Marcia McNutt, PhD, president of the National Academy of Sciences; Carolyn Clancy, MD’79, assistant under secretary for health for the U.S. Veterans Health Administration; and Majid Jafar and Lynn Barghout Jafar, co-founders of the Loulou Foundation, received honorary degrees at UMass Chan Medical School’s 52nd Commencement, held on Sunday, June 1. Learn more about the honorees in these videos.
Marcia McNutt, PhD
The president of the National Academy of Sciences since 2016, Dr. McNutt was the director of the U.S. Geological Survey when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010 and explained the challenges faced in cleaning up this environmental disaster.
“What an incredibly stressful time that was for the nation,” McNutt said.
Former coworkers and McNutt’s three daughters reflect on her contributions to science in this video.
Carolyn Clancy, MD’79
Dr. Clancy was part of UMass Chan’s first full medical school class of 100 students. The VA’s Office of Discovery, Education and Affiliate Networks, which Clancy has led since 2018, fosters collaboration and knowledge transfer among VA educators, researchers and clinicians; and the VA’s hundreds of affiliates.
“There are people in the United States who benefit from high-quality care and they will never know that name, Dr. Carolyn Clancy, and yet, through example after example after example, she has directly affected . . . the care that people receive,” said Mary Wakefield, PhD, former deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in this video.
Majid Jafar and Lynn Barghout Jafar
Majid and Lynn Barghout Jafar co-founded the Loulou Foundation to advance science and treatments for CDKL5 deficiency disorder, a rare neuro-genetic disorder that affects their eldest daughter, Alia. Through the Loulou Foundation, the Barghouts have funded more than 60 research projects in more than 100 labs across North America, Europe and Asia. So far, the research has yielded one FDA-approved drug, with another in a clinical trial.
“The Loulou Foundation has been an absolute game-changer in the CDKL5 community,” said Michael Jasulavic, the parent of a child with CDKL5, in a video interview. “We may never be at the point we’re at now if it weren’t for their actions.”
Watch the conferral of the honorary degrees on UMass Chan’s YouTube channel. Photos are posted on Facebook.
