Isako Di Tomassi spends her days studying microbes that threaten plant health. Outside the lab, she helped build a movement: a campaign that convinced hundreds of scientists to write letters and op-eds defending the importance of federal research funding.
Di Tomassi, a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University and researcher in the Restrepo Lab at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI), and Cornell colleague Emma Scales received the “Meeting the Moment for Public Health” award at Research!America’s 2026 Advocacy Awards for their leadership of The McClintock Letters. This grassroots science communication effort rallied researchers nationwide to make a direct, local case for the value of federally funded science. The honor was presented on March 10 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
The pair organized the initiative through the Cornell Advancing Science and Policy Club (ASAP), where Di Tomassi and Scales serve as co-presidents, and the Scientist Network for Advancing Policy (SNAP), of which they are founding members. The project invited scientists to write opinion pieces for their hometown newspapers explaining their research, why it matters, and why public investment in science is essential. The response was remarkable: over 600 scientists signed up to write; over 300 were trained in science communication workshops and op-ed writing workshops hosted across the country; and more than 200 pieces were published in newspapers across 45 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
The initiative was named after Barbara McClintock, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist whose work on genetic transposition transformed our understanding of heredity. The project aimed to publish letters around the week of June 16, McClintock’s birthday — a fitting tribute to a scientist who spent decades defending the importance of curiosity-driven research before the world caught up to her findings.
The “Meeting the Moment for Public Health” award, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and part of Research!America’s Outstanding Achievement in Public Health Awards, honors an individual or organization that has been a clear voice in communicating critical public health information to the public and rising to the challenges of the moment. Research!America’s Advocacy Awards, established in 1996, are an annual celebration of the leaders — researchers, policymakers, and advocates alike — who work to ensure that medical, health, and scientific research remains a national priority.
“As scientists, and particularly as agricultural researchers, we work for the public,” said Di Tomassi. “It is part of our job to communicate with the people that we work for, and to share why our research matters and how it helps people. We also really wanted to humanize the people in lab coats, because many folks don’t get a chance to interact with scientists in their day-to-day lives. Also, the fact that hundreds of researchers took steps to strengthen their skills in public-facing science communication is an impact that we are very proud of.”
Di Tomassi’s scientific work as a researcher in the Restrepo Lab at BTI is deeply connected to the public stakes she advocated for. The lab is led by BTI President Silvia Restrepo, a plant pathologist who has spent more than two decades studying plant diseases, including the infamous late blight, the disease that killed crops in the Irish Potato Famine and continues to threaten food systems worldwide. Di Tomassi’s research focuses on the pathogen that causes late blight disease, the oomycete Phytophthora infestans.
“Isako exemplifies the kind of scientist BTI strives to cultivate, one who brings rigor to the lab and understands the responsibility to communicate why this work matters,” said Restrepo. “We are enormously proud of her, and the movement she helped build.”
The McClintock Letters supports BTI’s belief that science communication isn’t separate from science. BTI’s mission – to advance, communicate, and leverage pioneering discoveries in plant sciences – treats public engagement as integral to the research enterprise. Di Tomassi’s work puts that principle into practice at a national scale, one letter at a time.