| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Cornelia Isabella Bargmann | | | Institution: | Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Rockefeller University | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1961 | | | | | | |
Cornelia I. Bargmann is currently both an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at Rockefeller University. Born in Virginia, she received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. She won the Richard Lounsbery Award in Biology and Medicine from the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2012, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2013. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2002) and the National Academy of Sciences (2003).
Cori Bargmann is recognized internationally through her elegant work on neural development and behavior using a tiny roundworm, C. elegans. The worm has become a key model organism in biomedical research because, having just 302 neurons, it is possible to know the detailed wiring of the nervous system on a cellular level and deduct the worm's behavior from its circuit. With the complete genome available, precise genetic manipulation can modify circuits and behavior. Insights gained from this powerful approach, on sensory perception, navigation, oxygen sensing, feeding behavior, and stress response, can now be used to guide research on the complexities of the human disorders such as dyslexia, epilepsy, and autism. Cori is a brilliant individual with a passion for science and scholarship and a generous and beloved person. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Bonnie L. Bassler | | | Institution: | Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 209. Neurobiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1962 | | | | | | |
Bonnie L. Bassler is currently both an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and and Endowed Squibb Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Born in Illinois she received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1990. She has won a number of awards, including: the Eli Lilly and Company Research Award, American Society for Microbiology, 2006; the President's Distinguished Teaching Award, Princeton University, 2008; the Richard Lounsbery Award, National Academy of Sciences, 2011; the Shaw Prize, 2015; the Max Planck Research Award, 2016; the Dickson Prize in Medicine, 2018; and the 2020 Gruber Genetics Prize. In 2019 she became a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. She is a member of the American Society for Microbiology (president); the American Academy for Microbiology (chair, Board of Governors); the National Academy of Sciences, 2006; and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2007.
Bonnie Bassler discovered the universal use of chemical communication among bacteria, leading to a new paradigm of bacteria as interacting organisms. Early in her career, she discovered that bacteria use multiple chemical signals to communicate. She showed that this process, called quorum sensing, allows bacteria to coordinate behavior as a population and thereby act like multicellular organisms. Bassler subsequently made the seminal and startling discovery that bacteria communicate across species, and she identified the universal inter-species communication molecule. On the human health front, Bassler demonstrated that quorum sensing controls virulence in disease-causing bacteria, and that by manipulating quorum sensing she can halt virulence in globally-important pathogens. Her research paves the way for novel antibiotics targeting quorum sensing, and her group successfully demonstrated such therapeutic strategies. Bassler is internationally recognized for her passionate commitment to science education and outreach and to increasing gender and racial diversity in science, mathematics, and engineering. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Michael T. Clegg | | | Institution: | University of California, Irvine | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Michael T. Clegg received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural genetics and genetics respectively at the University of California, Davis. In 1972 he joined the faculty of Brown University moving from there to the University of Georgia in 1976. In 1984, he assumed the position of Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside, where he also served as Dean of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences from 1994 to 2000 and founding director of the Genomics Institute from 2000 to 2004. He assumed his present position as Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, in 2004.
Clegg's research specialty is population genetics and molecular evolution. His early work in population genetics focused on the dynamical behavior of linked systems of genes in plant and Drosophila populations. During this period, he also contributed to the theoretical study of multilocus systems employing computer simulations together with the analysis of mathematical models. Later he helped pioneer the comparative analysis of cholorplast DNA variation as a tool for the reconstruction of plant phylogenies. His current work is concerned with the use of genomic data and coalescent models to study crop plant domestication in barley and avocado. Clegg is also heavily engaged in international science policy and science diplomacy through his role as Foreign Secretary of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. During an academic career of over 40 years, Clegg has published more than 160 research articles and book chapters and he has coauthored or edited nine books.
Clegg was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1990 and he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. He was elected Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and reelected in 2006 and 2010. He has also served as President of the American Genetic Association and President of the International Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution. He is an Associate Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World (TWAS) and a corresponding member of several foreign academies. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Mary-Claire King | | | Institution: | University of Washington School of Medicine | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | | | |
Mary-Claire King is currently the American Cancer Society Research Professor at the Department of Medicine (Medical Genetics) and the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. Born in Illinois, she received her Ph.D. in 1973 from University of California, Berkeley. She has won the Brinker Award for Breast Cancer Research from the Komen Foundation (1999), the Genetics Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation (2004), the Heineken Prize for Medicine of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Lasker Award (2014), the National Medal of Science (2015), the Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research (2016), and the Helen Dean King Award of the Wistar Institute (2019). She is a member of the Institute of Medicine (1994), American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1999), National Academy of Sciences (2004), and the French Academy of Sciences (2009).
Mary-Claire King's work revolutionized scientific approaches as well as clinical practice in breast cancer. In 1990, using then novel techniques, she defined and identified the location of a single gene (BRCA1) as causing inherited breast cancer. This gene and another gene (BRCA2) were also associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer. Her collaboration with Israeli and Palestinian colleagues led to the identification of novel deafness genes. She also pioneered genetic techniques to define familial relationships of deceased individuals. She applied these tests to unite grandmothers with their grandchildren whose parents had been killed during state-sponsored violence in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. Mary-Claire's work has had a wide impact in the USA and internationally and she has received many honors. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Jack W. Szostak | | | Institution: | Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Harvard Medical School; Massachusetts General Hospital | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1952 | | | | | | |
Dr. Jack W. Szostak is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and the Alex Rich Distinguished Investigator in the Dept. of Molecular Biology and the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Szostak is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Szostak’s early research was on the genetics and biochemistry of DNA recombination, which led to the double-strand-break repair model for meiotic recombination. At the same time Dr. Szostak made fundamental contributions to our understanding of telomere structure and function, and the role of telomere maintenance in preventing cellular senescence. For this work Dr. Szostak shared, with Drs. Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, the 2006 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In the 1990s Dr. Szostak and his colleagues developed in vitro selection as a tool for the isolation of rare functional RNA, DNA and protein molecules from large pools of random sequences. His laboratory has used in vitro selection and directed evolution to isolate and characterize numerous nucleic acid sequences with specific ligand binding and catalytic properties. For this work, Dr. Szostak was awarded, along with Dr. Gerald Joyce, the 1994 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology and the 1997 Sigrist Prize from the University of Bern. In 2000, Dr. Szostak was awarded the Medal of the Genetics Society of America, and in 2008 Dr. Szostak received the H.P. Heineken Prize in Biophysics and Biochemistry. Dr. Szostak’s current research interests are in the laboratory synthesis of self-replicating systems and the origin of life. | |
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