The Albany Medical Center Prize serves to encourage and recognize extraordinary and sustained contributions to improving health care and promoting innovative biomedical research. Awarded annually, the $500,000 prize is the largest prize in medicine in the United States and is bestowed to any physician or scientist, or group, whose work has led to significant advances in the fields of health care and scientific research with demonstrated translational benefits applied to improved patient care. The prize is a legacy to its founder - the late Morris "Marty" Silverman. At the inaugural awards ceremony in Albany, NY in March 2001, Albany Medical Center Prize founder Marty Silverman started a tradition that will be carried on for the duration of the Prize - 100 years. Marty's promise was to light one candle each year to honor that year's recipient.
Prize Criteria The Albany Medical Center Prize has been created to provide national and international recognition to a physician, biomedical scientist, or group of physicians or scientists, who have made extraordinary and sustained leadership contributions to improving healthcare and patient care; or who have successfully pursued innovative biomedical research with demonstrated translational benefits applied to improved patient care. Each year's Albany Medical Center Prize winner will have demonstrated significant outcomes that offer medical value of national or international importance. Albany Medical Center Prize winner activities will include but not be limited to disease and injury management, clinical research, and basic science investigations of diseases and injuries, leading to new discoveries and improved clinical outcomes. Those honored will be practitioners and/or scientists whose accomplishments and outcomes have been demonstrated in the past quarter century, with preference to demonstrated accomplishments in the past decade. The recipient has full discretionary use of the Albany medical Center Prize, although it is the Albany Medical Center Prize Committee's hope that at least a portion of the award will be used to advance further positive outcomes in his or her field of expertise. The Albany Medical Center Prize is designed to be both a public award and an important resource for sustaining excellence. Nominations for the 2009 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research will be accepted through January 9, 2009. A letter of nomination must include a description of the nominee's extraordinary or sustained contribution to improving health care and patient care; or a description of innovative biomedical research with demonstrated translational benefits applied to improved patient care. The Selection Committee also requests two additional letters of support for each nomination, as well as the curriculum vitae of each person nominated, with a bibliography of important publications and articles. No self nominations will be accepted. Nominations by interested parties may be directed to: Teri A. Cerveny, Secretary Senior Vice President, Development The Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research c/o Albany Medical Center, Center Building, 628 Madison Avenue - 1st Floor Albany, New York 12208 Phone: 518-262-8043 Fax: 518-262-4769 Email: AMCprize@mail.amc.edu
