On 25th February, a short ceremony was held in the Masters Lodge at Downing College Cambridge to award Foundation Fellowships to Julie Lambert and Jon Howard, daughter and son of the late Dr Alan Howard. The awards were made by the Master, Mr Alan Bookbinder, and given in recognition of their roles in the long standing support of the Howard Foundation to the college.

Julie and Jon join a small and distinguished group of existing Foundation Fellows – Humphrey Battcock, Kim Silverman, Alwyn Heong and Tadayoshi Tazaki. Julie is the first woman to hold the Fellowship. Jon had been a Wilkins Fellow at Downing College since 2007.

The Howard Foundation is the largest single source of philanthropic support to Downing College since the college was founded in 1800. Dr Alan Howard went up to Downing in 1948 to read Natural Sciences and gained his PhD in 1955. Alan and Jon Howard formed the Howard Foundation in 1982. It has since funded three major buildings at the college as well as many smaller projects.

Results from a study supported by the Howard Foundation are now published in the journal Clinical Nutrition. This study, the Cognitive impAiRmEnt Study (CARES), demonstrated improvements in working memory for cognitively healthy older adults, following supplementation with carotenoids, omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E over a two year period.

The study was led by Dr Rebecca Power at the Nutrition Research Centre Ireland (NRCI), Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT).

Click here to see further information on the WIT website. Click here to see the paper itself on the Clinical Nutrition Journal website.

For over a decade, the Howard Foundation has supported research into the health benefits of the three macular carotenoids: Lutein, Zeaxanthin and Meso-zeaxanthin. This has led to a number of research trials and scientific papers published in many journals.

The most significant of these papers have now been gathered together on the Publications page of this website. This shows the story of the development of the research, first into eye health and latterly into eye and brain health.