2026 Society of Penn Clinical Research Professionals Keynote Presentation

Our Assistant Director Dahlia Kamel serves as the Chair Elect for the Society of Penn Clinical Research Professionals, and was invited to give the keynote speech for the 2026 Clinical Research Expertise and Advancement Through Excellence Awards, here at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She was incredibly excited to be given a platform to express to the Penn community why clinical research professionals are the invisible infrastructure of innovation and deserve to be recognized. Please check out the excerpt of her speech below and join us in celebrating phenomenal research staff around the Penn FTD Center, Penn community, and beyond.

“I was deeply honored last year to be chosen as the winner of Penn’s 2025 Excellence in Leadership of Clinical Research Professionals Award. Throughout my career supporting, advocating for and empowering those around me has been a guiding part of my philosophy, both as clinical research professional and as a leader of them.  

I was humbled to be chosen for this award, and it reinforced my passion and commitment to mentorship, continued improvement of clinical research process, and the opportunity to create sustained positive change on an institutional level. In my very improvised acceptance speech, I said something to the effect of ‘I am good at my job because the people I manage make it easy to be good at my job. They do the hard work, and they show up for me - so I show up for them.’  And that’s really where I’d like to focus today.  

When people think about breakthroughs at great academic medical institutions, they often picture the renowned surgeon performing a first-of-its-kind procedure, the PI publishing groundbreaking findings, or the physician whose name appears in the article title. 

What they rarely picture are the clinical research professionals. The coordinators who arrive before sunrise to prepare for study visits. The regulatory specialists who navigate mountains of compliance requirements. The data managers who ensure every data point is accurate. The research nurses who comfort anxious patients while collecting critical information. The administrators who ensure we have access to space, money, and other resources to complete study procedures. And the teams who spend countless hours behind the scenes making sure every protocol is followed, every consent is ethical, every specimen is tracked, and every patient is protected. 

And yet, without them, none of the celebrated successes would exist. Clinical research professionals are the invisible infrastructure of innovation. They are the bridge between scientific discovery and human impact. 

It’s very typical to hear the celebration of the outcomes. If you’ve read any email digest sent by Penn, you’re used to seeing this. But none of these outcomes happen by accident. 

Behind every success is an army of professionals coordinating complex logistics that most people aren’t even aware of.  They manage timelines, regulatory requirements, patient recruitment, adverse event reporting, audits, budgets, documentation, and communication across dozens of stakeholders. 

And our clinical research professionals do all of this while carrying something even more important than paperwork: They carry trust. Because every patient who enrolls in research is placing enormous trust in the institution, in science, and ultimately in the people guiding them through uncertainty.  Clinical research professionals are often the individuals that patients know best during study participation. They are the reassuring voice on the phone. The calm presence heard during difficult moments. The person answering questions long after clinic hours have ended. Our CRPs are not simply managing research. They are safeguarding humanity within research. 

What makes their role especially remarkable is that so much of their success is measured by what never goes wrong. The protocol deviation that never occurs. The safety issue caught early. The enrollment crisis prevented through persistence and creativity. The audit passed because of meticulous preparation. The patient retained because someone took the time to stop and listen. 

You might consider that CRPs are like air traffic controllers for academic medicine. If they do their jobs perfectly, the system runs safely and smoothly and almost no one notices. But the absence of their unique skills, expertise, and experience would be catastrophic. 

And despite this enormous responsibility, they often work without the visibility, recognition, or institutional prestige given to other roles.  

CRPs are frequently called “support staff,” when in reality they are strategic leaders, operational experts, patient advocates, compliance specialists, and scientific partners all at once. The underlying truth is that modern academic medicine could not function without CRPs. Not occasionally. Not partially. It would not function.  Every major medical advancement we celebrate today reached patients because research professionals translated the vision into execution. 

So today, I believe we should do more than simply acknowledge our CRPs. I’m asking that we make the choice to recognize them as integral architects of scientific medical progress. 

Because while they may work behind the scenes, their impact is felt everywhere: in the patients who gain more time, in the families given hope, in the discoveries that change medicine forever. 

The greatest institutions are not built solely by the people at the podium. They are built by the dedicated professionals working tirelessly behind them. And among those professionals, clinical research teams are some of the most essential and most deserving of our gratitude. They are the steady hands behind innovation and the guardians of ethical science.”

Congratulations to the 2026 Penn FTD Center CREATE Award Winners from the Penn FTD

Center! Emily Xie, BS was awarded as the Distinguished Performance in a Clinical Research Coordinator Role Recipient and Cara R. Joyce, MPH as the Distinguished Performance in a Regulatory or Monitoring & Compliance Role Award Recipient.