Five Johns Hopkins University researchers have been
elected by their peers as fellows of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jonathan Bagger, Ted Dawson, Barbara
Landau, Jun Liu and Jeremy Nathans are among 486 new
fellows around the world. Election as a fellow
honors scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to
advance science or its applications.
This year's fellows were announced in the "AAAS News &
Notes" section of the journal Science
on Dec. 19. New fellows will be presented with an official
certificate and a gold and blue (representing
science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Feb.
14 at the Fellows Forum during the 2009
AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.
As part of the section on physics, Jonathan Bagger was
elected for distinguished contributions
to the field of theoretical high-energy physics and for
leadership of the U.S. high-energy physics
community. Bagger is a Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the
Henry A. Rowland
Department of Physics
and Astronomy at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and
Sciences. He also serves as vice provost for
graduate and postdoctoral programs and special projects.
Bagger's research centers on high-energy physics at
the interface of theory and experiment,
with current work focusing on supersymmetry and
supergravity. He has twice been a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has served on
the National Research Council's Board on
Physics and Astronomy and is vice chair of the Department
of Energy/National Science Foundation
High Energy Physics Advisory Panel.
He sits on the editorial board of Physics
Reports and the Journal of High Energy Physics
and is
a fellow of the American Physical Society.
As part of the section on neuroscience, Ted Dawson of
the School of Medicine was elected for
distinguished contributions to research and leadership in
our understanding of the molecular bases of
neurodegenerative disease.
Dawson, a professor of neurology and
neuroscience, directs the Movement Disorders Center and
the Neuroregeneration and Stem Cell programs in the
Institute for Cell Engineering. Many advances in
neurobiology of disease have stemmed from Dawson's work
discovering the processes underlying nerve
cell death and neurodegeneration. He has been instrumental
in our understanding of how the gas nitric
oxide damages nerve cells during stroke. Dawson's
discoveries have led to innovative approaches and
enhanced the development of new agents to treat neurologic
disorders, such as Parkinson's and
Alzheimer's diseases, as well as other neurodegenerative
disorders.
As part of the section on psychology, Barbara Landau
was elected for her groundbreaking work
into the origins and nature of human language and its
development under a variety of biological and
environmental conditions.
Landau is the Dick and Lydia Todd Professor and chair
of the Cognitive Science
Department at
the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Her work
focuses on language learning, spatial
representation and the relationships between those
foundational systems of knowledge. In particular,
Landau investigates these issues in normally developing
children and in people who have severe spatial
impairments due to a rare genetic condition known as
Williams syndrome. She serves on the board of
scientific advisers for the American Psychological
Association and the governing board of the
Cognitive Science Society, and is a fellow of the Cognitive
Science Society, American Psychological
Society and American Psychological Association.
As part of the section on biological sciences, Jun O.
Liu of the School of Medicine was elected
for developing the use of small chemical probes in the
elucidation of mechanisms of important
processes in biology, including cell signaling,
angiogenesis and cell proliferation. A professor of
pharmacology and molecular sciences with a secondary
appointment in
Oncology, Liu is interested in a
molecular understanding of signaling and communication
involved in immune system activation, cell
death and cell growth in the context of growing new blood
vessels. Angiogenesis — formation of new
blood vessels — is necessary for tumor growth and
metastasis as well as several other human diseases.
Inhibition of angiogenesis is emerging as a promising
strategy for treating cancer. Liu's
interdisciplinary approach to research involves a
combination of tools and techniques from protein
biochemistry and molecular and cell biology to synthetic
organic chemistry.
As part of the section on biological sciences, Jeremy
Nathans of the School of Medicine was
elected for elegant investigations of human color vision,
including isolating rhodopsin genes and
determining the molecular bases for variation in color
vision and for visual disorders. A professor of
molecular biology and
genetics and
ophthalmology, Nathans identified the genes that code
for the
three kinds of light-sensing pigment molecules found in the
cone cells — one of the two types of
photoreceptor cells in the retina, the other being rods.
The pigments are critical for color vision, and
Nathans has shown that alterations in these pigment genes
are responsible for color blindness common
in inherited variations in human color vision.
In more recent studies, Nathans discovered and
characterized genes that control the normal
development of the retina and determined how defects in
these genes disrupt the function and
survival of retinal cells. These studies have revealed
several defects that lead to human retinal
diseases including Stargardt disease, the most common type
of macular degeneration in children and
young adults. In collaboration with other Johns Hopkins
researchers, he also determined the cause of
the vitelliform type of macular dystrophy, showing that it
is caused by abnormalities in a member of a
previously unknown family of ion channels — proteins
that allow ions to enter and exit cells.
The American Association for the Advancement of
Science is the world's largest general
scientific society, and publisher of the journal Science.
AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes some
262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving
10 million individuals. The nonprofit AAAS is
open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science
and serve society" through initiatives in science
policy, international programs, science education and
more.
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