Class
| • | 2. Biological Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Kamaljit S. Bawa | | | Institution: | University of Massachusetts; Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1939 | | | | | | |
Kamal Bawa (www.kbawa.com) is Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Founder-President of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). The Ashoka Trust, based in Bangalore, is one of India’s top-ranked environmental think tanks and in 2019 received the UNESCO Sultan Qaboos Prize for Environmental Conservation. He has done extensive work in the Himalaya for a number of years on a wide range of issues from biodiversity conservation to climate change. Kamal Bawa has published more than 200 papers and has authored or edited more than 10 books, and special issues of journals. Among the many awards he has received are: Bullard Fellowship at Harvard University (1972, 2009) Guggenheim Fellowship (1987), Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment (1992), Giorgio Ruffolo Fellowship at Harvard University (2009), the Gunnerus Prize in Sustainability Science from the Royal Norwegian Society of Letters and Sciences (2012), the international MIDORI Prize in Biodiversity (2014) from the Aeon Foundation in Japan, the Linnean Medal (2018), and honorary doctorates from the University of Alberta (2014) and Concordia University in Montreal(2019). He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012), the Royal Norwegian Society of Letters and Sciences (2012), and the Royal Society (2015). Kamal Bawa is founding Editor-in Chief of two interdisciplinary journals: Conservation and Society (www.conservationandsociety.org) and Ecology, Economy and Society (http://ecoinsee.org/journal/eb_editors). His latest coffee table book Himalaya: The Mountains of Life, a companion volume to Sahyadri: India’s Western Ghats, was published in 2013. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Catherine Dulac | | | Institution: | Harvard University; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1963 | | | | | | |
Catherine Dulac is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her work explores the identity and function of neural circuits underlying instinctive social behaviors in mice, and the role of genomic imprinting in the adult and developing brain. She grew up in Montpellier, France, graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, and received her PhD from the University of Paris VI. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and joined the faculty of Harvard as a junior faculty in 1996, before becoming full professor in 2001, and Chair of Harvard's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology from 2007 until 2013. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and of the French Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a recipient of multiple awards including the Richard Lounsbery Award, the National Academy’s Pradel Research Award, the Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience, the Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society, and the 2021 Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Erin K. O'Shea | | | Institution: | Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1965 | | | | | | |
Erin O’Shea is president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a top biomedical philanthropy. HHMI is known for driving science forward by investing in scientists, educators and students with the potential to make transformative change. O’Shea is the first woman to lead HHMI.
A leader in the scientific fields of gene regulation, signal transduction, and systems biology, O’Shea maintains a research lab at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus. She previously served as the Institute’s Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer and has been an HHMI investigator since 2000.
Prior to joining HHMI, O’Shea was the director of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Center for Systems Biology and its Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Chemistry and Chemical Biology. O’Shea has also served on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco. She earned a PhD in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Smith College.
O’Shea is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology. In 2017, Washingtonian magazine named her "one of Washington’s 100 most powerful women." | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher | | | Institution: | Dana Farber Cancer Institute; Harvard Medical School | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 209. Neurobiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1951 | | | | | | |
Laurie H. Glimcher is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Richard and Susan Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1976, where she spent most of her career, including as Irene Heinz Given Professor of Immunology.
Laurie Glimcher has elucidated the molecular pathways that regulate the development and activation of cells in the immune system - pathways critical for both the development of protective immunity and for the pathophysiologic immune responses underlying autoimmune, infectious, allergic, and malignant diseases. She discovered the first Th1-specific transcription factor, T-bet, and demonstrated that it is the master-regulator of Type 1 immunity in cells of both the adaptive and innate immune system. She also discovered XBP1, the first transcription factor required for both plasma cell differentiation and the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) Stress Response. She then demonstrated a link between ER stress and proinflammatory/autoimmune diseases. Most recently she discovered that XBP1 is key in the maintenance of cancer stem cells in triple negative breast cancer. Further, IRE1/XBP1 also controls anti-tumor immunity by disrupting dendritic cell homeostasis. Hence reducing IRE1/XBP1 activity should simultaneously inhibit tumor cell growth and activate type 1 anti-tumor immunity.
She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1996), the National Academy of Sciences (2002), and the American Association of Immunologists, (president, 2003-04). Laurie Glimcher was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Gary Ruvkun | | | Institution: | Harvard Medical School; Massachusetts General Hospital | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1952 | | | | | | |
Gary Ruvkun is currently Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Hans-Hermann Schoene Distinguished Investigator in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1982.
Gary Ruvkun discovered, with Victor Ambros, that small non-coding RNAs play a central role in eukaryotic gene regulation. Prior to this discovery it was universally assumed that the regulation of gene expression was controlled entirely by proteins. The discovery of a whole new layer of regulation mediated by what are now known as micro-RNAs has revolutionized thinking about regulatory mechanisms. Ruvkun’s genetic studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of micro-RNA biogenesis and action. In a second major advance, Ruvkun and Cynthia Kenyon provided the first convincing evidence that organismal aging is controlled by genetic programs, thereby opening a new approach to the study of aging. Finally, Ruvkun has studied how organisms respond to toxins, showing that it is not individual compounds that are recognized but rather their toxic effects, such as slower protein synthesis. Detection of toxicity then leads to a multi-faceted response aimed at countering the toxic insult.
Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, 2008; Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, 2015. Author: (B. Reinhart et al.) “The 21 nucleotide let-7 RNA regulates developmental timing in C. elegans,” Nature, 2000; (A. Pasquinelli et al.) “Conservation of the sequence and temporal expression of let-7 heterochronic regulatory RNA,” Nature, 2000; (Y. Liu et al.) “Caenorhabditis elegans pathways that surveil and defend mitochondria,” Nature, 2014. National Academy of Sciences, 2008; National Academy of Medicine, 2009; American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2009. Gary Ruvkun was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Christopher Stringer | | | Institution: | Natural History Museum, London | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | | | | |
Christopher Stringer is the Research Leader in Human Origins at London's Natural History Museum. He is also co-director of the follow-up Pathways to Ancient Britain project. He earned his Ph.D. in 1974 and his D.Sc. 1990, both from the University of Bristol. He has spent most of his career at the Natural History Museum, first starting as a Researcher in 1973.
Stringer is a leading proponent of the Out-of-Africa theory for the origin and spread of modern humans. Beginning with his seminal 1988 Science paper on the "Genetic and Fossil Evidence for the Origin of Modern Humans" (with Peter Andrews) he has worked with archaeologists, dating specialists and geneticists to further develop and refine our understanding of the evolution of our own species. He has recently formulated a modified version of this model, the Coalescent African Origin model. He carried out significant fieldwork on Neanderthals and since 2001 has directed the "Ancient Human Occupation of Britain" and "Pathways to Ancient Britain" projects, which have produced significant new findings about the spread of hominids into the British Isles. He is also the author of numerous bestselling books on human evolution including Our Human Story (with Louise Humphrey), Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story (with R Dinnis), and Homo Britannicus.
He received the Royal Anthropological Institute's Rivers Memorial Medal in 2004 and the Zoological Society of London's Frink Medal in 2008. Stringer was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honors for services to the understanding of human evolution. He has been a member of the Royal Society since 2004 and is a member of the Society of Antiquaries. Stringer was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Clifford J. Tabin | | | Institution: | Harvard Medical School | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1954 | | | | | | |
Clifford J. Tabin is the George Jacob and Jacqueline Hazel Leder Professor and Chair of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. Tabin began his work in developmental biology during a brief postdoc in the laboratory of Doug Melton at Harvard University, before leaving a year later for a position as an independent Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the faculty of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School in 1989.
Tabin pioneered the molecular genetic analysis of embryonic development of vertebrates, and ever since has been a leader in the field that attempts to understand how limbs and digits develop in individuals and evolve in different species. He has made outstanding contributions to the question of how bilateral symmetry in appendages like wings and legs is regulated, and how, in contrast, asymmetry arises in development, as in the placement of the heart in humans and in the coiling of the intestine. In other pioneering work his group have identified genes that regulate the length and depth of the beaks of Darwin’s finches, and genes that are responsible for the loss of pigment and vision in cave fish. He established a preclinical science education program in the medical school in Kathmandu in Nepal in order to train doctors to work with poor people in rural areas.
He received the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology in 1999, the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology in 2008, and the Society for Developmental Biology’s Conklin Medal in 2012. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 2000, the National Academy of Sciences since 2007, and the Royal Society of London since 2014. Tabin was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. | |
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