News Release
Office of News and Information Johns Hopkins University 901 South Bond Street, Suite 540 Baltimore, Maryland 21231 Phone: 443-287-9960 Fax: 443-287-9920 |
April 30, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Johns Hopkins Medicine Media Relations and Public Affairs Media Contacts: Audrey Huang; 410-614-5105 Amy Lunday; 443-287-9960 |
Gregg L. Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Jane I. Guyer, Ph.D., a professor of anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences were elected as members of the National Academy of Sciences for their excellence in original scientific research. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Semenza and Guyer will be inducted into the Academy next April during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Semenza and Guyer, elected along with 70 others, brings the
number of Johns Hopkins University faculty elected to NAS
to 21. There are currently just over 2,000 active NAS
members. Among the NAS's renowned members are Albert
Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville
Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. More than 180 living
Academy members have won Nobel Prizes.
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One of today's pre-eminent researchers on the molecular mechanisms of oxygen regulation, Semenza has led the field in uncovering how cells adapt to changing oxygen levels. He has identified and studied the HIF-1 (hypoxia-inducible factor 1) protein, which controls genes in response to changes in oxygen availability. HIF-1 controls genes involved in adaptation to low oxygen — genes that control energy manufacture, generation of new red blood cells and the growth of new blood vessels. He currently is studying the role of HIF-1 in cancer, ischemia and chronic lung disease, the most common causes of mortality in the U.S. population.
Semenza received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, did his residency in pediatrics at Duke University Medical Center and postdoctoral research in medical genetics at Johns Hopkins. On the faculty at Johns Hopkins since 1990, he has authored more than 100 research articles, several book chapters and sits on the editorial boards of several scientific publications. Semenza has received several awards, including the E. Mead Johnson Award for Research in Pediatrics, the Jean and Nicholas Leone Award, Children's Brain Tumor Foundation, the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award, the Lucille P. Markey Scholar Award in Biomedical Science and was recently elected to the Association of American Physicians. He is member of the McKusick- Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine and director of the vascular biology program in the Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering.
"Dr. Semenza's ground-breaking discovery of the hypoxia
inducible factor has started an entire new field of
research and helped put Johns Hopkins on the academic map
nationally and internationally. His outstanding service to
the Hopkins community — his involvement with multiple
training programs, teaching several courses each year, and
participation in several committees — is a draw for
talented graduate students, fellows and faculty," says Chi
V. Dang, M.D., Ph.D., the vice-dean for research at Johns
Hopkins. "We are thrilled that his work has been recognized
with this rare honor."
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Jane Guyer earned her doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of Rochester in NewYork, and received her bachelor's degree in sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She joined the Johns Hopkins University faculty in 2002 as a professor in the Department of Anthropology, and added a secondary appointment in the Department of History in 2007. Before coming to Johns Hopkins, she spent seven years as director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University, and has also served on the faculties at Harvard University and Boston University. Guyer's research has focused on material life, with major emphasis on issues related to food, oil and money. Most recently, Guyer has been studying the China-India-Africa- Brazil axis of global trade in small consumer items, but she has devoted her entire career up to now to economic transformations in West Africa, particularly the productive economy, the division of labor and the management of money. Guyer's most recent book, Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (2004) re-examines the anthropological and historical record on monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa. The author of numerous research articles and editor many collected works, Guyer also serves on several national and international committees, including the International Advisory Group to the World Bank and the governments of Chad and Cameroon on the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project and the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association.
"Professor Guyer has enriched the School of Arts and Sciences immensely by her presence, through her extraordinary scholarship and her broader contributions to our academic community — her mentorship of graduate students, her leadership of the Department of Anthropology, her wisdom on our Academic Council," said Adam F. Falk, the James B. Knapp Dean of Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. "I am immensely pleased to see her honored by election to the National Academy, both because she is personally so deserving, and because it represents a recognition and appreciation for her field of inquiry, one that is ever more critically relevant in our world."
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furthering science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Established in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences has served to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art" whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government.
On the Web
Gregg L. Semenza's Homepage
Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering (ICE)
National Academy of Sciences Homepage
Jane I. Guyer's Homepage