SFARI Investigators Awarded Nobel Prize, Lasker Award and MacArthur Fellowship

Three SFARI investigators (current and past) have recently been awarded distinguished honors in the natural sciences. These awardees include:

• • David Julius, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco), who received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Ardem Patapoutian, Ph.D. (Scripps Research) for their “discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”

• • Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D. (Stanford University), who received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award with Dieter Oesterhelt, Ph.D. (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry) and Peter Hegemann, Ph.D. (Humboldt University of Berlin) for “the discovery of light-sensitive microbial proteins that can activate or silence individual brain cells and for their use in developing optogenetics, a revolutionary technique for neuroscience.”

• Michelle Monje, M.D., Ph.D. (Stanford University), who received a MacArthur Fellowship for “advancing understanding of pediatric brain cancers and the neurological effects of cancer treatments with an eye toward improved therapies for patients.”

In addition, three SFARI Investigators were named to the National Academy of Medicine in recognition of their achievements: Monje, Ted Dawson, M.D., Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University) and Feng Zhang, Ph.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and another SFARI Investigator, Li-Huei Tsai, Ph.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year. All join a number of SFARI Investigators who have received similar honors in recent years.