The Global Virus Network’s (GVN) 2025 Short Course in Translational Virology brought together a remarkable international cohort in December 2025 for eight days of scientific immersion, mentorship, and hands-on learning at the intersection of virology, medicine, and global health.

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The Federation of Pediatric Organizations (FOPO) is pleased to announce that Robert (Bob) Vinci, MD, has been named the recipient of the 2026 FOPO Joseph W. St. Geme, Jr. Leadership Award.

 

This prestigious honor recognizes Vinci’s visionary leadership as a clinician, educator, mentor and institutional builder whose sustained system-level contributions have reshaped pediatric education, pediatric workforce policy and access to care for vulnerable populations. Vinci, professor of pediatrics at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine and a member of the Department of Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center (BMC), is widely recognized as an innovative leader, educator and mentor who has guided hundreds of trainees over his over four-decade career.

The advisor-advisee relationship is central to most doctoral education models. Yet not all students trust their advisors. Danfei Hu, Jonathan E. Cook, and colleagues sought to examine the importance of this relationship to success and wellbeing in graduate school. The authors focused on the first year of graduate school, a time in which PhD students adapt to their role as scholars and in which large numbers of students drop out. In a prospective longitudinal study of 558 incoming PhD students, primarily in STEM fields, at three US research universities, the authors found that PhD students’ academic motivation and well-being declined over the course of the year. However, those with greater-than-average trust in their advisors early in doctoral training reported greater motivation, including more interest in research and their field of study, higher self-efficacy, stronger academic belonging, greater academic self-control, and more optimism about their academic career.