NU Trustee Ann Lurie Honored With Humanitarian Award
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| Ann Lurie |
Northwestern University trustee and philanthropist Ann Lurie has received the 2009 Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Award for Humanitarian Contributions to the Health of Humankind by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. The award was presented on March 24 at an awards ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, Arlington, Va.
“Ann’s life is an exceptional story of one person’s commitment to helping people through worldwide professional, civic, and philanthropic endeavors,” said Northwestern University President Henry S. Bienen. Ms. Lurie was nominated for the award by Bienen and former U.S. Congressman John Edward Porter.
Over the past 20 years, she has donated more than $250 million to improving the health and well being of people in Chicago and around the world.
Her gifts endowed the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University as well as the state-of-the-art Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center, a 12-story building with lecture auditoriums and laboratories that accommodates more than 1,000 researchers, technicians, postdoctoral students, and lab assistants.
She established two professorships at Northwestern and one at Children’s Memorial Hospital, focusing on cancer research. She also funded a laboratory in the medical research center to study cancer genetics.
Ms. Lurie recently pledged $100 million to help build the new Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The donation is the largest charitable investment ever received in the hospital’s more than 125-year history. It is scheduled to open in 2012.
“This gift will transform Children’s Memorial Hospital and the care that we are able to provide to children and families,” said Patrick M. Magoon, the hospital’s president and CEO.