Each year, the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences honors distinguished individuals through its Fellowship and Honorary Life Member awards. The awardees constitute a select and prestigious community of scientists, engineers, research physicians, and others deeply concerned about science and science education. Awardees are recognized for extraordinary scientific accomplishments and service to the science community and the public. Academy peers initiate the nomination process. The Board of Governors' reviews all nominees and makes its selection on the basis of the quality and extent of accomplishment and service.
A candidate for Fellowship must have attained recognition for significant professional achievement in scientific research or science education. A candidate for Honorary Life Membership must have attained great distinction in science; only two are selected each year.
Nominations must include letters of support from three leading scientists or science educators in the nominee's field, one of which should be the letter of nomination. The nomination should include the candidate's curriculum vitae and a list of publications. Only one of the letters can be from a person employed at the same institution as the candidate or closely associated with the candidate's research. Self-nominations are not permitted. Academy Fellows will be announced and honored at the annual meeting.
Charles Alcock
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Dr. Alcock received his B.Sc. in Physics at Auckland University in New Zealand, and his Ph.D. in Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. Currently, Dr. Alcock is the Director Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysicsa, and a professor of astronomy at Harvard University.
Frederick Ausubel
Harvard University
Dr. Ausubel is part of the Department of Genetics at Harvard University, and part of the Massachusetts General Hospital. In his research, Dr. Ausubel uses model pathogenesis systems to identify virulence-related genes in bacterial and fungal pathogens, to identify host innate immunity genes in the nematode Caenornabditis elegans and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and to identify anti-microbial compounds in whole-animal high throughput screens.
W. A. Berggren
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Dr. Berggren attended Fordham Preparatory School and Dickinson College. He earned a Masters degree at the University of Houston and a Ph.D. at the University of Stockholm. He completed a post-doctoral year at Princeton University, before spending two years as a research paleontologist with Oasis Oil in Libya. Dr. Berggren settled in Woods Hole in 1965 where he has been a Senior Scientist since 1971. At WHOI, Dr. Berggren is involved in the analysis and interpretation of piston and gravity cores. He has established himself as a force in Plio-Pleistocene correlations.
Anne Carpenter
Broad Institute
Dr. Carpenter is the Director of the Imaging Platform at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. With her background in cell biology, microscopy and computational biology, she leads an interdisciplinary research group that develops and applies methods for extracting quantitative information from biological images in order to identify gene function, disease states, and therapeutic potential across diverse biological fields. The group's research yields algorithms that are available to the scientific community in the form of open-source software, CellProfiler and CellProfiler Analyst. Her group, and others around the world, apply this software to answer significant questions in the biomedical sciences. Dr. Carpenter received her Ph.D. from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Cell Biology. During her postdoctoral work with David Sabatini at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, she was co-mentored by Polina Golland at the Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
John Coffin
Tufts University
Dr. Coffin received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in the laboratory of Dr. Howard Temin, and was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Charles Weissmann at the University of Zyrich. In 1975, he was made Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University in Boston, where he was subsequently promoted to full Professor and in 1994 was the recipient of an American Cancer Society Professorship. In 1997, he was named Director of the new HIV Drug Resistance Program in the National Cancer Institute, and he presently divides his time between Tufts University and NCI. He has served on a number of national committees to review and set policy regarding retroviruses and disease. In 1999, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
Carolyn Cohen
Brandeis University
Dr. Cohen received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she is currently a Professor of Biology at Brandeis University, where she studies protein structure, dynamics and assembly. The major objective of Dr. Cohen's work is to determine the precise molecular architecture of certain alpha-proteins that have dynamic as well as structural roles in the cell.
Mildred Dresselhaus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Dresselhaus received her undergraduate degree at Hunter College
in New York, and carried out postgraduate study at the University
of Cambridge on a Fulbright Fellowship and Harvard University. She
received a PhD from the University of Chicago and then spent two
years at Cornell University before moving to Lincoln Lab.
Dr. Dresselhaus is currently an Institute Professor and a professor
of physics and electrical engineering at MIT. Dr. Dresselhaus was
awarded the National Medal of Science in 1990 in recognition of her
work on electronic properties of metals as well as expanding the
opportunities of women in science and engineering. In 2000-2001,
she was the Director of the Office of Science at the US Department
of Energy. From 2003-2008 she was the Chair of the Governing Board
of the American Institute of Physics. Dr. Dresselhaus has also
served as President of the American Physical Society, President of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and
Treasurer of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Dresselhaus
has devoted a great deal of time to supporting efforts to promote
increased participation of women in science and engineering.
Dr. Dresselhaus is particularly noted for her work on graphite,
graphite intercalation compounds, and carbon nanostructures and low
dimensional thermoelectric materials. She is active in working on
the use of nanostructures to address the global energy challenge.
Lila Gierasch
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Gierasch received her A.B. at Mount Holyoke College in Chemistry and her Ph.D. at Harvard University in Biophysics. Currently, Dr. Gierasch is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Gierasch studies conformational analysis of peptides and proteins by NMR, CD and other spectroscopic methods, as well as biophysical approaches to protein folding and localization in vivo.
Laurie Glimcher
Harvard University
Laurie Glimcher is the Irene Heinz Given professor of immunology in the department of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard School of Public Health, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate member at the Broad Institute. Her laboratory uses biochemical and genetic approaches to elucidate the molecular pathways that regulate CD4 T helper cell development and activation. The complex regulatory pathways governing T helper cell responses are critical for both the development of protective immunity and for the abnormal immune responses underlying autoimmune diseases. With the discovery of a transcription factor, XBP-1 that controls plasma cell differentiation and the unfolded protein response, her group also studies lymphocyte commitment to the B cell lineage. Most recently, her laboratory has identified new proteins that control osteoblast commitment and activation.
Jeffrey Hall
Brandeis University
Dr. Hall is a Professor of Biology at Brandeis University. In his reasearch, Dr. Hall and his colleagues investigate the function of the nervous system in Drosophila. Many of their approaches involve genetic studies of behavior, augmented in by molecular manipulations of genes defined by certain behavioral mutations.
Daniel Hartl
Harvard University
Daniel L. Hartl is Higgins Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His research focuses on the molecular basis of evolutionary changes in genes and genomes. His approach is guided by the philosophy that progress in molecular evolution and progress in molecular biology often go hand in hand, and that studies of molecular evolution are usually enhanced when they take advantage of information about biological function and molecular mechanism. The Drosophila Genome Project originated in his laboratory with studies of chromosome evolution using large-fragment DNA clones. He pioneered the evolutionary theory of genetic polymorphism and divergence, and developed a novel Bayesian method to show that most amino acid replacements in Arabidopsis (an inbreeder) are deleterious whereas those in Drosophila (an outbreeder) are beneficial. Dr. Hartl was awarded his PhD by the University of Wisconsin, he did postdoctoral studies at the University of California in Berkeley, and he has been on the faculty of the University of Minnesota, Purdue University and Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. Dr. Hartl has been honored with the Samuel Weiner Outstanding Scholar Award and Medal, the Medal of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a Past President of the Genetics Society of America and the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Dudley Herschbach
Harvard University
Dr. Herschbach received his B.S. in mathematics, and M.S. in chemistry from Stanford University and he received his A.M. in physics, and Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard University. Dr. Herschbach won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes." His research has ranged broadly over the field of chemical physics, including much theoretical work in dimensional scaling. Dr. Herschbach has been a strong proponent of science education and science among the general public, and frequently gives lectures to students of all ages, imbuing them with his infectious enthusiasm for science and his playful spirit of discovery.
Nancy Hopkins
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Hopkins received her Ph.D. at Harvard University, and she is currently a Professor of Biology at MIT. Dr. Hopkins is part of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, where she studies the identification of genes essential for early development in zebrafish, and the role of these genes in longevity and cancer predisposition in adult fish.
G. David Forney
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Forney received his B.S.E. from Princeton University, and his M.S. and Sc.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is now an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. Dr. Forney's research interests includ: coding and decoding for Euclidean-space channels, power- and bandwidth-efficient communication, connections between coding theory and system theory; complexity, combined equalization and coding, and quantum communications.
Nancy Kopell
Boston University
Dr. Kopell received her Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of California Berkley. She is currently the Co-director of the Center for BioDynamics at Boston University. Dr. Kopell's major current interest is dynamics of the nervous system, especially rhythmic behavior in networks of neurons. Rhythms have been known in the nervous system for about three quarters of a century, but it is still mysterious what biophysical mechanisms produce them, and what functions they serve. In the last decade, there have been many papers linking rhythms at different frequencies to attention, perception, learning and recall, as well as motor behavior. Synchronous assemblies of neurons are thought to be important for distributed processing in the nervous system, including "binding" of activity from different parts of the nervous system, gating incoming signals, potentiating outgoing signals and facilitating plasticity.
Eric Lander
Broad Insitute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Eric Lander is founding director of the Broad Institute. As one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, Eric and colleagues are using these findings to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the basis of human disease. Eric is also professor of biology at MIT, professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School and member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He founded the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research in 1990. This Center became part of the newly founded Broad Institute in 2003.
Susan Leeman
Boston University
Dr. Leeman received her Ph.D. at Radcliff College, and she is currently a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Boston University. Dr. Leeman's work focuses on the two peptides, substance P (SP) and neurotensin, that were isolated and chemically defined in this laboratory. Previous projects that are currently underway relating to the biochemistry and pharmacology of SP include studies to determine the binding domains of SP with its receptor using photoactivatable derivatives of SP containing the photoreactive amino acid benzoylphenlalanine; studies to determine the binding domains of an antagonist of SP, CP 96,345 using a photoactivatable derivative of this compound; the characterization of calcium signals generated by administration of SP to CHO cells transfected with mRNA encoding the full-length SP receptor; the roles of SP in several models of inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract using non-peptide SP antagonists; a truncated form of the SP receptor and several mutant receptors. A new direction of research involves studies directed towards the chemical characterization and function of the carbohydrate moieties on the SP receptor.
Susan Lindquist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Lindquist received her Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University. She is currently a professor of biology at MIT, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The central theme of Dr. Lindquist's research is to explore the impact of protein conformational changes on diverse processes in cellular and organismal biology. She is exploiting our understanding of protein folding to gain insights into the basis of neurodegenerative diseases and spongiform encephalopathies, and to design therapeutic strategies. In addition to the role that misfolded proteins play in disease, she has also identified potentially important beneficial effects of self-perpetuating alternate protein conformations, including mechanisms of evolutionary change and long-term memory.
Lynn Margulis
University of Massachusetts
Dr. Margulis is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, received from William J. Clinton the Presidential Medal of Science in 1999. The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., announced in 1998 that it will permanently archive her papers. Her publications, spanning a wide range of scientific topics, include original contributions to cell biology and microbial evolution. She is best known for her theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges a central tenet of neodarwinism. She argues that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations. Rather new tissues, organs, and even new species evolve primarily through the long-lasting intimacy of strangers. The fusion of genomes in symbioses followed by natural selection, she suggests, leads to increasingly complex levels of individuality. Dr. Margulis is also acknowledged for her contribution to James E. Lovelock's Gaia concept. Gaia theory posits that the Earth's surface interactions among living beings sediment, air, and water have created a vast self-regulating system.
Mathew Meselson
Harvard University
Dr. Meselson received his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology. He studied X-ray crystallography under Linus Pauling. Dr. Meselson is currently a Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University. The objective of Dr. Meselson's research is to understand why nearly all animals and plants reproduce sexually, why the loss of sexual reproduction usually leads to early extinction. The Meselson laboratory studies the evolution of asexuality in bdelloid rotifers. Meselson described the "Meselson effect", which is when two alleles in an asexual organism evolve independently and divergently over time, producing what is essentially two genomes in one organism.
Mary-Lou Pardue
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Pardue received her Ph.D. at Yale University and she is currently The Boris Magasanik Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Pardue's research is on the genetic, biochemical, and cytological studies of structural elements of chromosomes, with an emphasis on telomeres, heterochromatin, and transposable elements. She also studies of the coordination of nuclear and cytoplasmic activities, and analysis of the molecular mechanisms by which cells respond to stress, especially the molecular biology of the heat shock response.
Barbara Partee
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Partee received her B.A. in Mathematics with High Honors at Swarthmore College with minors in Russian and Philosophy. She received her Ph.D. at MIT in linguistics with a minor in mathematics. Dr. Partee is currently a Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research and teaching interests center on formal semantics and its connections with syntax, pragmatics, and logic, and on related issues in the philosophy of language and in cognitive science. One lifelong interest is quantification. An NSF-supported project with Emmon Bach and Angelika Kratzer of UMass Amherst dealt with cross-linguistic quantification and semantic typology. Another project in collaboration with Eva Hajicova and Petr Sgall of Charles University, Prague, concerned topic-focus structure and quantification, integrating the contemporary Prague school approach with work in formal semantics. Her current research, joint with husband and colleague Vladimir Borschev of the Russian Academy of Sciences and UMass Amherst, aims to integrate Russian lexical semantics with Western formal semantics. Their current NSF project (2004-08) on the Russian "Genitive of Negation" construction involves Russian colleagues and UMass and Russian students.
Constance Phillips
Boston University
"Science education has always been a passion of mine. Teaching high school biology right out of graduate school together with my interest in the life sciences steered me in the direction of curriculum and program development. My career has mainly focused on starting innovative science education programs in exciting new venues in science. I continue to love teaching and working with students of all ages. Helping students explore the mysteries of the world and learn the practical applications that improve our lives is very rewarding.
When I was first exposed to biotechnology and learned of its impact on our lives, and its promises for improving our health and quality of life, I became forever intrigued. My job as director of Boston University's Biomed program and CityLab Academy allows me to indulge this passion both in terms of teaching and program development. Working with science that is changing people's lives and preparing students for careers as clinical and research professionals is incredibly rewarding."
David Pilbeam
Harvard University
Dr. Pilbeam received his M.A. from Cambridge, his Ph.D. from Yale, and his A.M. from Harvard. He is a Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University. Dr. Pilbeam is interested in a wide range of topics involving human and primate evolution. Dr. Pilbeam is currently working with Michel Brunet and colleagues on the description and analysis of the new hominid from Chad, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and he has long-term and continuing interests in the behavioral reconstruction and phylogenetic relationships of Miocene apes, which broadens to include more theoretical aspects of phylogenetics.
H. Eugene Stanley
Boston University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Stanley received his B.A. in Physics at Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard University. Dr. Stanley is now a professor at Boston Universiity and the Director of the Center for Polymer Sciences.
B. L. Turner II
Clark University
Professor B. L. Turner II is the Milton P. and Alice C. Higgins Professor of Environment and Society and Director, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University. His research focuses on sustainability science, specifically on land change dynamics, ranging from the ancient Maya to contemporary deforestation in the tropics. Dr. Turner received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin in 1974.
E. O. Wilson
Harvard University
Dr. Edward O. Wilson is one of the great minds of our time. His groundbreaking research, original thinking, and scientific and popular writing have changed the way humans think of nature, and our place in it. Currently he is a research professor emeritus and honorary curator of entomology at Harvard University. He has received many of the world's leading prizes for his research in science, his environmental activism, and his writing.
Dr. Wilson has been a leader in the fields of entomology, animal behavior and sociobiology, island biogeography, biodiversity, environmental ethics, and the philosophy of knowledge, having written groundbreaking books and articles on all of these subjects. Two of his non-fiction books, The Ants (1990, with Bert Hslldobler) and On Human Nature (1978), have won Pulitzer Prizes. The Diversity of Life (1992) and Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), two of his more recent books, have been applauded for their graceful, creative and constructive approaches to challenging subjects. In The Diversity of Life and The Future of Life he conveys his deep concern for humanity's bewildering degradation of our planet's ecosystems. His commitment to protecting our natural heritage has brought him to the forefront of environmental activism.
Maria Zuber
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Zuber received her B.A. in Astrophysics and Geology at the University of Pennsylvania, her Sc.M. and her Ph.D. in Geophysics at Brown University. Dr. Zuber's research interests include theoretical modeling of geophysical processes, analysis of altimetry, gravity and tectonics to determine the structure and dynamics of the Earth and solid planets, and development and implementation of spacecraft laser and radio tracking experiments. Dr. Zuber's current research includes such topics as: CO2 Snow Depth and Subsurface Water Ice Content in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars, Digital Field Geology System, Mars Convective Core Stability Models, Ancient geodynamics and global-scale hydrology on Mars, Density Structure of the Martian Atmosphere, Lunar Gravity and Topography, Tectonic Fabric of the Seafloor, and Altimetry of the Coastal Ocean.