On Monday, May 19th, one of the most dynamic engineers in NASA made a rare appearance at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York. In cooperation with the Companions in Courage Foundation (www.CiC16.org), a mid-day student session was webcast to the pediatric patients at North Shore LIJ’s Cohen Children’s Medical Center.

Patients watch live broadcast from Cradle of Aviation Museum

Kobie Boykins, a dynamic young engineer at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is on the front line of Mars exploration. Boykins designed the solar arrays that power the Mars exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Most recently, Boykins was responsible for the design of actuators on Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory, which safely landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. Continue reading »

LONG ISLAND, NY – (May 4, 2014) Almost 100 runners toed the Start Line at today’s Long Island Marathon in support of the Companions in Courage Foundation. The event helped raise thousands for the pediatric patients who benefit from the work of the CiC Foundation.

For the 10th straight year, Doreen and Bill Isenberg served as hosts for Team COURAGE under the ‘big top” set up near the Finish Line in Eisenhower Park. They filled the tent with bagels, juice and power bars to ensure that all of the runners had plenty of energy to complete their run. Continue reading »

Posted: 05/20/2013 by Richard Tate

Last month, in a waiting room at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., a small boy sat with a laptop, engrossed in a game. His hair had fallen out, a side effect of his ongoing battle with cancer, and he wore a surgical mask to help protect his compromised immune system. The boy had a determined light in his eyes as he blasted a growing tower of cancer cells with chemotherapy bombs on the screen in front of him. 

The game he played is Re-Mission 2: Nanobot’s Revenge, one of a new collection of free online games for young cancer patients. Each of the games in Re-Mission 2 puts players inside the body to fight cancer with weapons like chemotherapy and antibiotics. From a corner of the waiting room, the boy’s grandmother looked on, smiling at her grandson’s apparent delight. As I chatted with her, I explained that the game, created by HopeLab, where I work, was made to be more than just fun. It was made to help her grandson fight his disease.  Continue reading »