Foundations Relations & Huck Institutes Collaborative Panel

November 6, 2025 @ 01:00 pm to 02:00 pm

Karen Kemirembe, Associate Director, Office of Foundation Relations, Penn State

Zoom
University Park

Join moderators, Karen Kemirembe and Maria Petrilak from University Foundation Relations and the following panelists, as they share how they collaborate with researchers to manage foundation funding from start to finish, discussing key challenges and strategies for success.

Scott Simon, MD earned his BA in political theory at Princeton University and his MD at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his neurosurgery residency in neurosurgery with a fellowship in endovascular neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University. He is currently a professor of neurosurgery at the Penn State College of Medicine as well as Division Director of Cerebrovascular Surgery, Endovascular Fellowship Director, and the Medical Co-Director of the Penn State Health Stroke Program. In addition to practicing as a CAST certified subspecialist in cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery Dr. Simon also has funded research in biomedical engineering and computer modeling of the cerebral vasculature in acute ischemic stroke as well as metabolism in animal models of intracerebral hemorrhage. Dr. Simon is on the executive council of the Council of State Neurological Societies, the Pennsylvania Neurosurgical Society and the AANS/CNS Joint CV Section and the editorial board of Neurosurgery.

Christina Grozinger, Ph.D. is the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology, director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and founding director for the Center for Pollinator Research and Insect Biodiversity Institute at Pennsylvania State University. Grozinger is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was awarded the 2021 National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences and 2023 Penn State President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration. Grozinger is chair of the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory Board Pollinator Subcommittee and serves on the ad hoc study committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine which will conduct a consensus study on the status of insects in North America. Grozinger received a B.S. degree in chemistry and biology from McGill University, an M.S. and a Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University and was a Beckman Institute Fellow at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Joshua Gross, Ph.D., is a neuropharmacologist with interests in G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) biology, nutritional neuroscience, neuroendocrine physiology, and preclinical drug discovery. Dr. Gross obtained his PhD from West Virginia University in Cellular & Integrative Physiology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Marc Caron at Duke University. Dr. Gross’ lab investigates the molecular mechanisms of GPCR signaling in the context of food reward and diet-related metabolic disease. They employ an array of techniques—ranging from in vitro molecular pharmacology to in vivo physiological analysis in transgenic mouse models.