Mats Sundin, the Swedish hockey legend who made a career thrilling fans as captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, has donated CAD$333,000 (roughly US$333,000) to launch two postdoctoral fellowships in developmental health at the University of Toronto and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
His hope, he told a packed news conference at the University of Toronto today, is to foster an “elite” crew of outstanding postdoctoral students who will make big contributions to unraveling the long-term influences of genes and the environment as they act on fetuses in the womb and on children early in life.
“What can we do to give our kids the best shot at reaching their full potential?” Sundin added in this press release. “By establishing this program at U of T and KI, we’re creating an Olympic training camp for our brightest young minds to work with global leaders and answer these challenging questions.”
The Mats Sundin Awards in Medicine are two-year postdoctoral fellowships that will be granted to one PhD graduate from each institution each year, with provisions for each awardee to spend one year with mentors at the sister institution.
The two venues are leaders in stem-cell research, regenerative medicine and associated areas of developmental biology. Each institution has pledged roughly CAD$150,000 to the award fund, in addition to Sundin’s gift. Sundin’s short-term aim, with his institutional partners, is to raise the fund’s value to a total of CAD$1 million. However, he plans to continue actively fundraising thereafter. Sundin has made it clear that “this partnership is for the long term,” says Stephen Lye, the associate director of the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Toronto, where the newly formed Institute for Human Development will be home to the awards.
Sundin, the highest-scoring Swede ever to play in North America’s National Hockey League, retired in 2009 as the Maple Leafs’ all-time leader in goals and points. His jersey, #13, will receive the rare honour of being raised to the rafters of the Air Canada Centre in Toronto tomorrow night. Today, he received medical scrubs labelled with his number from Cathy Whiteside, dean of the University of Toronto faculty of medicine, pictured above. Sundin also represented Sweden in three Olympics, leading the country’s team to a gold medal at the 2006 winter games in Turin.
Those who have worked with him on the new initiative say that Sundin appreciates the parallels between great scientists and great athletes. Both “must work hard all the time, be motivated, be systematic and be competitive. He likes that a lot,” says Ola Hermanson, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute who studies the regulation of developing neural cells. Hermanson is helping to organize the new awards on the Swedish end, where Urban Lendahl and Jonas Frisén are among the scientists who have agreed to judge award applications.
Lye notes that Sundin had been exposed to gravely ill children through earlier work for the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. “I think that impacted him. When he learned about this area of research” — which aims ultimately to create the healthiest possible environment for fetuses and newborns, with lifelong impacts on well-being — “he was very drawn to that.”
Hermanson and Lye both added that the value of Sundin’s gift goes beyond the fellowships it will launch, to the star power it is shining on medical research.
“There was more TV coverage of this press conference than we used to have for the Nobel Prize in Medicine,” says Hermanson of the Karolinska Institute, which is home to the Nobels.