|
|
12/19/06
 Five
Scholars Elected Fellows of the AAAS in 2006.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science announced the
election of five Searle Scholars among the Fellows elected this Fall.
In the Biological Sciences, the new fellows include Scholars Eric
Anslyn (’91 Scholar), Cori Bargmann
(’92), Gaetano
Montelione (‘89), Barbara
Wakimoto (‘85), and William Tolman
(‘92). Advisory Board Member Michael
Edidin and former Advisor Judith
Kimble were also elected.
Related
Links:
11/27/06
Karla Kirkegaard
('87 Scholar) and Evgeny Nudler ('98 Scholar) are among the 13 recipients of the 2006 NIH Director's Pioneer Awards.
Last year Pehr Harbury ('99 Scholar) and
Vicki Chandler ('88 Scholar) received these awards. As the NIH web site explains: "A unique aspect of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research is the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (NDPA) Program, a high-risk research initiative of Research Teams of the Future. First announced in Fiscal Year 2004, nine awards were made in September 2004, and 13 awards each were made in 2005 and 2006. The NDPA is designed to support individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research. The term "pioneering" is used to describe highly innovative - potentially transformative - approaches that have the potential to produce an unusually high impact, and the term "award" is used to mean a grant for conducting research, rather than a reward for past achievements."
Related
Links:
10/11/06
Amy Pasquinelli ('04 Searle Scholar) one of five to receive a Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research award for 2006 from the W.M. Keck Foundation.
Amy's award was given "to study the central problem of how microRNAs regulate specific target genes". The awards were established in 1999 "to give the nation's most promising young scientists the resources they need to pursue potentially breakthrough research projects in biomedicine." Each year since 1999, the program has given annual grants of up to $1 million to four or five junior faculty investigators at leading research universities and institutions.
Former recipients of these Keck awards include Searle Scholars
Mike Caterina, Phyllis
Hanson, Chuan He, Brian
Kuhlman, Nina Papavasiliou, and
Kang Shen.
Related
Links:
9/20/06
Ken Catania ('01
Searle Scholar) Becomes Seventh Scholar to Win MacArthur “Genius” Award.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today the names of
its 25 Fellows for 2006. The
MacArthur Foundation noted Ken’s contributions to the study of the nervous
systems of unusual animals “to generate new insights into the mammalian
cortex—how it evolves, develops, and responds to changing conditions”.
The text
of the MacArthur Foundation web site reads as follows.
“Kenneth
Catania is a neuroscientist whose investigations of mammalian insectivores,
particularly the star-nosed mole, provide fundamental insights into the
organization of the sensory cortex. The star-nosed mole, a near-blind,
wetlands-dwelling rodent, relies on fleshy tactile tendrils surrounding its nose
to locate and identify prey underground. In his early work, Catania showed
that the somatosensory cortex of these animals is organized in spatial maps
corresponding to the sensory organ itself; this discovery represents a
correspondence to the organization of the visual cortex in most other mammals.
By investigating natural variations in the number of sensory tendrils, he was
able to show that the somatosensory maps reorganize according to the morphology
of the organ, implying that the sensory inputs themselves shape the cortical
organization during development. Recently, Catania used foraging theory to
show that the star-nosed mole approaches the theoretical maximum speed for
locating and consuming food; he postulates that the remarkably fast neural
processing of sensory input represents a necessary adaptation to the ecological
niche of this insectivorous mole species. Through his integrative approach
to understanding an unusual animal model, Catania generates new insights into
the mammalian cortex – how it evolves, how it develops, and how it responds to
changing conditions.
Kenneth
Catania received a B.S. (1991) in zoology from the University of Maryland,
College Park and a Ph.D. (1997) in neuroscience from the University of
California, San Diego. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt
University (1997-1998) and served as an assistant professor (1998-2006) in
Vanderbilt’s Department of Biological Sciences, prior to being named an
associate professor in 2006. Catania’s articles have appeared in such
journals as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
USA, and Nature Neuroscience.
Previous MacArthur awards have gone to Searle Scholars Joe
DeRisi, Pehr Harbury, Richard
Mulligan, David
Page, Geraldine
Seydoux, and Xiaowei
Zhuang.
Related
Links:
5/1/2006
Searle Scholars Dale Boger (‘81), Minx
Fuller (‘85), Scott
Hawley (‘84) and Susan McConnell
(‘89) Elected Fellows of
American
Academy
of Arts and Sciences
The
American
Academy
of Arts and Sciences just announced its new Fellows for 2006.
Dale Boger, who is the Richard and Alice Cramer Professor of Chemistry,
Scripps Research Institute. Minx
Fuller is the Reed Hodgson Professor of Human Biology and Chair of the Genetics
Department,
Stanford
University
. Scott Hawly joined
the recently formed Stowers Institute for Medical Research as a senior faculty
member. Susan McConnell is the Susan B. Ford Professor of Biological Sciences at
Stanford
University
. With their induction, there
will be 31 Searle Scholars in the Academy.
Related Links:
5/1/2006
Searle Scholars Stephen
Goff (’82) and Terry Orr-Weaver
(’88) elected to the National Academy of Sciences
Among the 72 newly elected members of
the National Academy of Sciences just announced Searle Scholars, Stephen Goff
and Terry Orr-Weaver. This brings to
26 the number of Searle Scholars who are members of the National Academy of
Sciences.
Related Links:
5/1/2006
American Chemical Society Honors Searle
Scholars Peter Schultz
(‘85) and Eric Anslyn
(‘91)
Peter Schultz received the 2006 Arthur C. Cope Medal.
The Cope Medal is awarded to a single person annually “to
recognize outstanding achievement in the field of organic chemistry
the significance of which has become apparent within the five years
preceding the year in which the award” is given.
An unique feature of the award is that “an unrestricted
grant-in-aid of $150,000 for research in organic chemistry, under the
direction of the recipient, designated as an Arthur C. Cope Fund
Grant, will be made to any university or nonprofit institution
selected by the recipient. A recipient may choose to assign the Arthur
C. Cope Fund Grant to an institution for use by others than the
recipient for research or education in organic chemistry.”
Peter Schultz is currently Professor of Chemistry at the
Scripps Research Institute and the Institute Director of the Genomics
Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in
San Diego
,
CA
.
Eric Anslyn received
an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, one of ten given annually to
“recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry.”
The award includes research grant to support research in
organic chemistry. Eric is
the eighteenth Searle Scholar to receive this award, which was founded
in 1984 by the ACS.
Related
Links:
4/24/2006
Fifteen Searle Scholars Named for 2006
Fifteen individuals doing research in the chemical and biological sciences have been selected as the 2006 class of Searle Scholars. Since the Program began in 1981, 423 Searle Scholars have been named. This year, the
Scientific Advisory Board considered 173 applications from recently appointed assistant professors, nominated by 120 universities and research institutions. In selecting the Scholars, the Board looked for individuals who have already done important, innovative research and who have the potential for making significant contributions to biological research over an extended period of time.
Charles L. Asbury
University of Washington
Elizabeth H. Chen
Johns Hopkins University
YiQin Gao
Texas A&M University
Christy L. Haynes
University of Minnesota
Jan T. Liphardt
University of California, Berkeley
L. Charles Murtaugh
University of Utah
John P. O'Doherty
California Institute of Technology
Randen L. Patterson
Pennsylvania State University
Peter W. Reddien
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kausik Si
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Eric P. Skaar
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Angelike M. Stathopoulos
California Institute of Technology
Lei Wang
Salk Institute of Biological Sciences
Stanislav S. Zakharenko
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Jennifer A. Zallen
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
4/19/2006
New Howard Hughes Medical
Institute "Million-Dollar Professors" include two Searle Scholars: Catherine Drennan ('01 Scholar)
and Scott Strobel ('97) as well as Advisory Board member
Sue Wessler.
These scientists were chosen for their talent as teachers. As the Howard Hughes Medical Institute new release of April 5th states: "Teaching often takes a back seat to research at leading American universities. Determined to change that fact, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) combed the country for leading research scientists who, through their teaching and mentoring, are striving to ignite the scientific spark in a new generation of students. Now 20 of the best will receive $1 million each from HHMI to put their innovative ideas into action as HHMI professors at 18 research universities across the country."
"The Institute does not tell the HHMI professors what to do or how to approach science education. Rather, HHMI provides them with the resources to turn their own considerable creativity loose in their undergraduate classrooms. Some will design programs to attract more women and minorities to science. Others will turn large introductory science courses or classes for non-science majors into engaging, hands-on learning experiences that challenge students to think like working scientists."
"The scientists whom we have selected are true pioneers-not only in their research, but in their creative approaches and dedication to teaching," said Thomas R. Cech, HHMI president. "We are hopeful that their educational experiments will energize undergraduate science education throughout the nation."
Related
Links:
3/16/2006
Scholars
Rene Garcia and Neil
Kelleher Receive 2004 Presidential Early Career Awards
Rene Garcia (’03 Scholar) and Neil Kelleher (’00
Scholar) were recipients of the 2004 Awards (announced
recently). These
Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers,
established in 1996, honor “the most promising beginning researchers
in the nation within their fields. Eight federal departments and
agencies annually nominate scientists and engineers at the start of
their careers whose work shows the greatest promise to benefit the
nominating agency's mission. Participating agencies award these
beginning scientists and engineers up to five years of funding to
further their research in support of critical government missions.”
1/26/2006
Sabeeha
Merchant ('88 Scholar) to receive 2006
Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. This medal and a monetary prize honors her
“pioneering
discoveries in the assembly of metalloenzymes and the regulated
biogenesis of major complexes of the photosynthetic apparatus in green
algae.” The
award has been presented at three-year intervals since 1979 for
excellence in research on marine and freshwater algae.
Related
Links:
|
