Presentation of the 2014 Founders' Medal Award.

Mr. President, colleagues and guests. I am honored and proud to present this year’s Southern Society of Clinical Investigation (SSCI) Founders’Medal to my longtime colleague and friend Monica Farley (Figure 1). For those in the audience who are having a feeling of déjà vu, I can reassure you that the feeling is correct in that I stood here last year and presented the Founders’ Medal to Dr. Jesse Roman. However, I wish to disabuse the audience of any assumption that I am again at this podium because of my oratorical skills but rather because I have been fortunate to have spent 20 years of my professional career collaborating and interacting with 2 such wonderful academic colleagues. Monica Farley is the consummate physician-scientist and academic leader, and she has devoted an amazing amount of her time and energy to the SSCI and its many missions. Monica was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 25, 1956, and grew up in America’s heartland. As she herself will attest, team sports were her greatest passions as a child and every season led to a seamless transition from softball to volleyball to soccer to swimming and so on. She thrived on the competition and the satisfaction of working with teammates toward a common goal. It is hard to find a childhood picture of Monica without a softball glove in her hand or a volleyball nearby. Her love for athletics and her ability to thrive under pressure formed a foundation for her academic career and successes later in life but also just as clearly taught her lessons in teamwork, collegiality and resilience. Monica was by all accounts a brilliant student and was accepted into the highly competitive 6-year combined undergraduate and medical school program at the University of Missouri campus in Kansas City, Missouri. This rigorous program blends (and significantly accelerates) undergraduate and medical school education. Despite the obvious academic load in such a program, Monica excelled as a collegiate volleyball player and graduated with distinction with her Bachelor of Arts in 1978 and her Doctor of Medicine just 2 years later in 1980. In fact, after her official intercollegiate athletic career ended, she anchored her medical school softball team. At the tender age of 24, Monica began her academic medical career by leaving Missouri and moving to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, for internship and residency in Internal Medicine under the legendary Dr. Willis Hurst, the longtime Chairman of Medicine and known internationally as a clinician, educator and scholar in cardiovascular medicine. This was an era with no restrictions on work hours for trainees, and the experiences at Grady Memorial Hospital, Emory University Hospital and the Atlanta VA could be grueling. However, Monica’s life experiences and intrinsic skills had prepared her well. Her hospital badges from those years may show pictures of someone who looked young enough to be a teenager in a local high school but she was in fact a mature, smart, proficient and highly respected resident. Not surprisingly, Monica was never one to retire her athletic gear, and she participated in team sports throughout her residency, including being a star member of its soccer team. During her residency, Monica engaged actively in research and as a senior resident was among a select group of her peers who received awards at the annual Department of Medicine Research Day in 1982. A picture of that event shows the inimitable Willis Hurst with 12 men and Monica Farley. As Monica has pointed out over the years, academic medicine was not very diverse at that time, and she has dedicated an enormous part of her career to mentoring young women in science and advocating for diversity in academic medicine, with a particular emphasis on changing the culture and making it possible for women to achieve the same successes and leadership opportunities that their male counterparts enjoyed. Monica brought her energy, intellectual curiosity and work ethic to her fellowship training in Infectious Diseases at Emory University, where she dedicated an additional year as a research fellow with the support of a Public Health Services Training Grant under the mentorship of Dr. John Spitznagel in the Department of Microbiology. Her research focused on the basic mechanisms of bacterial virulence including the surface epitopes in gram-negative bacteria that facilitated binding to host cells. She was a productive and prolific investigator from the beginning and joined the faculty as an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University in 1986 with a primary appointment at the Atlanta VA under the mentorship of Dr. David Stephens, who at that time was the new Division Director of Infectious Diseases and is now our Chairman of Medicine. This was an opportune pairing on several levels as Monica and David forged a remarkably productive collaborations while Monica began a professional relationship with the VA that continues today. Monica frequently cites the support of the VA Career Development Award Program as absolutely invaluable in her early progress as a biomedical investigator and academic physician. This incredibly productive early phase of her career was the foundation for even greater successes at the next level, and Monica has published more than 140 original scientific manuscripts along with numerous reviews, book chapters and other scholarly writings. In parallel, she has a long history of independent extramural support from the VA, the NIH, the CDC and other funding agencies. Early in her academic career, Monica joined the American Federation of Clinical Research or AFCR, which later became the American Federation for Medical Research or AFMR. As we know, the Southern Section of the AFMR (S-AFMR) is one of the societies that come together every February for this Southern Regional Meeting in New Orleans. Monica served the AFMR in many capacities including as Co-Chair of the Public Policy Committee and President and used these national leadership roles to promote medical research and public spending for the career development of young physician-scientists. She also demonstrated a remarkable commitment to the S-AFMR and served in every conceivable capacity including Councilor and Chair of the section. Not surprisingly, Monica was also elected into the SSCI very early in her academic career and brought the same passion and commitment to service to our society. She has served 2 From the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine and the Atlanta VAMC, Atlanta, Georgia. The author has no financial or other conflicts of interest to disclose. Correspondence: David M. Guidot, MD, 615 Michael Street, Suite 205 Atlanta, GA 30322 (E-mail: [email protected]).