JURY > 2010 > LIFE SCIENCES

2010 Life Sciences Jury

Jury Chair

Prof. Inder Verma

Prof. Inder Verma is the American Cancer Society Professor and the first incumbent of the Irwin Mark Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Sciences, in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA
One of the world's leading authorities on the development of viruses for gene therapy vectors, Dr. Verma uses genetically engineered viruses to insert new genes into cells that can then be returned to the body, where they produce the essential protein whose absence causes disease. He has also been conferred the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award (1988). Dr. Verma is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (US), Institute of Medicine, American Academy for Arts & Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Third World Academy of Sciences and a foreign associate of the Indian National Academy of Sciences. The Vilcek Foundation named Dr. Verma as the recipient of its 2008 prize in biomedical science. Dr. Verma is also the recipient of 2010 Spector Prize awarded by Columbia University and 22nd Annual Cancer Research Award of the Pasarow Foundation.

Jurors

Dr. Didier Trono

Professor of Genetics and Virology and Dean of the School of Life Sciences, Swiss Institutes of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
After obtaining an M.D. from the University of Geneva and completing a clinical training in pathology, internal medicine and infectious diseases in Geneva and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he worked with David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research of MIT as a post-doctoral fellow. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to launch a center for AIDS research. He moved back to Europe seven years later, before taking the reins of the newly created EPFL School of Life Sciences in 2004. Didier Trono’s research focuses on interactions between viral pathogens and their hosts, and on the exploration of genetics from both fundamental and therapeutic perspectives. His laboratory is particularly interested in innate defenses against retroelements such as HIV and in the role of epigenetics in the shaping and expression of mammalian genomes.

Dr. Carol Prives

DaCosta Professor of Biology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, USA
Dr. Prives is known as a leader in the p53 tumor suppressor field in cancer research. Her laboratory discovered that p53 is a sequence-specific transcriptional activator and that cancer-related mutants of p53 are defective in this function. She was also among the first to elucidate how p53 is stabilized after DNA damage. In 1998 she was awarded a Research Professorship from the American Cancer Society. In 2000 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2005 to the Institute of Medicine. In 2008, Prives was elected as member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for her excellence in original scientific research. She has served on numerous editorial boards as well as on a number of scientific advisory boards, including chairing two NIH Study Sections, the Board of Scientific Directors of the National Cancer Institute, the Damon Runyon Fellowship Committee, New Jersey Cancer Commission, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She also served on the American Association for Cancer Research Board of Directors (2004-2007).

Prof. Mriganka Sur

Paul E. Newton Professor of Neuroscience, Head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Director of the Simons Initiative on Autism and the Brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Professor Sur studies the organization, development and plasticity of the cerebral cortex of the brain using experimental and theoretical approaches. He has discovered fundamental principles by which networks of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and change dynamically during learning. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Charles Judson Herrick Award of the American Association of Anatomists in 1983, the A.P. Sloan Fellowship in 1985, the McKnight Development Award in 1988, the Hans-Lukas Teuber Scholar Award in 1997, the Sigma Xi Lectureship in 2001, and the Foundation Day Medal of the National Brain Research Center, India in 2008. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the UK, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Neuroscience Research Program, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Rodin Academy, Sweden, and the Third World Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Rudolf Jaenisch

Member, Whitehead Institute and Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Prof. Jaenisch, a Whitehead Founding Member, studies the epigenetic regulation of gene expression. He created the first transgenic animal model and conducted the first experiment that demonstrated that therapeutic cloning could correct genetic defects in mice. Jaenisch has won the Boehringer Mannheim Molecular Bioanalytics Prize (1996), the first Peter Gruber Foundation Award in Genetics in 2001, the Robert Koch Prize for Excellence in Scientific Achievement in 2002, the Brupracher Foundation Cancer Award in 2003 and Vilcek Prize in 2007. He was elected as member of the National Academy of Sciences, member of the Institute of Medicine and fellow of American Academy of Arts and Science.

Dr. Gurudev Khush

Adjunct Professor, University of California, Davis, USA
Dr. Khush is a renowned agronomist and is considered one of the heroes of the Green Revolution, for his leadership in developing rice strains that enhanced the quality and quantity of the rice supply in countries facing unprecedented population growth. Under his direction at the Plant Breeding Department, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) developed rice varieties that now account for 60% of the world's rice supply. Khush received the 1996 World Food Prize for unparalleled achievements in enlarging and improving the global supply of rice during a time of exponential population growth. He received the Japan Prize in 1987, the Wolf Prize for Agriculture in 2000 and the Golden Sickle Award in 2007. He has also been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of London, and he consults for over 15 national governments, including India, China, and Indonesia.