| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Francis Sellers Collins | | | Institution: | President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; National Human Genome Research Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1950 | | | | | | |
Francis Sellers Collins is the Former Director of the National Institutes of Health. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1974 and his M.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 1977. Other work experiences include being a Professor at the University of Michigan and head of the National Human Genome Research Institute from 1993-2008.
Francis Collins pioneered the fundamental strategy of ‘positional cloning,' leading to the successful identification of numerous disease genes. Using this approach, his laboratory identified the cystic fibrosis gene in 1989 and later the genes responsible for neurofibromatosis, Huntington disease, the M4Eo subtype of acute myeloid leukemia, multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1, Alagille syndrome, and Hutchinson-Gilford progeria. Collins' lab has also made major contributions toward deciphering the molecular basis of genetically complex diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes. At the National Institutes of Health, Collins was a key world leader in biomedicine. He was a central organizing figure in the human genome project, laying the groundwork for modern clinical and basic genetics research, and in many ways defining how to perform ‘large-scale science' in biomedical research. In this role, he has distinguished himself as a scientist, manager, advocate, arbiter, and voice for responsible science.
Collins was awarded the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1990, the Dickson Prize from the University of Pittsburgh in 1991, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, the Philip Hauge Abelson Awardand the National Medal of Science in 2009, and the Templeton Prize in 2020, among others. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the Royal Society, 2020. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Karl Deisseroth | | | Institution: | Stanford University; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1971 | | | | | | |
Karl Deisseroth is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He earned both his Ph.D. and his M.D. from Stanford University in 1998 and 2000, respectively. He continues as a practicing psychiatrist with specialization in affective disorders and autism-spectrum disease.
Deisseroth focuses his laboratory on understanding how operation of the brain arises from the properties and activities of its cellular components. Over the last 17 years, his laboratory has created and developed technologies for observing and controlling biological systems at high resolution while maintaining the systems intact; these technologies include optogenetics, hydrogel-tissue chemistry, and a broad range of enabling methods. He pioneered the resulting basic science discoveries as well, including resolution of the structural and functional machinery of light-gated ion channels, and discovery of neural cell types and connections that cause adaptive and maladaptive behavior. His contributions have revolutionized neuroscience by creating and using tools to assess causality between observed neural activity in specific neuronal populations and circuits and the emergence of behavior and emotional responses.
His awards and honors include the 2015 Breakthrough Prize, the 2015 Keio Prize, the 2015 Lurie Prize, the 2015 Albany Prize, the 2015 Dickson Prize in Medicine, the 2016 BBVA Award, the 2016 Massry Prize, the 2017 Redelsheimer Prize, the 2017 Fresenius Prize, the 2017 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist Award, the 2017 Harvey Prize from the Technion/Israel, the 2018 Eisenberg Prize, the 2018 Kyoto Prize, the 2018 Gairdner Award, and the 2020 Heineken Prize in Medicine from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine in 2010, to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2019. Deisseroth was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Sandra Díaz | | | Institution: | Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina; Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1961 | | | | | | |
Sandra Díaz is Professor of Ecology at Córdoba National University, senior member of the Argentine National Research Council and Visiting Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. She is interested in plant functional traits and syndromes, their effects on ecosystem properties and their interactions with global change drivers. She constructed the first global quantitative picture of essential functional diversity of vascular plants –the global spectrum of plant form and function. She has advanced theory and practical implementation of the concept of functional diversity and its effects on ecosystem properties and benefits. She combines her ecology studies with interdisciplinary work on how different societies value and reconfigure nature. She founded Núcleo DiverSus on Diversity and Sustainability, and co-founded the Global Communal Plant Trait Initiative TRY. She co-chaired the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. She is a member of the Academies of Sciences of Argentina, USA, France, Norway, Latin America and the Developing World, and Foreign Fellow of the British Royal Society. Her awards include the Margalef Prize in Ecology (2017), the Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science (2019), the Kew International Medal (2020) and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge in Ecology and Conservation Award (2021). | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Christopher Bower Field | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Christopher Bower Field is the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University. He earned his Ph.D., also from Stanford, in 1981. He has also worked at the University of Utah, as the Director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and at the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.
Field has made fundamental contributions to understanding complex interactions between plants and land ecosystems, and CO2 emissions from human activities. His visionary research on the global carbon cycle showed that projections of future climate require the explicit consideration of land ecosystems and their management. His pioneering work established the links between plant photosynthesis and the global carbon budget, and also demonstrated the important role of nitrogen in limiting the uptake of carbon by natural ecosystems in a higher CO2 world. These and other insights enabled the design of effective strategies for managing agricultural fields, forests and other terrestrial ecosystems in response to climate change. He has also played critical international leadership roles in assessing impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities related to climate change. He has used research findings to guide policy makers and business leaders in making effective choices to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change.
He is co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (2007), and received the Heinz Award (2009), the Max Planck Research Award (2013), the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2013), the Roger Revelle Medal (2014), and the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication (2015). Field has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2001 and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 2010. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Maria Jasin | | | Institution: | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1956 | | | | | | |
Maria Jasin is a Professor and molecular biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She earned her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. Other experience includes serving as a professor at the Weill Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences.
Jasin is a giant in the field of gene editing for genome modification and how spontaneous "gene editing" is causally linked to breast cancers. She received the 2019 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine "for her work showing that localized double-strand breaks in DNA stimulate recombination in mammalian cells. This seminal work was essential for and led directly to the tools enabling editing at specific sites in mammalian genomes." She discovered double-strand DNA break repair proceeded both by non-homologous end-joining repair (mutagenesis) and, astonishingly, homology-directed repair (HDR) (precise gene correction). Thus, she established that an endonuclease-generated double strand break in DNA is an efficient approach for gene editing, setting the paradigm that specified genomic DNA damage enables genome modification. She also found that the breast cancer suppressors BRCA1 and BRCA2 are crucial for HDR, and established HDR as a tumor suppression mechanism, discoveries which have transformed therapeutic approaches.
She is the recipient of the Basser Global Prize for BRCA Research, from the University of Pennsylvania, and the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Jasin was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Leslie B. Vosshall | | | Institution: | Rockefeller University; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1965 | | | | | | |
Leslie B. Vosshall is the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior at The Rockefeller University. In 2022, she became the Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), where she had been an Investigator since 2008. She earned her Ph.D. at The Rockefeller University in 1993. She was previously an Annenberg Assistant Professor, Head of the laboratory and Chemers Family Associate Professor at the Rockefeller University, and a faculty member at the Marine Biological Laboratory.
Vosshall is known for her strong impact on public health and extraordinary contributions to the scientific community. Female mosquitoes bite humans to obtain blood to nurture eggs, thereby transmitting viral pathogens including dengue and Zika to hundreds of millions of people each year. Over the past decade, Vosshall single-handedly built the yellow fever mosquito Aedes Aegypti into a genetic model organism for neurobiology and provided key insights into the sensory mechanisms these deadly insects use to hunt humans. She elucidated the mechanism of action of insect repellents and developed small molecules that disrupt mosquito biting behavior and show great promise in reducing disease transmission. Vosshall is a strong proponent of open access publications and pre-prints and fostering diversity in science.
She was the 2002 recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2008 Lawrence C. Katz Prize from Duke University, the 2010 DART/NYU Biotechnology Award, the 2011 Gill Young Investigator Award, the 2020 National Academy of Sciences Pradel Research Award, and the co-recipient of the 2020 Alden W. Spencer Award with Kristin Scott. Vosshall is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015 and the National Academy of Medicine in 2021. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022. | |
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