Six Johns Hopkins University researchers have been elected
fellows of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science by their peers.
Jef Boeke, Paul D. Feldman, Nirbhay
Kumar, Thomas C. Quinn, Theresa A.B. Shapiro and David
Valle are among 471 new fellows around the
world. Election honors the fellows' scientifically or
socially distinguished efforts to advance science or
its applications.
The new fellows were announced Oct. 26 in the "AAAS
News & Notes" section of the journal
Science. They will be presented with an official
certificate and a gold and blue (representing science
and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Feb. 16 at
the Fellows Forum during the 2008 AAAS
Annual Meeting in Boston.
As part of the section on biological sciences, Jef
Boeke was elected for distinguished
contributions to the field of molecular genetics,
particularly for elucidating how mobile yeast and
human transposons move via reverse transcription of DNA.
Boeke, a professor of
molecular biology and
genetics, is the founding director of the
High Throughput
Biology Center, the first interdisciplinary
center in Johns Hopkins' Institute for
Basic Biomedical Sciences. He holds a joint appointment
in the
Kimmel
Cancer Center and an adjunct appointment in Biology at the Krieger
School of Arts and
Sciences.
Boeke has served as principal investigator of a
National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group,
renewing a National Cancer Institute program project grant
currently in its 32nd year and leading a
National Institutes of Health Roadmap Technology Center
aimed at developing new technologies for
dissecting networks and pathways of lysine modification. He
has also been active in technology
transfer, serving as a founder of Avigen, as well as
executing various licensing arrangements. He has
served as organizer or co-organizer of several
international meetings on transposition and on many
advisory and editorial boards.
As part of the section on astronomy, Paul D.
Feldman was elected for distinguished
contributions to the field of space ultraviolet astronomy
and spectroscopy, and to our understanding
of planetary atmospheres and comets. A professor in the Henry A. Rowland
Department of Physics and
Astronomy in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences,
and principal investigator of a NASA-
supported sounding rocket program, Feldman has been
responsible for more than three dozen sounding
rocket launches aimed at studying the Earth's upper
atmosphere and the atmospheres of planets and
comets. He also was a co-investigator on NASA's Far Ultraviolet
Spectroscopic Explorer and the
Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys and
a member of the team that developed the
space shuttle-borne Hopkins
Ultraviolet Telescope for far ultraviolet astronomy. He
is a fellow of the
American Physical Society and a member of the International
Astronomical Union, American
Astronomical Society and American Geophysical Union.
Feldman has authored or co-authored more
than 300 peer-reviewed articles.
As part of the section on medical sciences, Nirbhay
Kumar was elected for distinguished
contributions to the field of parasitology, particularly
for studies of malaria parasite development and
identification of proteins for a transmission-blocking
vaccine. A professor in the Johns Hopkins
Malaria Research Institute at the Bloomberg School of
Public Health, Kumar focuses on the parasitic
disease that annually affects hundreds of millions of lives
in the world and kills a child every 30
seconds. He and colleagues are working to develop a human
malaria transmission-blocking vaccine that
would interfere with the development of sexual stages in
mosquitoes and could significantly reduce
malaria transmission. Several antigens have been identified
as targets for the development of such a
vaccine. Kumar also has employed targeted gene disruption
to investigate molecular mechanisms
involved in the differentiation and development of sexual
stages of the parasite, which are crucial for
malaria transmission.
In other collaborative projects, Kumar is looking at
the interactions between malaria-helminths,
detection of malaria by mass spectrometry and proteomic
analysis of mosquito midgut and salivary
glands. He has served since 2004 as primary investigator of
a Fogarty International Center-funded
malaria research and training program. Kumar has published
more than 120 scientific papers and is a
member of several national and international review
committees and of the American Society for
MicroBiology, the American Society of Parasitologists and
the American Society of Tropical Medicine
and Hygiene. He serves on the editorial boards of several
scientific journals.
As part of the section on biological sciences,
Thomas C. Quinn was elected for significant
contributions to the epidemiology of HIV and to
international health, particularly for work relating to
immunodiagnostics and molecular amplification assays for
infectious agents. Quinn is associate
director for international research and senior investigator
in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
He is a professor of
medicine and
pathology International Health,
Epidemiology, and Molecular
Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Public
Health.
In 2006, he became the inaugural director of the
Johns Hopkins Center for
Global Health,
coordinating all international research at the allied
medical institutions of the university. He also
directs the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine P3 HIV/AIDS
Research Facility and the International
STD/HIV Research Laboratory. Quinn's investigations have
involved the study of the epidemiologic,
virologic and immunologic features of HIV infection in
Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia.
In 2004, Quinn was inducted into the Institute of
Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences. He is a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society
of America and a member of the American
Association of Physicians and the American Society for
Clinical Investigation. He is an
adviser/consultant on HIV and STDs to the World Health
Organization, Pan American Health
Organization, UNAIDS, Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS and Food and Drug
Administration. He served on the boards of directors for
the Infectious Diseases Society of America
and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. He is
a founding member of the Academic
Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa and helped
design the Infectious Diseases Institute
of Makerere University School of Medicine in Uganda, where
he holds an adjunct appointment in
medicine. He is the recipient of multiple awards and honors
and is author of more than 700
publications on HIV, STDs and infectious diseases.
As part of the section on medical sciences, Theresa
A.B. Shapiro was elected for outstanding
contributions to the field of parasitology, particularly
elucidating the role of trypanosomal
topoisomerases and development of therapeutic agents for
trypanosomiasis and malaria. Shapiro is the
Wellcome Professor and director of
Clinical Pharmacology at the School of Medicine. Her
research
spans the entire range of pharmacology, with a focus on
much-needed new therapies for parasitic
infections. She is regarded as a leading expert on the DNA
of topoisomerases in African
trypanosomes, having described several new enzymes in this
class, defined their role in DNA
metabolism and demonstrated their essential nature and
suitability as drug targets. Her long-standing
collaboration with synthetic-organic chemist Gary Posner
has led to the identification of compounds
that are curative after a single oral dose in mice and are
now in scale-up synthesis for preclinical and
clinical trials. She launched a successful new training
program in which medical fellows conduct
translational and hands-on clinical studies for their
thesis research toward a PhD in clinical
investigation.
Shapiro is a member of the Association of American
Physicians, is an associate editor of
Pharmacological Reviews, has served on numerous NIH study
sections and is an expert consultant on
antiparasitic drugs to the Food and Drug Administration.
As part of the section on medical sciences, David
Valle was elected for pioneering contributions
to the field of medical genetics, particularly for
identification of the genetic and biological bases of
disorders of peroxisomal biogenesis. Valle is a professor
of
pediatrics,
molecular biology and genetics
and the Henry J. Knott Professor and Director of the
McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic
Medicine at the School of Medicine.
He is a diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics,
a member of the Institute of Medicine
of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American
Board of Medical Genetics and past
president of the American Society of Human Genetics. Valle
also is director of the Johns Hopkins
Predoctoral Program in Human Genetics, director of the
Johns Hopkins Center for Inherited Disease
Research, co-director of the Short Course in Medical and
Experimental Mammalian Genetics at the
Jackson Laboratory, editor of The Metabolic and Molecular
Bases of Inherited Disease and a member
of the advisory board of the NHGRI Research Network for
Sequencing the Human Genome. He serves
on the board of scientific overseers of the Jackson
Laboratory and the advisory council of the
National Human Genome Research Institute and on a number of
scientific editorial boards.
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