Several members of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) have attained notable achievements in recent weeks. Congratulations to one and all.
2017 Shaw Prize for Life Science and Medicine
Ian Gibbons (left) and Ron Vale both have been awarded the prestigious 2017 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine for their discovery of the microtubule-associated motor proteins dynein and kinesin, respectively. Gibbons, a member of ASCB since 1961 and now emeritus, identified dynein in 1963 while at Harvard University by using an enzyme assay to isolate the motor protein from the cilia of Tetrahymena. Retired from the University of Hawaii, he is currently a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Vale, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at the University of California, San Francisco, and former ASCB president, isolated kinesin from squid while he was a Stanford University graduate student working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in the mid-1980s. Vale has been a member of ASCB since 1988.
