New Endowment Established to Support Childcare for Young Investigators Attending the BMES Annual Meeting

Thanks to the support of the benefactors, The Linda Griffith & Douglas Lauffenburger Endowment supporting childcare for young investigators attending the BMES Annual Meetings has been established and will soon begin accepting applications.

The endowment comes from a gracious gift to BMES from Linda Griffith and Doug Lauffenburger. Both are BMES members and professors at MIT. Griffith is the recipient of last year’s prestigious BMES Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lectureship Award, and Lauffenburger is a past president of the Society.

“Young investigators are the lifeblood of our Society who bring new problems to the fore, and new ideas for existing problems,” said Griffith. “We hope this gift will start conversations everywhere about how we can better support the lives of our students, postdocs, and junior colleagues who are faced with financial and time stress.”

Since launching the MIT Department of Biological Engineering in 1998, Griffith and Lauffenburger have seen first-hand the challenges that come from starting a family while pursuing a degree and a career.

Griffith said that the experiences she’s seen from postdocs who have delayed having children because they are unable to juggle against the pressures of parenthood and a career, at the same time, have been striking. “It is heartbreaking to think that any of our BMES community members delay children to the point that they cannot have them — we want to encourage having children while you are able to have them.”

Encouraging a healthy family dynamic comes from a deep place for Griffith and Lauffenburger as they could not have children of their own due to severe infertility issues arising from endometriosis.

“The pain of infertility never goes away,” noted Griffith. “It is lessened a lot by helping others have healthy children and family lives.”

The concept of family has been a driving force for the BME couple. Instead of opting for a fancy student banquet when they initiated the Biological Engineering Department at MIT, Griffith and Lauffenburger opted instead to host a buffet dinner at their own home. They invited the students to bring their families, and the couple hired students with extensive childcare experience to host the children with activities and special food while the parents were encouraged to relax and enjoy the company of adults.

“Doug and I enjoy seeing the children grow up and blossom over the years,” said Griffith. “We feel sympathetic to the broader community of investigators in bioengineering. We have watched with pride and admiration as two former undergraduate researchers from our labs, (Immediate Past President of BMES) Cindy Reinhart-King and (current President) Shelly Sakiyama, have built families in concert with assuming leadership positions in the profession and the Society.”

Providing travel support through their new endowment is yet another way Griffith and Lauffenburger are signaling their continued support of young families.

The decision to establish the BMES endowment fund was not something that the couple decided on overnight. The two had informal conversations with young investigators, especially those with children, and found huge enthusiasm for a BMES childcare grant for parents in need.

“We note that our funding, while substantial, will not likely meet the full needs, and therefore have encouraged the society leadership, BMES Fellows and grassroots members to explore ways to augment our catalytic funding for families,” said Griffith.

The generous funds for this gift come from the prize Griffith and Lauffenburger received from the National Academy of Engineering for the Gordon Prize, in recognition of the creation of the discipline of Biological Engineering.

“Working together to start the Biological Engineering Department at MIT, together with colleagues there, was akin to a family business,” said Griffith. “It therefore made sense to us to support other families with the award funds.”

The endowment will help young investigators offset some of the costs associated with childcare to attend the BMES Annual Meeting this year and in future years.

It is fitting that the endowment was launched in time for the 2026 Annual Meeting since BMES has recently launched a new special interest group (SIG) focused on Women’s Health, and one of the SIG’s focus areas is reproductive disorders. “BMES is stepping up as a Society to address some of the most challenging problems in modern professional life,” Griffith added.

Griffith and Lauffenburger’s commitment to helping address the challenges facing young investigators with children serves as a stable foundation enabling both BMES and the careers of students to evolve.

Applications for the endowment will become available soon, after registration for BMES 2026 opens.

For information on supporting this endowment with a donation, visit Linda Griffith & Douglas Lauffenburger Endowment fund donations.

Linda Griffith delivered her lecture, “Translating Science into Products – Journey of Bringing Vaccines and Biologics to Life,” at the 2025 BMES Annual Meeting in October 2025. Watch the lecture here.