The John Quinn Memorial Fund

Hey everyone – remember John Quinn who passed away last October?  Since then, I have been working diligently with his widow, Maria Virginia Villegas and Jorge Cano to establish the John Quinn Memorial Fund. John spent the last months of his life working closely with his wife, Maria Virginia, an established investigator and infectious diseases physician, at the CIDEIM (Centro Internacional de Entrenamiento e Investigaciones Medicas) in Cali, Colombia. John enjoyed his work which involved guiding graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in their research on nosocomial infection and antimicrobial resistance. The John Quinn Memorial Fund has been established to carry on John’s work under the supervision of his coworker and widow, Maria Virginia.  MaVe (her nickname) is an extraordinarily energetic and capable infectious diseases physician and microbiologist.  She has established a network of hospitals in Colombia who collaborate to limit the spread of resistant pathogens and to investigate basic mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance in these pathogens. Her research is based on this large network of hospitals. 

After many months of work, Jorge has been able to establish a mechanism to provide for tax-deductible contributions for those of us in the US to give to this very deserving effort. It will take anywhere from $25 to $30,000 US dollars per year to fund one graduate student or post-doctoral fellow. These young investigators will be supervised directly by Maria Virginia. I have started the process with my own donation and I hope you will all follow my lead.

To give, go directly to The Give Colombia web site and click on Donate. Alternatively, go directly to the donation site. You will fill in your credit card info (or use pay pal) and then click on “continue and review” at the bottom of the screen. On the next screen, you will note the opportunity to “Add Special Instructions.”  Just note that your donation is exclusively for CIDEIM/John Quinn Memorial Fund and your donation will get to the right place.

I can’t think of a better way to honor John’s memory than to support the kind of research Maria Virginia and her team are doing.  It is especially important to provide an opportunity for this kind of training to young aspiring investigators from Colombia. I hope you will all join me in supporting this effort.