MIKLOS SALGO

SALGO--Miklos. Miklos Pierre-Guy Salgo, PhD, MD, F.A.C.P., died on November 29, 2023 at home in Hillsborough, CA. He was 77. He was born in Geneva, Switzerland to the late Ambassador Nicolas and Marika Noren Salgo and was a naturalized citizen. Survived by wife Roxann, son Seth, sister Christina and nephews Daniel and Peter. Known to friends and colleagues as Mickey, he grew up in Sands Point, NY and attended Friends Academy, a Quaker school where his interest in science was fostered and he was given an inquiry based education based on the timeless values of equality, service and integrity that served him his entire life. Mickey was a loving husband and father. He had an innate sense of fairness and justice that could never be swayed and always encouraged his friends and family to live in that spirit. Mickey was a lover of history, an avid animal (camera trapping) and bird watcher and often learned a new language for one of his many trips abroad. He spoke French and Spanish fluently and had a deep love for the ocean and Cape Dory sailboats. Mickey helped to save many pieces of land from development and helped create new hiking trails through his work in the Rails to Trails program in New York. He enjoyed biking and hiking near his home in California and in the Catskill Mountains near South Cairo, NY. He enjoyed many travel adventures alone and with his family. His most talked about trip was solo riding a horse across central Afghanistan (1969). At trips end he spoke conversational Pashto. Another favorite trip was riding 200 miles on horseback in Mongolia with Roxann. He earned a BS from Cornell University College of Agriculture and a PhD in mammalian reproductive biology from The City College of New York-CUNY. Graduate of New York University School of Medicine, residency at Jacobi Medical Center and Fellowship Infectious Disease Montefiore Medical Center both Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He started working for Hoffmann-LaRoche Inc., a pharmaceutical company in Nutley, NJ and continued there until retirement in 2015. Colleagues of Mickey's from his days at Roche had the following to say: Mickey was a truly unique man who instinctively inspired trust, friendship, and respect. His impact was not only among his colleagues but across the whole spectrum of the medical, scientific, and patients' communities. Always acknowledged as an incredibly gifted clinician and scientist, everyone who was fortunate enough to work with him will remember his unique ability to skillfully bring people together, optimizing the needs of all, and doing so in such an unassuming and collaborative fashion. Mickey simply embodied leadership. In his time as Sr. Director of Clinical Virology at Roche he led many teams responsible for the clinical development of new drugs for patients suffering from serious diseases like HIV and AIDS, who at that time had no effective therapies available to them. So important were his, and his team's, contributions that many of the clinical trials he oversaw were published in esteemed medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine. Mickey directed the design, analysis, and reporting of clinical trials implemented by his Team to test the safety and effectiveness of new drugs before they could be approved for use by doctors and patients. Depending on the decisions made by the Team Leader in this process, things can go either spectacularly right or wrong, resulting in either success or failure. Among Mickey's biggest drug development challenges were the development of two groundbreaking new treatments for HIV called Invirase and Fuzeon. Despite the challenges Mickey was able to get it right no matter how tough or how complicated, and did so in a way that was gentle, and kind. Despite these pressures, he did so with humor and passion. We cannot think of any other colleague who was so universally loved by everyone: no one ever had a bad word to say about him, NEVER. Through his professionalism and utter determination to do the right thing, Mickey's leadership has had an incalculable impact both on the people struggling to live longer and healthier lives with serious disease, and also on those with whom he worked. It's unlikely that any of the patients who benefited from these new treatments even knew his name but the many people who have been fortunate enough to collaborate and work with him know the enormous legacy he leaves behind and the leadership he so eloquently modelled lives on in all of us. Above all Mickey was the quintessential physician, scientist and humanitarian driven by his dedication to helping the many patients with HIV AIDS. Mickey continued the work of the Salgo-Noren Foundation, founded by his father in 1954, that provided support to both professors and students at the undergraduate and graduate level in American colleges with a focus on students from Eastern Europe. Most recently the Foundation has established two scholarship endowments at Cornell University to provide financial assistance to international students and students with residency or DACA status that have demonstrated financial need. In addition, the foundation has provided funding to Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) Global Fellows and Navigator Student Success programs. The CALs Navigator Program provides help to students from under-resourced and nontraditional backgrounds to transition to Cornell. After retiring, he became involved in community activities including amateur radio (call sign KK6FQA), San Mateo Sheriff's Search & Rescue, Community Emergency Response Training (CERT), and Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve (FOE) where he was a docent and was involved in many programs including: Board of Directors, trail patrol, Ed Center host, wildflower docent, road warriors, and camera trapping founding coordinator. Mickey's consequential legacy lives on in the countless lives touched.