“Walter and Idun Berry’s chief goal in establishing this fellowship program was to give researchers the opportunity to pursue their hunches, to do those experiments and follow those leads that might look obvious in hindsight, but that at the time were truly innovative and even a bit courageous.”
–Walt Borneman, Berry Foundation Trustee
In 1990, Walter and Idun Berry decided on Stanford University as the best place to create a postdoctoral fellowship program dedicated to improving the health of children. The fellowship named in their honor seeks to "benefit humanity through advancing and expanding the understanding of children’s health and disease in both the clinical and basic medical sciences."
Since the program's establishment, annual gifts from the Walter V. and Idun Berry Foundation have supported 68 early career clinical and basic research scientists. The fellows’ innovative research has addressed many challenging illnesses and produced valuable discoveries.
In celebration of the 20th year of the Berry Fellowship Program, a symposium will be held at Stanford University in October 2010. Community members, students, faculty, the directors of the Foundation, and all former Berry Fellows are welcome to attend.