic campaign created by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation that recognizes as “Rock Stars” researchers whose work has contributed to significant advances in improving the health and lives of others. In addition to Dr. Thompson, Cancer Biology and Genetics Program Chair Joan Massagué and Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Chair Charles L. Sawyers are 2010 Rock Stars.
Rock Stars of Science debuted as a six-page spread in the June 2009 issue of GQ in which former Memorial Sloan Kettering President Harold Varmus was a featured Rock Star. The campaign aims to motivate young people to consider careers in science by pairing well-known rock stars and celebrities with some of the nation’s leading investigators.
Rock S.O.S extends the relationship between Geoffrey Beene and Memorial Sloan Kettering. In 2006, the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering was established with an initial gift from the estate of Mr. Beene. “I orchestrated the creation of the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center as the centerpiece of my goal to transform an iconic designer brand into a business/philanthropic model supporting ’out of the box’ early-stage research for the treatment and prevention of cancer,” said G. Thompson Hutton, Executor of the Geoffrey Beene Estate and Trustee of the Geoffrey Beene Foundation. “Our 2010 Rock Stars of Science campaign salutes researchers like Drs. Thompson, Sawyers, and Massagué for their scientific leadership, life-saving therapies, and generosity in helping to excite the next generation about careers in science.”
