Five ASCB Members Ascend to American Academy of Arts & Sciences
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has elected five ASCB members, two to the section on Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology, two to the section on Cellular & Developmental Biology, and one as a Foreign Honorary Member to the Cell & Developmental section.
Named to the Biochemistry section were Lila M. Gierasch of University of Massachusetts, an ASCB member since 1993, and Eva Nogales of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who also joined ASCB in 1993. Keith W.T. Burridge of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a member since 1998, and Anne M. Villeneuve of Stanford, a member since 2012, were elected to to the cellular and developmental biology section. The Foreign Honorary Member in cellular and developmental biology is Carl-Henrik Heldin of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research/Uppsala University in Sweden. Heldin, who joined ASCB in 1991, served on the Editorial Committee of Molecular Biology of the Cell from 1992 to 2010.
Andrew G. Campbell Elevated to Dean of Brown University’s Graduate School
Andrew G. Campbell, currently a professor of medical science in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Brown University, has been named the next dean of the university’s graduate school, starting July 1.
The new dean of the graduate school will report directly to the provost and serve as a member of the university’s senior academic leadership team and the President’s Cabinet.
In his new role, Campbell will assume primary responsibility for all aspects of Brown’s graduate programs that currently enroll 2,000 students in doctoral and master’s programs in 41 departments, centers, and institutes.
CRISPR Lifts Doudna to Canada Gairdner Prize
ASCB member Jennifer Doudna has won a Canada Gairdner International Award for her part in the development of the revolutionary CRISPR Cas9 gene editing technique. The Gairdner comes with an unrestricted $100,000 CDN prize. Doudna was a featured speaker at the ASCB Annual Meeting last December.
Mukhopadhyay Soars as NIH Outstanding New Environmental Scientist Award
Somshuvra Mukhopadhyay, an ASCB member since 1998, is a recipient of a 2016 Outstanding New Environmental Scientist or ONES award from the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The Mukhopadhyay Lab in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Texas, Austin, will study the process through which cells remove the toxin manganese, which can cause a syndrome similar to Parkinson’s disease.
About the Author:
John Fleischman was the ASCB Senior Science Writer from 2000 to 2016. Best unpaid perk of the job? Working with new grad students and Nobel Prize winners.
