We recently learned of the passing of Dr. Clancy Blair.

Clancy and Doug Granger (Salimetrics founder) were longtime colleagues, collaborators, and very much enjoyed each other’s friendship. He will be missed by us, Doug, and by many many others.

In the mid 1990s Clancy and Doug started working together as assistant professors then at Penn State. The first project, in 1995, involved a proposal to integrate saliva sampling as a core component of a large-scale prospective study of early child development in the context of rural poverty – That project, The Family Life Project, was continuously supported by NIH for the next 28 years. With Clancy’s stewardship, the project generated numerous groundbreaking publications. In the most recent decade, Clancy’s leadership was instrumental in expanding the project scope via ECHO to include testing epigenetic, genetic, microbiome, cytokine, and metabolome markers, all achieved through saliva sampling. The initial papers from this latest effort have been high impact.

Clancy’s research significantly advanced how we understand the ways children are shaped by their families, neighborhoods, and schools, and leaves a profound legacy.

In this modern era when it seems our scientific attention span is so short, there is a tendency to overlook that the stage for the great science we now read has been set by prior generations of scientists who did much of the heavy lifting.

This week, take a moment to celebrate an extraordinary researcher, a steadfast advocate for salivary bioscience, and a scientist who has helped set the stage for discoveries to come.

You can learn more about Dr. Blair’s impactful work Here.

His obituary can be viewed Here.