Michael Smith was a British-born Canadian biochemist and businessman. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis for his work in developing site-directed mutagenesis. Following a PhD in 1956 from the University of Manchester, he undertook postdoctoral research with Har Gobind Khorana at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Subsequently, Smith worked at the Fisheries Research Board of Canada Laboratory in Vancouver before being appointed a professor of biochemistry in the UBC Faculty of Medicine in 1966. Smith's career included roles as the founding director of the UBC Biotechnology Laboratory and the founding scientific leader of the Protein Engineering Network of Centres of Excellence (PENCE). In 1996 he was named Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology. Subsequently, he became the founding director of the Genome Sequencing Centre at the BC Cancer Research Centre.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology.
Eugene Viktorovich Koonin is a Russian-American biologist and Senior Investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). He is a recognised expert in the field of evolutionary and computational biology.
Susan Randi Wessler, ForMemRS, is an American plant molecular biologist and geneticist. She is Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
Charles Thomas Caskey, also known as C. Thomas Caskey, was an American internist who has been a medical Geneticist and biomedical researcher and entrepreneur. He was a Professor of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, and served as editor of the Annual Review of Medicine from 2001-2019. He was a member of the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Science, the Encyclopedia of Molecular Medicine and numerous other medical and scientific journals.
David Haussler is an American bioinformatician known for his work leading the team that assembled the first human genome sequence in the race to complete the Human Genome Project and subsequently for comparative genome analysis that deepens understanding the molecular function and evolution of the genome.
Gregory A. Petsko is an American biochemist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is currently Professor of Neurology at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. He formerly had an endowed professorship in Neurology and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College and is still an adjunct professor of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University, and is also the Gyula and Katica Tauber Professor, Emeritus, in biochemistry and chemistry at Brandeis University.
Gerald Mayer Rubin is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Related to his genomics work, Rubin's lab is notable for development of genetic and genomics tools and studies of signal transduction and gene regulation. Rubin also serves as a vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and executive director of the Janelia Research Campus.
Joachim Wilhelm "Jo" Messing was a German-American biologist who was a professor of molecular biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.
Scott D. Emr is an American cell biologist and the founding and current Director of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Cornell University, where he is also a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics.
Bruce William Stillman, AO, FAA, FRS is a biochemist and cancer researcher who has served as the Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) since 1994 and President since 2003. He also served as the Director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center for 25 years from 1992 to 2016. During his leadership, CSHL has been ranked as the No. 1 institution in molecular biology and genetics research by Thomson Reuters. Stillman's research focuses on how chromosomes are duplicated in human cells and in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the mechanisms that ensure accurate inheritance of genetic material from one generation to the next; and how missteps in this process lead to cancer. For his accomplishments, Stillman has received numerous awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize in 2004 and the 2010 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, both of which he shared with Thomas J. Kelly of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, as well as the 2019 Canada Gairdner International Award for biomedical research, which he shared with John Diffley.
Elaine Ann Ostrander is an American geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. She holds a number of professional academic appointments, currently serving as Distinguished and Senior Investigator and head of the NHGRI Section of Comparative Genomics; and Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch. She is known for her research on prostate cancer susceptibility in humans and for conducting genetic investigations with the Canis familiaris —the domestic dog— model, which she has used to study disease susceptibility and frequency and other aspects of natural variation across mammals. In 2007, her laboratory showed that much of the variation in body size of domestic dogs is due to sequence changes in a single gene encoding a growth-promoting protein.
Andrew Paul Feinberg is the director of the Center for Epigenetics, chief of the Division of Molecular Medicine in the Department of Medicine, and the King Fahd Professor of Medicine, Oncology, Molecular Biology & Genetics in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
Daniel L. Hartl is the Higgins Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is also a principal investigator at the Hartl Laboratory at Harvard University. His research interests are focused on evolutionary genomics, molecular evolution, and population genetics.
Michael P. Snyder is an American genomicist who is the Stanford B. Ascherman Professor and as of 2009, Chair of Genetics and Director of Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, and the former Director of the Yale Center for Genomics and Proteomics. He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015. During his tenure as chair of the department at Stanford, the U.S. News & World Report has ranked Stanford University first or tied for first in Genetics, Genomics and Bioinformatics under his leadership.
Manoj Prasad is an Indian plant geneticist, molecular biologist and working as a Senior Scientist and JC Bose National Fellow at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR). Known for his research on the stress biology of plants and virology, he is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Virological Society and was a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2014.
Sheng Yang He is a Chinese-American plant biologist. He was a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University before moving to Duke University in 2020. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2011. He served as President of the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions from 2014 to 2016. Recognized for his research on plant pathology on the molecular level, he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2015.
Edwin W. Taylor is an American specialist in cytoskeleton and biochemical events of muscle contraction. An adjunct professor in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology at Northwestern University, Taylor was elected to Membership of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.
Nora J. Besansky is an American molecular biologist. She is the Martin J. Gillen Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. In 2020, Besansky was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences for being an expert in the genomics of malaria vectors.
Siv Gun Elisabeth Andersson is a Swedish evolutionary biologist, professor of molecular evolution at Uppsala University. She is member of both the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of Engineering. She is also Head of basic research at the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and has been co-director of the Swedish national center for large-scale research Science for Life Laboratory between 2017 and 2021. Her research focuses on the evolution of bacteria, mainly on intracellular parasites.
