Martin Hetzer (born in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian-born molecular biologist, [1] Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer [2] at the Salk Institute in La Jolla and the holder of the Jesse and Caryl Philips Foundation Chair in Molecular Cell Biology. His research focuses on fundamental aspects of organismal aging with a special focus on the heart and central nervous system. His laboratory has also made important contributions in the area of cancer research and cell differentiation.
Hetzer received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and genetics [3] from the University of Vienna, Austria, and completed postdoctoral work in the lab of Iian Mattaj [1] at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. He joined the faculty at the Salk as an assistant professor in 2004 and became Full Professor in 2011.
Hetzer has received a number of awards including a Pew Scholar Award, [4] an Early Life Scientist Award from the American Society of Cell Biology, a Senior Scholar Award for Aging from the Ellison Medical Foundation, a Senior Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society, a Royal Society Research Merit Award, the 2013 Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging [5] and the 2015 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award. [6]
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, US. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Construction of the research facilities began in spring of 1962. The Salk Institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the US in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Salk as the world's top biomedicine research institute, and in 2009 it was ranked number one globally by ScienceWatch in the neuroscience and behavior areas.
Ronald Mark Evans is an American Biologist, Professor and Head of the Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, and the March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Ronald M. Evans is known for his original discoveries of nuclear hormone receptors (NR), a special class of transcriptional factor, and the elucidation of their universal mechanism of action, a process that governs how lipophilic hormones and drugs regulate virtually every developmental and metabolic pathway in animals and humans. Nowadays, NRs are among the most widely investigated group of pharmaceutical targets in the world, already yielding benefits in drug discovery for cancer, muscular dystrophies, osteoporosis, type II diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases. His current research focuses on the function of nuclear hormone signaling and their function in metabolism and cancer.
John Kuriyan is Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the departments of Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB) and Chemistry. He is also a Faculty Scientist in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has also been on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2009, 2019 and 2020.
Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz is a Senior Group Leader at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus and a founding member of the Neuronal Cell Biology Program at Janelia. Previously, she was the Chief of the Section on Organelle Biology in the Cell Biology and Metabolism Program, in the Division of Intramural Research in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 2016. Lippincott-Schwartz received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, and performed post-doctoral training with Dr. Richard Klausner at the NICHD, NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.
Giulio Superti-Furga is an Italian molecular and systems biologist based in Vienna, Austria, and a member of the Scientific Council of the ERC. He is the Scientific Director of CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Professor of Medical Systems Biology at the Medical University of Vienna.
The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) is a biomedical research center, which conducts curiosity-driven basic research in the molecular life sciences.
Jorge Enrique Galán is an Argentinian-American microbiologist who specializes in infectious disease, bacterial pathogenesis including Salmonella.
Garth L. Nicolson is an American biochemist who made a landmark scientific model for cell membrane, known as the Fluid Mosaic Model. He is the founder of The Institute for Molecular Medicine at California, and he serves as the President, Chief Scientific Officer and Emeritus Professor of Molecular Pathology. He is also Conjoint Professor in the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Newcastle, Australia. During the outbreak of the Gulf War syndrome, he was the leading authority on the study of the cause, treatment and prevention of the disease. He was appointed Chairman of the Medical-Scientific Panel for the Persian Gulf War Veterans Conference. On suspicion of the bacterium that caused the disease as a product of biological warfare, he made extensive scientific investigations and served as authority to the United States House of Representatives. For his service he was conferred honorary Colonel of the US Army Special Forces and honorary US Navy SEAL.
Heinrich (Henri) Jasper is a German-American biologist at Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He was formerly a professor of biology at The University of Rochester. He studies aging, stem cell function, and tissue regeneration.
Jennifer Lea Stow is deputy director (research), NHMRC Principal Research Fellow and head of the Protein Trafficking and Inflammation laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), The University of Queensland, Australia. She was awarded her PhD from Monash University in Melbourne in 1982. As a Fogarty International Fellow, she completed postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine (US) in the Department of Cell Biology. She was then appointed to her first faculty position as an assistant professor at Harvard University in the Renal Unit, Departments of Medicine and Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. At the end of 1994 she returned to Australia as a Wellcome Trust Senior International Medical Research fellow at The University of Queensland where her work has continued. Stow sits on national and international peer review and scientific committees and advisory boards. She has served as head of IMB's Division of Molecular Cell Biology, and in 2008 she was appointed as deputy director (research).
Susan Wente is an American cell biologist and academic administrator currently serving as the 14th and current President of Wake Forest University. From 2014 to 2021 she was Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University. Between August 15, 2019 and June 30, 2020, she served as interim Chancellor at Vanderbilt.
Anthony Rex Hunter is a British-American biologist who is a Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California San Diego. His research publications list his name as Tony Hunter.
John Michael Sedivy is the Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology and a Professor of Medical Science at Brown University. He is listed as a F1000 Prime faculty member and on Who's Who in Gerontology. He has published over 130 original articles.
Gerald Weissmann was an Austrian-born American physician/scientist, editor, and essayist. He was Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology) at New York University School of Medicine. He was editor-in-chief (2006–16) of The FASEB Journal. At the time of his death he was its book review editor. In 1965, he was one of the discoverers of liposomes and is credited with coining that term.
Hao Wu is a Chinese American biochemist and crystallographer and the Asa and Patricia Springer Professor of Structural Biology in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Her work focuses on molecular mechanisms of signal transduction in cell death and inflammation. She is the discoverer of signalosomes, which are large macromolecular complexes involved in cell death and in innate and adaptive immune pathways. She has established a new paradigm for signal transduction that involves higher-order protein assemblies. She has received the Pew Scholar Award, the Rita Allen Scholar Award, the Margaret Dayhoff Memorial Award, the NYC Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, NIH MERIT and Pioneer Awards, and the Purdue University Distinguished Science Alumni Award. She was elected AAAS fellow in 2013 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015.
Samara Reck-Peterson is an American cell biologist and biophysicist. She is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, San Diego and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is known for her contributions to our understanding of how dynein, an exceptionally large motor protein that moves many intracellular cargos, works and is regulated. She developed one of the first systems to produce recombinant dynein and discovered that, unlike other cytoskeletal motors, dynein can take a wide variety of step sizes, forward and back and even sideways. She lives in San Diego, California.
Nicola J. Allen is a British neuroscientist. Allen studies the role of astrocytes in brain development, homeostasis, and aging. Her work uncovered the critical roles these cells play in brain plasticity and disease. Allen is currently an associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Hearst Foundation Development Chair.
Valentina Greco is an Italian-born biologist who teaches at the Yale School of Medicine as the Carolyn Walch Slayman Professor of Genetics and is an Associate Professor in the Cell Biology and Dermatology departments. Her research focuses on the role of skin stem cells in tissue regeneration.
Shruti Naik is an Indian American scientist who is an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at the NYU Langone Medical Center. In 2020 Naik was named a Packard Fellow for her research into the molecular mechanisms that underpin the function of tissue stem cells. She was awarded the 2018 regional Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists and the International Takeda Innovator in Regeneration Award. She has also received the NIH Directors Innovator Award and been named a Pew Stewart Scholar in 2020.
Jan Karlseder is an Austrian molecular biologist, a professor in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research and the holder of the Donald and Darlene Shiley Chair at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.