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The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, announced Friday that after decades of leadership, support, and advocacy, former executive director, Harald Schmid, PhD, and former Institute scientist Patricia Schmid, have endowed a $1 million professorship to recruit, retain, and support a faculty member at the Institute.
“Scientists, by our very nature, are always driven to give back,” Executive Director Robert Clarke, PhD, said. “Typically, we do that through our research results, but as he has always done, Dr. Schmid has gone above and beyond to give back to The Hormel Institute in a way that will ensure its success for years to come.”
Since arriving as a scientist in 1962, Dr. Schmid and the Institute have been inextricably linked. At the time, the Institute was renowned for its lipid research that had successfully identified the omega-3 and -6 fatty acids in the 1950s. When Schmid was named executive director in 1987, lipid research related to heart disease was still the Institute’s focus as both results and funding remained fruitful.
That all changed in the early 1990s. With little notice and practically overnight, federal funding for lipid research evaporated, putting the Institute’s future in question. With the desire to retain as many people as possible while allowing the Institute to keep its reputation for conducting world-class research, Schmid made the decision to pivot from lipids to cancer. Specifically, how cells go from normal to cancerous.
“Although there was concern about entering the very competitive field of cancer research, the potential scientific payoffs were irresistible,” Schmid said. “The cellular signaling systems involved in the transformation of normal cells to cancer cells were ideally suited for the kinds of laboratory research that existed or could develop at The Hormel Institute.”
