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Selection Committee for 2010:
Solomon Snyder, M.D. (Chairman)
Mary-Claire King, Ph.D.
Robert Langer, Sc.D.
Jean-Marie Lehn, Ph.D.
Craig Mello, Ph.D.
Sir Richard Sykes, Ph.D.
Axel Ullrich, Ph.D.
Huda Zoghbi, M.D.
Solomon Snyder, M.D.
Solomon Snyder, M.D., is a Distinguished Service Professor of Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is known as the "godfather of synaptic chemistry," and is an expert on the molecular basis of psychiatric disorders. His research, along with that of his colleagues, unveiled the neural opioid receptor and discovered that nitric oxide is a neurotransmitter involved in stroke and aggressive behavior. Dr. Snyder also is studying carbon monoxide as a neurotransmitter that could be involved in cell death. Moreover, work in Snyder's lab has demonstrated that D-serine also could be a neurotransmitter, even though this is the only D-amino acid that exists in significant levels in the brain. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Mary-Claire King, Ph.D.
Mary-Claire King, Ph.D., is an American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. She received her doctorate in 1973 from the University of California at Berkeley, where she demonstrated that humans and chimpanzees are 99 percent genetically identical. Subsequently, she was the first to prove that breast cancer is inherited in some families, as the result of mutations in the gene she named BRCA1. Dr. King’s primary research focus is on the genomic analysis of complex human traits. Most recently, King’s group demonstrated that individually rare genomic deletions and duplications that disrupt genes in neurodevelopmental pathways underlie much of the genetic basis of schizophrenia. Her other research interests include genetics of inherited hearing loss, genetics of systemic lupus erythematosus, human genetic diversity and evolution, and the application of genomics to human identification in the context of human rights violations. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Robert Langer, Sc.D.
Robert Langer, Sc.D., is a David H. Koch Institute Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering. Dr. Langer has written more than 1,050 papers and has more than 750 issued and pending patents worldwide. His patents have been licensed or sublicensed to more than 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies, a number of which were launched on the basis of these patent licenses. Langer is internationally known for his work in the fields of biotechnology and materials science, with a major focus on the development of polymers for drug delivery. His other research interests include tissue engineering, immobilized enzymes and biomedical engineering. Langer has received more than 170 major awards, including the National Medal of Science; the Charles Stark Draper Prize; the Millennium Prize; the Gairdner Foundation International Award; the Lemelson-MIT Prize; the Dickson Prize for Science; the Heinz Award for Technology, Economy, and Employment; the Harvey Prize; the John Fritz Award; and the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research among others. He also served as both a member and chairman of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board. Langer has received over 15 honorary degrees and has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and is a member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences.
Jean-Marie Lehn, Ph.D.
Jean-Marie Lehn, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Collège de France. Dr. Lehn has performed pioneering work in opening a new field of chemistry known as supramolecular chemistry. He earned his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Strasbourg in France in 1963. In his early research, Lehn created cryptands, which are organic cage-like compounds that can bind selectively with other entities such as metal ions or molecules like acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter in the brain. Lehn’s efforts in this arena and further in molecular recognition, specifically for the “development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity,” earned him and his two co-laureates the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Since then, his work has been mainly concerned with self-organization processes and with the development of dynamic chemistry in bioorganic and materials areas.
Craig Mello, Ph.D.
Craig Mello, Ph.D., is Professor in the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Mello received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Brown University in 1982 and his doctorate in biology from Harvard University in 1990. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. James Priess at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1994. In 1998, Mello along with Andrew Z. Fire, then of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, published research findings in Nature that demonstrated that a particular form of RNA can silence targeted genes. This RNA interference (RNAi) process offered astounding potential for understanding and manipulating the cellular basis of human disease. Dr. Mello has received many awards for this work including the 2006 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2006. He was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.
Sir Richard Sykes, Ph.D.
Sir Richard Sykes, Ph.D. currently serves as Chairman of NHS London, and prior to joining NHS London served as Rector of Imperial College in London. Before joining Imperial, he had a 30 year career in the pharmaceutical industry with Glaxo, subsequently Glaxo Wellcome, where he was Chairman and Chief Executive, and then GlaxoSmithKline where he left as Chairman in 2002. Sir Richard serves on a number of scientific, higher education and government committees, including serving as a Director of the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation and Lonza AG, and is a Trustee of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Chairman of the International Advisory Board, A*STAR Biomedical Research Council, and a Council member of the International Advisory Council of King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, among others. Sir Richard holds a number of degrees and awards from institutions both in the UK and overseas. He received his knighthood in 1994 for services to the pharmaceutical industry. Sir Richard earned a doctorate in microbial biochemistry from Bristol University in southwest England and a doctorate from the University of London.
Axel Ullrich, Ph.D.
Axel Ullrich, Ph.D., is Director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany. For more than 30 years, Dr. Ullrich has been a leader in gene technology and molecular medicine. Basic research in Ullrich’s laboratory led to the characterization of several medically relevant receptors of the tyrosine kinase family, including receptors for epidermal growth factor and vascular endothelial growth factor. He demonstrated that these receptors are critically involved in human cancer and developed therapeutics based on these discoveries. Ullrich has published more than 500 scientific articles in international journals. With more than 75,000 citations, Ullrich is one of the 10 most cited scientists over the past 25 years, worldwide. He serves as an honorary professor, visiting scientist, advisor and elected member to numerous academic institutions around the globe and is also the winner of the 2009 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research for his pioneering work in applying molecular biology and molecular cloning to the discovery of protein therapeutics for the treatment of a wide range of diseases, including diabetes and cancer.
Huda Zoghbi, M.D.
Huda Zoghbi, M.D., is a Professor in the Pediatrics, Neuroscience, and Molecular and Human Genetics Departments at Baylor College of Medicine; an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute. Dr. Zoghbi and her colleagues first made headlines when they discovered the gene that causes spinocerebellar ataxia type 1, a crippling neurological disease. She and her team then discovered that mutations in MeCP2 cause the neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, as well as identified the gene Math 1 that regulates the growth of tiny inner ear hair cells, an essential element of hearing and balance in mammals. Zoghbi’s interests range from neurodevelopment to neurodegeneration and she continues to study the nervous system in the lab at Baylor College of Medicine. Zoghbi serves on the editorial boards of a number of prominent journals and is the recipient of numerous awards. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2000, and she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004.
