A Love Story, Twice Told

Jonathan Epstein and Margaret (Maggy) Myers grew up as “lab brats” on the shores of Salisbury Cove — their families among the MDI Biological Laboratory’s most storied: the Lewises, the Epsteins, going back generations.

Jon and Maggy met as teenagers, working in the laboratories of Drs. Patricio Silva and Vic Murdaugh.

“I learned to love science those summers,” he says. “If my first experiences in science had been elsewhere — at Ivy League universities, where I later worked, or other highly competitive institutions — I don’t think I would have caught the bug in the same way.”

The couple married on Spruce Point, just across the cove from the Lab “where Jonny fell in love with science,” Maggy recalls, “and I fell in love with Jonny.”

She became a pediatric physician and Associate Clinical Director of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Jon built a career in cardiovascular research and regenerative medicine, recently becoming Dean of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Now they aim to help others find the same opportunities the Lab gave them, providing $1 million to support MDI Bio Lab and to establish the “Epstein Myers Scholars” fund to support hands-on scientific training for high school, college and graduate students.

“I just hope that some young trainee gets turned on to science by an experience that’s fostered by this gift, that somebody will get a chance they might not have had otherwise,” Jon says.

They also see the gift as homage to others’ commitment to the Lab, such as Silva, still a valued lab presence today, and their parents. “Both sets of parents donated to the lab, and that had an impact on us,” Jon says.

So too did Martha and Wistar Morris, close friends whose philanthropy includes construction of the Lab’s first year-round research center. “We wanted to follow in their footsteps,” Maggy says.

There is real urgency too, at a time when science funding is at risk. “The first thing that goes may be support for the students who need it most,” Maggy says. “At least we can help ease the financial burden a little bit.”

Jon frames it as a long-term investment in the future of science itself: “When you think of the people whose first experience was at the Lab who now contribute at major institutions in the U.S. and abroad, you see how providing young people real exposure to science can have ripple effects across the country and around the world.”