Class
| • | 2. Biological Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Helen M. Blau | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1948 | | | | | | |
Helen Blau is world-renowned for her seminal discovery that the differentiated state is reversible rather than fixed and terminal. Her demonstration of cellular plasticity constituted a paradigm shift in our understanding of mammalian cell differentiation. Using muscle as a model, Blau’s work provided the first definitive evidence that diverse cell types could be reprogrammed using non-dividing cell fusions. Her studies demonstrated that cell differentiation requires continuous regulation and that a shift in the stoichiometry of trans-acting regulators induces nuclear reprogramming, providing the scientific underpinnings for the induction of pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Blau applied this discovery to stem cell biology. She led the field with novel approaches to treating muscle damaged due to disease, injury, or aging. She showed that biophysical and biochemical cues synergize to maintain the stem cell state in culture and rejuvenate the function of aged muscle stem cell populations, profoundly impacting the field of regenerative medicine.
Among Helen Blau's many honors are the 1999 FASEB Excellence in Science Award and a Fulbright Senior Specialists award. She was President of the American Society for Developmental Biology 1994-95, on the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Aging 1996-2000, President of the International Society of Differentiation 2004-05, and member of the Harvard Board of Overseers 2004-10. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Diane E. Griffin | | | Institution: | Johns Hopkins University | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1940 | | | | | | |
Diane E. Griffin MD, PhD is University Distinguished Service Professor and former Chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Vice President of the US National Academy of Sciences. She earned her BA in Biology at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL and her MD and PhD at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research interests are in the area of pathogenesis of viral diseases with a particular focus on measles and arboviral encephalitis. These studies address issues related to virulence and the role of immune responses in protection from infection and in clearance of infection. She has more than 400 publications and has served on multiple advisory and editorial boards. She is the US Chair of the US-Japan Cooperative Medical Sciences Program and past president of the American Society for Virology and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Association of American Physicians, as well as the National Academy of Sciences. Among other honors, she has received the Rudolf Virchow Medal from the University of Wurzburg (2010), Wallace Sterling Lifetime Alumni Achievement Award from Stanford University (2011), FASEB Excellence in Science Award (2015), Maxwell Finland Award from the NFID (2016) and MilliporeSigma Alice C. Evans Award from the ASM (2017). | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Hopi E. Hoekstra | | | Institution: | Harvard University; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1972 | | | | | | |
Hopi E. Hoekstra is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Departments of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology and the Molecular & Cellular Biology at Harvard University. She is the Curator of Mammals in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, an Institute Member at the Broad Institute and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research focuses on understanding the evolution and genetics of morphological and behavioral traits that affect fitness of individuals in the wild. Using deer mice as a model system, she first dissected the molecular, genetic and developmental basis of camouflaging coloration to understand the mechanisms driving adaptation. Later, she focused on unraveling the genetic and neurobiological underpinnings of complex natural behaviors.
She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She has received Young Investigator awards from the American Society of Naturalists and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, and most recently, the Lounsbery Medal from the National Academy of Sciences (2015). She gave the 2013 Commencement speech at UC Berkeley’s Integrative Biology Department and has been profiled in The New York Times. In 2016, she was elected into the National Academy of Sciences and in 2017, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She also teaches in Harvard’s introductory Life Science course Genetics, Genomics and Evolution to approximately 500 freshmen each year, and has been awarded the Fannie Cox Prize and a Harvard College Professorship for teaching excellence. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Richard E. Lenski | | | Institution: | Michigan State University | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1956 | | | | | | |
Richard E. Lenski is an evolutionary biologist, one who pursues an experimental approach to watch the process of evolution in action. In an on-going experiment that he started in 1988, Lenski and his team have been monitoring and analyzing 12 populations of E. coli bacteria as they evolve in a controlled environment for almost 70,000 generations. This work has provided fundamental insights into the process of microbial adaptation, the dynamics of genome evolution, and the origin of new functions. Samples have been stored periodically in freezers, and the cells that lived in different generations can be revived and directly compared - in effect, allowing time travel. In addition to studying microbial evolution, Lenski collaborates on experiments in which computer programs self-replicate, mutate, compete, and thereby evolve in and adapt to their virtual worlds. Lenski did his undergraduate studies at Oberlin College, graduate work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and postdoctoral research at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He began his faculty career at the University of California, Irvine, before joining Michigan State University in 1991 as the John Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology, with sabbatical stints at the University of Oxford and Université de Montpellier. Lenski has mentored more than 25 graduate students and postdoctoral associates who are now on the faculties of universities around the United States and the world. He is a past president of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and he helped start the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, which brings together biologists, computer scientists, and engineers to illuminate and harness the power of evolution. Lenski has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, he holds an honorary degree from Wageningen University, and he is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Organization, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Rudolf K. Thauer | | | Institution: | Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology; Philipps University Marburg | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1939 | | | | | | |
Born 1939 in Frankfurt, Germany, I went to school in Wetter, Landshut, Philadelphia, USA (1947-1951) and Bad Nauheim and then studied Medicine and Biochemistry at the Universities of Frankfurt, Tubingen and Freiburg, where I ended my studies 1968 with a PhD in Biochemistry and a Thesis on the "Energy Metabolism of Clostridium kluyveri." Ever since then my scientific interest remained focused on how strictly anaerobic microorganisms conserve energy. Discoveries made were amongst others that carbon monoxide is an intermediate in autotrophic CO2 fixation via the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway and that the trace element nickel is required by many anaerobes as cofactor of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase, hydrogenases and methyl-coenzyme M reductase. The latter enzyme has a nickel tetrapyrrole as prosthetic group and catalyzes both methane formation and methane oxidation in Archaea. After a short postdoc in 1971 with Harland Wood at Case Western University Chicago, I was appointed in 1972 Associate Professor for Biochemistry at the Ruhr University in Bochum, in 1976 Full Professor for Microbiology at the Philipps University Marburg and in 1991 Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg. After my retirement as Director at the end of 2007 I continued research at the Max Planck Institute that led together with Wolfgang Buckel to the discovery of flavin-based electron bifurcation that changed our understanding how most anaerobes conserve energy. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Robin A. Weiss | | | Institution: | University College London | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1940 | | | | | | |
Robin Weiss is Emeritus Professor of Viral Oncology at University College London. He has spent most of his career conducting research on oncogenic viruses and on HIV. He is noted for his contributions to the discovery of endogenous retroviral genomes and for identifying CD4 as the HIV receptor. His expanded his research on avian endogenous retroviruses inherited through the host genome to consider mammalian retroviruses including the potential infection hazard by these agents in xenotransplantation of pig tissues to humans. He studied viral oncogenes and viruses involved in AIDS-linked malignancies such as Kaposi’s sarcoma. He showed that in dogs, a sexually transmitted tumor cell clone emerged around 10,000 years ago which has colonized dogs worldwide and continues to spread as a ‘parasite’. He applied pseudotype techniques originally devised for retroviruses to the study of receptors and antibody neutralization for other viruses such as influenza, rabies and ebola. He recently exploited single-chain llama nanobodies for HIV vaccines and diagnostics and he currently investigates the history of infectious diseases. Weiss was Director of Research at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, 1980-1999, and was President of the Society for General Microbiology, 2006-2009. He has chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and served on the Board of Directors of the Africa Health Research Institute and on the Nuffield Council for Bioethics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Michael W. Young | | | Institution: | Rockefeller University | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Michael Young is Richard and Jeanne Fisher Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Genetics at The Rockefeller University. He is also the University’s Vice-President for Academic Affairs. Young received a B.A. in biology in 1971 and a Ph.D. in genetics in 1975, both from The University of Texas, Austin. His graduate work, with Burke Judd, examined gene sizes and distributions in the chromosomes of Drosophila. He moved to Rockefeller in 1978, following postdoctoral work on transposable elements with David Hogness in the Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine.
In the late 1970s, Young began to use the fruit fly, Drosophila, to explore the molecular bases of circadian (daily) rhythms. Molecular and genetic screens in his laboratory identified six genes that are involved in the formation of a biochemical oscillator with a periodicity close to 24 hours. Interactions among these genes, and their proteins, contribute to a network of molecular oscillations that emerge within most tissues at the level of single cells. Most of the “clock genes” discovered by Young and his colleagues in Drosophila are also central to the circadian pathways of vertebrates. Recently Young’s laboratory showed that a prevalent human sleep disorder is caused by dysfunction of such a well-conserved circadian clock gene. Young’s elected memberships include the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the President’s Council of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Physiological Society, London (Honorary). Along with colleagues Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash, he received the 2009 Gruber Neuroscience Prize, 2011 Horwitz Prize, 2012 Canada Gairdner International Award, 2012 Massry Prize, 2013 Wiley Prize, 2013 Shaw Prize and the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries of molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythms. | |
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