UMass Medical School scientists Job Dekker, PhD, and John L. Sullivan, MD, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
Dr. Dekker, professor of biochemistry & molecular pharmacology and co-director of the Program in Systems Biology, was elected as an AAAS Fellow for the invention of chromatin conformation capture, and for using it to map in detail the three-dimensional organization of the genome within the nucleus.
Dr. Sullivan, professor of pediatrics and molecular medicine, was elected for distinguished contributions in viral immunology leading to new insights into human immunodeficiency diseases and in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
This year, 388 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Each new fellow will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin on Feb. 15 at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2014 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.
This year’s AAAS Fellows will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science on Nov. 29.
Dekker and Sullivan join other distinguished UMMS faculty previously named AAAS Fellows, including:
• Steven Reppert, MD, the Higgins Family Professor of Neuroscience and chair and professor of neurobiology;
• Trudy G. Morrison, PhD, professor of microbiology & physiological systems;
• Thoru Pederson, PhD, the Vitold Arnett Professor of Cell Biology and professor of biochemistry & molecular pharmacology;
• C. Robert Matthews, PhD, the Arthur F. and Helen P. Koskinas Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology and chair and professor of biochemistry & molecular pharmacology; and
• Raymond M. Welsh, PhD, professor of pathology and microbiology & physiological systems.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal Scienc as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals.
To learn more about the AAAS Fellows program, visit the AAAS website.
