Doudna '85 Elected to Academy of Sciences

Dr. Jennifer Doudna ’85, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences during the organization’s 139th Annual Meeting in April 2002. Dr. Doudna was one of 72 new members appointed to the NAS, and one of only 10 women this year.

“Dr. Doudna,” Professor of Chemistry Fred Grieman notes, “is a very young recipient to be inducted to the NAS. Usually it comes after a much more extensive career, but she is on the edge of very important work, and the award speaks quite a bit about her accomplishment thus far.”

Formerly the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, she will join the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, in January 2003 as professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. She also holds the title of associate investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

A leading researcher on the structure of RNA and ribozymes, she has received numerous honors for her innovative work, most recently from the American Chemical Society, the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Current Biology and the Journal of Molecular Biology, and is the author of numerous articles and chapters.

Doudna earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry at Harvard University. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1994, she served as research fellow in molecular biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and as the Lucille P. Markey Scholar in Biomedical Science at the University of Colorado. She has served as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.