ISBER is pleased to announce the 2024 Award Recipients!

ISBER is pleased to announce the 2024 Award Recipients! Join us in congratulating the award recipients below:

ISBER 2024 Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking
This award is sponsored by Analytical Biological Services 

MARTA CASTELHANO

About the Award: The ISBER Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking is designed to recognize individuals who have made outstanding, indisputable contributions to the field of biobanking. The winning individual is not required to be an ISBER member. Their contributions may include: advancing the science of biobanking, creating depth of knowledge, demonstrating world-class expertise, making remarkable discoveries, bringing the field into further prominence.

Dr. Castelhano received her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Master of Veterinary Science degrees from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Serving as an Associate Research Professor at Cornell University, the Director of the Cornell Veterinary Biobank (CVB) and the Dog Aging Project Biobank, Dr. Castelhano has over 18 years of experience in the standardized collection, processing, storage, and distribution of high-quality biospecimens and associated data.   

Dr. Castelhano is a member of the Education and Training Committee at ISBER, where she creates educational opportunities for biobankers worldwide, and has contributed to the writing of the 5th edition of the ISBER Best Practices: Recommendations for Repositories. A frequent speaker at biobank conferences and symposiums, Dr. Castelhano was invited by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) to represent the U.S. position in biobanking as an ISO expert and delegate. With her contribution, ISO 20387: General Requirements for Biobanking was published, the first ISO standard created specifically for biobanks. 

In April 2019, Dr. Castelhano led the CVB through third-party conformity assessment by the American Association of Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) to become the first biobank in the world to receive accreditation to the ISO 20387 standard. Her work is currently funded by the National Institute on Aging (part of the National Institutes of Health – NIH), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NIH), and Morris Animal Foundation.

ISBER 2024 Leadership Award
This award is sponsored by MVE Biological Solutions 

DIANE McGARVEY

About the Award: The ISBER Leadership Award is designed to honor ISBER members who have demonstrated exceptional leadership to further the mission and goals of the society and/or significant, long-standing contributions to the society. ISBER recognizes contributors who have played critical roles in developing and executing ISBER’s vision and mission.

Diane McGarvey has over 30 years’ experience in biorepository science. She is the Director of the Eastern Division of the NCI-Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) at the University of Pennsylvania.  She and her team have published on tissue procurement, preservation, and post-preservation processing methodologies. 

Ms. McGarvey has been an ISBER member since it’s early days. She recently served as the ISBER Director-at-Large of the Americas Region previously served on many other ISBER committees. She is currently active in Education and Training Committee.

Teaching our next generation of biobankers has always been a core belief of Ms. McGarvey Along with being the ISBER Workshop Coordinator for several years, she along with Deb Garcia initiated the Biobanking 101 series which has become a successful ISBER webinar series that focuses on basic elements of repository processes and provides tools to biobankers. Ms. McGarvey consults on biorepository start-up, logistics, and management.

ISBER 2024 Special Service Award

ROCIO AGUILAR-QUESADA

About the Award: The ISBER Special Service Awards recognize individuals who have made exceptional contributions towards the goals of the Society through the performance of a special service or act on behalf of the organization.

Rocío Aguilar-Quesada has been working as Technical Responsible in the Andalusian Public Health System Biobank in Granada since 2009. She has her PhD in Biochemistry and M.S. in Biobanking and the use of human biological samples for biomedical research. Rocío is currently coordinating and participating in different projects and initiatives related to quality assurance, biospecimen science, and ELSI of the use of biological samples.

Rocío has actively contributed to many ISBER task forces, working groups, and initiatives, including:

• ISBER 2023 Regional Meeting co-chair
• EMEA Regional Ambassador since 2019
• Member of the ISBER Nominating Committee since 2022
• Member of the 2023 and 2024 Outstanding New Product Award Task Force
• Member of the ISBER Biospecimen Science Working Group since 2016
• Contributor of the 5th edition of the ISBER Best Practices: Recommendations for Repositories

ISBER 2024 Special Service Award

KOH FURUTA

About the Award: The ISBER Special Service Awards recognize individuals who have made exceptional contributions towards the goals of the Society through the performance of a special service or act on behalf of the organization.

Dr. Koh Furuta is a retired biobanker, who is working as a clinical pathologist. He graduated from Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, and started his career as a surgeon. Koh spent 5 years as a postdoc at Johns Hopkins University from 1992 to 1997. During that time, he was exposed to the very early stages of molecular biology and biobanking. After returning to Japan, Koh worked at the National Cancer Center Hospital in Tokyo for 15 years. During a sabbatical leave, from 2010 to 2011, he visited Minneapolis, Minnesota to join the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, and learned about cryobiology. 

During Koh's appointment at the National Cancer Center Hospital, he worked with his colleagues to establish a biobank of liquid samples, including blood samples. He was invited to join the Kanagawa Cancer Center in Yokohama in 2015. After contributing to the Kanagawa Cancer Center for three years, he visited IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) in Lyon, France, where he spent 5 months. He returned to Japan just before the outbreak of COVID-19.

Koh served ISBER as Director-At-Large of the Indo-Pacific Rim region from 2019 to April 2023. He is also involved in ISO activities such as TC276WG2 (biobanking), TC212WG1 and WG4 (Clinical Laboratory), and TC147SC4WG26 (Waste Water Epidemiology).