Fulbright PULSE Fulbright

In this episode, we are joined by Prof. Dr. Rainer Storb, one of the trailblazers who established bone marrow and stem cell transplantation as an effective treatment for diseases like leukemia, lymphoma and aplastic anemia.
Rainer is a medical doctor, physician and professor for hematology and oncology at University of Washington's School of Medicine, pioneer of the blood stem cell transplantation, and one of the most impactful biomedical scientists and research translators of our time. He is also a founding member of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, heading its transplantation biology program and its clinical research division. As a physician, he has been treating patients himself with therapies he has discovered, designed, studied, and standardized.
We talk about the seemingly hopeless case he and his colleagues took on when he first entered the field in the 1960s, the adversarial circumstances under which they were conducting their research, the challenges they faced, how he dealt with these challenges, and how first transplantations in humans started to work consistently. We also find out how stem cell transplantation evolved into a procedure that has been performed more than 1'000'000 times around the globe since Rainer and his colleagues laid the ground-breaking foundations.
And we talk about how Rainer envisions a cancer treatment, free of aggressive radiation and heavy chemotherapy, on the path to eliminating cancer.

Vera is the founder and president of Pro Ukraine e. V., a charitable organization in Germany supporting Ukraine. As an American Fulbrighter going to Germany, Vera completed her Master's studies at Middlebury College in Mainz. For her outstanding commitment of over twenty years to relieve poverty in Ukraine, she has received the Mulert Award by the German Fulbright Alumni Association.
Hanna is the founder and CEO of the Lifelong Learning Center, an NGO in Sumy, Ukraine, and she is a professor of Management at the American University of Kyiv, also teaching at Sumy State University. As a Ukrainian Fulbright going to the US, Hanna conducted post-doctoral research at Purdue University in Indiana.
We talk about daily life in Ukraine in the face of Russia's ongoing invasion, about how Hanna and her organization have helped residents in her city, how Vera and her organization have helped Ukrainian pupils, and how their work has changed since Russia's war against Ukraine.

In this episode, Fulbright Poland alumni Madalyn Fernbach and Jeremy Wexler talk to Mark Brzezinski, diplomat, lawyer, and the current Ambassador of the United States to Poland since 2022.
Mark graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts, earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia Law School, and obtained a PhD in political science from Oxford. 
He studied on a Fulbright grant in Warsaw from 1991 to 1993 and was later named by President Obama to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
During his career, he also served as the US Ambassador to Sweden and as a director of Bill Clinton's National Security Council in the White House.

In this episode, we talk to Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, historian, diplomat, politician, and one of Germany's most accomplished public figures in questions of foreign policy.
Alexander is currently a Member of the Bundestag, Deputy Chairman of the FDP-Fraktion, and designated German Ambassador to Russia. He studied at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington DC on a Fulbright grant in 1993 and was then trained and served as a diplomat for 10 years, served as a member and in various high-ranking roles at the European Parliament for 13 years, and has been a member of the Bundestag for 6 years.
We talk about how the United States changed during the time he served in the German Embassy in Washington DC, about European Integration, Europe's future role on the world stage as China and the United States compete for political supremacy, and his vision for Europe.
We also talk about his past in the Russia department in the German Federal Foreign Office in the early 2000s, and the role he can play as a German Ambassador in Moscow in times of Russia's war against Ukraine.
Interviewed by Mohamed Kari (mkari.de).

In this episode, Dr. Jeffrey M. Peck is interviewed by Alexandra Schaller. Jeff is the President of the Association of Friends and Sponsors of the German-American Fulbright Program and Europe Director of the higher education strategy consultancy AKA Strategy.
He was a Professor at University of Washington, Georgetown University, York University, Université de Montréal, and City University of New York, and at Humboldt University of Berlin on a Fulbright grant in 2006/2007.
Interview led by Alexandra Schaller.

In this episode, Dr. Avery Wang, founder of Shazam and nowadays Principal Research Scientist at Apple, is our guest.
Avery co-founded Shazam, invented the ground-breaking algorithm behind the music identification app and served as a Chief Scientist for the following 18 years until Shazam was acquired by Apple for a reported 400 million dollars. 
Avery graduated with four Mathematics and Electrical Engineering degrees from Stanford, conducted neuroscientific research on a Fulbright grant at the Ruhruniversität Bochum in Germany from 1990 to 1992, before then finding his way into Silicon Valley's startup scene.
We talk about his path and find out about the moonshot problem he faced at Shazam, his responsiblity in the founding team, how he struggled with it, and how he eventually solved it with an algorithm that has been used 70 billion times since he invented it.
Interviewed by Mohamed Kari (mkari.de).