WASHINGTON - Two researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston are among 471 scientists named nationally as American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows, a distinction conferred annually upon selected AAAS members by their peers. UTMB now has 16 fellows.
Werner Braun, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Stanley M. Lemon, professor and director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity, received the most recent honors awarded to AAAS members who have made significant scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.
The AAAS cited Braun's "distinguished contributions to the field of computational biology," particularly saluting him "for the development of computational methods to identify structural and functional motifs of proteins."
Lemon received the award for his "outstanding contributions to the field of microbiology, particularly for studies of the epidemiology, prevention and molecular pathogenesis of hepatitis virus infections," the AAAS said.
Braun and Lemon join 14 other UTMB faculty members previously honored as AAAS Fellows, including biochemistry and molecular biology professors D. Wayne Bolen, Vlodek M. Bujalowski, Robert Fox, David Gorenstein, James Lee, Sankar Mitra, John Papaconstantinou, Louise and Satya Prakash, and E. Brad Thompson. Also pathology professor Robert Tesh, pharmacology and toxicology professor James R. Halpert, neuroscience and cell biology professor William Willis and Don Powell, professor of internal medicine and director of UTMB's General Clinical Research Center.
This year's fellows will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes Section of the journal Science Oct. 26, and recognized at a ceremony Feb. 16 at the Fellows Forum during the annual AAAS meeting in Boston.
Founded in 1848, the AAAS is the world's largest general scientific society, including 262 affiliated societies and academies of science serving 10 million members worldwide. Its journal, Science, has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million people.