Inside Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s 19th Annual Spring Ball
2 min readOn Wednesday night at The Plaza Hotel in New York City, VIPs, health care professionals, and philanthropists gathered to celebrate The Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s 19th annual Spring Ball. Celebrities including Seth Meyers and Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon were in attendance, along with Memorial Sloan Kettering’s chief of computational oncology Sohrab Shah, M.D.
The fundraiser, sponsored by Carolina Herrera, Sidney Garber, and Wells Fargo, was titled “Turning Data Into Cures: Transforming Cancer Research With AI and Computational Oncology,” with funds going toward advancements for helping doctors to refine precision cancer care and diagnoses, detect the onset of cancers and relapses, and understand the evolution of tumors. “Cancers are often diagnosed at a late stage, which worsens treatment outcomes for patients,” Shah says. “Studying drug resistance and tumor evolution with AI and other computational tools will help us pinpoint the precise molecular changes that enable cells to ‘shape-shift’ away from anticancer therapies like chemotherapy, immunotherapy, targeted therapy and will inform combination therapies to keep this tumor evolution in check.”
The work being studied at Memorial Sloan Kettering provides a meaningful, innovative application of AI, with the hope of better understanding and eventually finding a cure for cancer. “There is perhaps nothing more compelling than the opportunity to harness AI to accelerate progress toward curing cancer,” says Claudia Taylor Overstrom, president of The Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “By supporting this work, we are not simply funding research—we are helping to accelerate progress toward a future where cancer is no longer a life-limiting diagnosis, but a disease we can outsmart, manage, and ultimately cure.”
Following the ball, which included a moving speech from Dr. Shah, there was an in-room auction led by author and auctioneer Lydia Fenet. By the end of the evening, the fundraiser secured a total of $2.8 million, with over $1 million raised in-room—the highest for the Spring Ball to date.
Scroll through the gallery below to take a peek inside the star-studded night.
Tasha Nicole Smith is ELLE Magazine’s beauty assistant. She loves all things hair, makeup, and skincare so you’ll find her talking about it here. She enjoys romcoms, a good pair of vintage heels, and lemon drop martinis and also shares a birthday with Beyoncé, which is her go to fun fact.