Valentina Greco and Bo Huang Win 2016 Early Career Award

Valentina Greco, Associate Professor of Genetics at Yale University and a member of the Yale Stem Cell Center, and Bo Huang, Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry an

d Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, have been named recipients of the 2016 Early Career Life Scientist Award.

Greco was selected for her landmark contributions to stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. She has developed numerous, innovative methods to track and study skin stem cells in live mice in real time. These novel approaches allowed the Greco lab to demonstrate the essential role of a stem cell’s microenvironment, or niche, in tissue maintenance and regeneration and to reveal that stem cells are not all equal in fate. In addition to her research accomplishments, Greco is also noted as an exceptional and enthusiastic mentor.

Huang was selected for his innovation in microscopy. He introduced new algorithms, originally developed for signal processing and medical imaging, to improve super-resolution microscopy, in a technique called stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM). Huang also repurposed nanobodies, originally made for crystallography as imaging probes, to reveal an unexpected phase in G protein–coupled receptor signaling. Additionally, he retooled CRISPR/Cas9 to develop a powerful approach for visualizing the dynamics of genome organization in live cells. Huang’s lab has become a hub for national and international microscopy collaborations.

The ASCB Early Career Awards will be presented in a Minisymposium at the 2016 Annual Meeting. The ASCB congratulates Greco and Huang and thanks the Selection Committee.

 

About the Author:


Christina Szalinski is a science writer with a PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Pittsburgh.
University of California, San Diego