Huntington Faxon Willard is an American geneticist. In 2014, he was named to head the Marine Biological Laboratory, and is a professor in human genetics at the University of Chicago. He stepped down from leading the lab in 2017 to return to research. Willard was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2016. Earlier, beginning in 2003 he was the Nanaline H. Duke Professor of Genome Sciences, the first director of the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, and Vice Chancellor for Genome Sciences at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.
Aziz Sancar is a Turkish molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and circadian clock. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Tomas Lindahl and Paul L. Modrich for their mechanistic studies of DNA repair. He has made contributions on photolyase and nucleotide excision repair in bacteria that have changed his field.
Joseph Carlyle "Lyle" Sitterson was an American educator who served as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from February 16, 1966, to January 31, 1972.
Herbert Holden Thorp is an American chemist, professor and entrepreneur. He is a professor of chemistry at George Washington University. He was the tenth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, assuming the position on July 1, 2008, succeeding James Moeser, and, at age 43, was noted as being among the youngest leaders of a university in the United States. At the time of his selection as chancellor, Thorp was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a Kenan Professor of chemistry at the university. Thorp is a 1986 graduate of UNC; he later earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from California Institute of Technology, and was a postdoctoral associate at Yale University.
Tony Waldrop was an American academic administrator, researcher, and athlete. In 2014, he became the third president of the University of South Alabama.
Edison T. Liu, M.D. is the former president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, and the former director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center (2012-2021). As CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, the organization doubled revenue, faculty and personnel, expanded globally from two campuses to six, established 13 endowed chairs, and increased the institutional endowment by five-fold. He is currently a Professor and Honorary Fellow at the institution. Before joining The Jackson Laboratory, he was the founding executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), chairman of the board of the Health Sciences Authority, and president of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) (2007-2013). As the executive director of the GIS, he brought the institution to international prominence as one of the most productive genomics institutions in the world.
Kevin Guskiewicz is an American academic administrator who is the 12th chancellor and 30th chief executive of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He gained prominence as a neuroscientist, sports medicine researcher, and Kenan Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is one of the Principal Investigators of the Injury Prevention Research Center, and directs the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center. He is a 2011 MacArthur Fellow. On January 1, 2016, he became Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill. On February 6, 2019, he was announced as interim chancellor, and on December 13, 2019, he was named chancellor by the UNC Board of Governors.
The UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is a cancer research and treatment center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One of 52 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States, its clinical base is the N.C. Cancer Hospital, part of the UNC Health Care system. UNC Lineberger is the only public NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center in the state of North Carolina. The current director is H. Shelton Earp III who succeeded current NCI director Norman Sharpless.
Blossom Damania is a virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is known for her work on oncogenic viruses that cause human cancer. Damania has also been serving as vice dean for research at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine since 2016.
Nancy Allbritton is a Professor of Bioengineering and the Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. She was previously a Kenan Professor and Chair in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.
Royce W. Murray was an American chemist and chemistry professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests were focused on electrochemistry, molecular designs, and sensors. He published over 440 peer-reviewed articles in analytical, physical, inorganic, and materials chemistry, and trained 72 Ph.D students, 16 master’s students, and 58 postdoctoral fellows, 45 of whom have gone on to university faculty positions. He was named a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2012, and was the inventor on three patents related to surface-modified electrodes.
Mark H. Schoenfisch is an American analytical chemist. He is the Peter A. Ornstein Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is jointly appointed with the institution's Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy. His research interests include analytical sensors, biomaterials, and the development of macromolecular nitric oxide release scaffolds as novel therapeutics. Intellectual property originating from his research group is the basis of technology being commercialized by Novan, Diabetic Health, and Vast Therapeutics located in the Research Triangle Park.
Stuart O. Bondurant FRCPE was professor and dean emeritus at the UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. As dean, he was noted for his efforts to expand the university's hospital system, and for leading improvements in the school's curriculum. In particular, he is recognized for his efforts to reduce infant mortality in North Carolina in his capacity as chair of the Governor's Commission on the Reduction of Infant Mortality.
Patrick F. Sullivan FRANZCP is an American psychiatric geneticist. He is the Yeargen Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is also the director of the Center for Psychiatric Genomics and the lead principal investigator of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. He is also a professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on the genetics of schizophrenia, major depressive disorders such as post-partum depression, eating disorders, and autism.
Lisa Bodnar is an American nutritional and perinatal epidemiologist. She is the Vice-Chair for Research and a tenured professor at University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on the contributions of pregnancy weight gain, dietary patterns, maternal obesity, and maternal vitamin D deficiency to adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes.
Lisa A. Carey is a Distinguished Professor in Breast Cancer Research at UNC School of Medicine, Division Chief of Hematology and Oncology, and physician-in-chief of the N.C. Cancer Hospital, UNC Lineberger's clinical home. She studied at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and was named co-chair of the Alliance National Cooperative Group Breast Committee in 2016.
Giselle Corbie-Smith is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She serves as Director of the UNC Center for Health Equity Research and Associate Provost of the Institute of Rural Innovation. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018. Her research considers racial disparities in healthcare.
Folami Ideraabdullah is an American geneticist and assistant professor in the Department of Genetics and the Department of Nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ideraabdullah explores how maternal nutrition and environmental toxin exposure affect development through exploring epigenetic changes to DNA. She has found that maternal Vitamin D deficiencies can cause genome-wide changes in methylation patterns that persist for several generations and impact offspring health. Her international collaboration with the University of Witwatersrand represents the first time that metal levels in the placenta have been investigated in relation to birth outcomes in South Africa.
Jennifer Y. Webster-Cyriaque is an American dentist and immunologist specializing in the oral microbiome, salivary gland disease in patients with HIV, and cancer-causing viruses. She became the deputy director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in November 2020. Webster-Cyriaque was a faculty member at UNC Adams School of Dentistry and the UNC School of Medicine for 21 years.
W. Kimryn Rathmell is an American physician-scientist whose work focuses on the research and treatment of patients with kidney cancers. She is the Hugh Jackson Morgan Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), and Physician-in-Chief for Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics in Nashville, Tennessee.
