The American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS), one of the world's largest scientific societies and
publisher of the Science family of journals, will celebrate
its new class of fellows in the nation's capital later this
year.
SAN
FRANCISCO, April 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of
the world's largest general scientific societies, has elected
Gladstone Senior Investigator Katie
Pollard, PhD, into its new class of AAAS Fellows, a lifetime
honor within the scientific community.
AAAS recognized Pollard for her "distinguished contributions to
the field of computational biology and bioinformatics, particularly
her discovery of human accelerated regions, and development of
open-source software for gene expression, comparative genomics, and
microbiomes."
"This year's class embodies scientific excellence, fosters trust
in science throughout the communities they serve, and leads the
next generation of scientists while advancing scientific
achievements," says Sudip S. Parikh,
PhD, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the
Science family of journals.
Pollard—who also serves as director of the Gladstone Institute
of Data Science and Biotechnology, a professor in the Department of
Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC San Francisco, and a Chan
Zuckerberg Biohub investigator—leads teams of scientists who
develop statistical and computational methods to decode how genomes
work, evolve, and break in disease. By analyzing massive sets of
genomic and epigenomic data, Pollard and her teams have gained a
greater understanding of human genetic variation, what makes humans
unique compared to other species, and genomic diversity of the
human microbiome.
"I'm honored to be named an AAAS Fellow, joining the ranks of
some of the most noted scientists in history," Pollard says. "I'm
very much aligned with the AAAS mission to advance science and
serve society, which is what we're doing every day in the lab and
as we collaborate with our peers."
Pollard also is an elected member of the National Academy of
Medicine and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, among
many other honors and awards.
In a landmark study published last year in Science,
Pollard and her team analyzed how stretches of DNA called human
accelerated regions (HARs) vary between humans and chimpanzees.
HARs are nearly identical among all humans, but are different in
all other mammals and therefore thought to confer human-specific
traits. Through machine learning and lab experiments, Pollard and
her team found that these human-specific structural changes in the
genome may have created the right environment for HARs to evolve
quickly in the human ancestor, after remaining almost the same over
millions of years of mammal evolution.
Most recently, a team led by Pollard received a major grant from
the Biswas Family Foundation to create the Biswas Center for
Transformative Computational Cancer Biology, where scientists will
fuse powerful machine learning with cutting-edge experimental
technologies to help identify and prioritize new research avenues
for cancer diagnosis and treatment. As with most of Pollard's work,
findings will be freely shared with the scientific community to
accelerate global research.
"Gladstone congratulates Katie on this major and well-deserved
career achievement," says Gladstone President and Senior
Investigator Deepak Srivastava, MD.
"Katie's groundbreaking work in computational biology, artificial
intelligence, and genomics has moved us closer to understanding the
root causes of disease and how to address them. We're excited for
all the discoveries yet to come."
With the addition of Pollard, Gladstone now has seven AAAS
Fellows; the others are Sanders "Sandy" Williams (1992),
Robert Mahley (1998), Warner Greene (2004), Jennifer Doudna (2008), Srivastava (2011), and
Katerina Akassoglou (2021).
The latest class of AAAS fellows is comprised of 502 scientists,
engineers, and innovators across 24 AAAS scientific disciplines,
from biological sciences and chemistry to neuroscience and physics.
Fellows will receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin
(representing science and engineering, respectively) to commemorate
their election and will be celebrated in Washington, D.C., on September 21.
A tradition dating back to 1874, the AAAS Fellows program has
recognized over the years notable scientists such as W.E.B DuBois,
Maria Mitchell, Steven Chu, Ellen
Ochoa, Irwin M. Jacobs,
Alan Alda, Mae Jemison, and Ayanna
Howard.
About Gladstone Institutes
Gladstone Institutes is an
independent, nonprofit life science research organization that uses
visionary science and technology to overcome disease. Established
in 1979, it is located in the epicenter of biomedical and
technological innovation, in the Mission Bay neighborhood of
San Francisco. Gladstone has
created a research model that disrupts how science is done, funds
big ideas, and attracts the brightest minds.
Media Contact
Kelly
Quigley
Gladstone Institutes
Director of Science Communications and Media Relations
kelly.quigley@gladstone.ucsf.edu
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SOURCE Gladstone Institutes