The National Academy of Sciences Elects 24 Women as New Members

Election to membership in the National Academy of Sciences is considered one of greatest honors for members of the scientific community. There are currently 2,250 active members of the academy.

This year the National Academy of Sciences elected 84 new members from the United States. After an analysis of the list of new members by JBHE, it appears that 24 of the new members are women. Thus, women make up 28.6 percent of this year’s class of new NAS members. This is considerable improvement from a year ago. In 2014, women made up 21.4 percent of the new NAS members.

Here are brief biographies of the 24 women who were elected members of the National Academy of Sciences this year.

Nancy Andrews, Brenda Bass, Marlene Behrmann Cohen, Sue Biggins, Marianne Bronner, and Dorothy Cheney

Nancy C. Andrews is vice chancellor and dean of the medical school at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She also serves as the Nanaline H. Duke Professor of Pediatrics at the medical school. Dr. Andrews earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Yale University. She is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and earned a Ph.D. in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Brenda L. Bass is a Distinguished Professor of biochemistry at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City. She is a graduate of Colorado College in Colorado Springs and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Marlene Behrmann Cohen is a professor in the department of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. She also serves as director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at the university. Dr. Behrmann Cohen is a native of South Africa. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Witwatersand and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

Sue Biggins is an associate director in the division of basic sciences at the Fred-Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. She also teaches at the University of Washington. Dr. Biggins is a graduate of Stanford University, where she majored in biology. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Princeton University.

Marianne E. Bronner is the Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. She has served on the CalTech faculty since 1996. Professor Bonner is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Dorothy L. Cheney is a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She is also a member of the graduate group in psychology and anthropology at the university. Dr. Cheney’s recent research has focused on the behavior of baboons in Botswana. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in England.

Catherine Dulac, Lora Hooper, Christine Jacobs-Wagner, Maria Jasin, Catherine Kling, and Jeannie Lee

Catherine Dulac is the Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. She is also an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Professor Dulac earned a Ph.D. in developmental biology at the University of Paris.

Lora V. Hooper is an associate professor in the department of immunology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She is a graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and holds a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Christine Jacobs-Wagner is a professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She also serves as director of the Microbial Sciences Institute at Yale. Professor Jacobs-Wagner holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Liege in Belgium.

Maria Jasin holds the William E. Snee Chair in the developmental biology program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Dr. Jasin’s research is focused on the suppressing of tumors.

Catherine Kling is the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a professor of economics at Iowa State University. She also serves as director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at the university. Dr. Kling has been on the faculty at the university since 1993. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland.

Jeannie T. Lee is a professor of genetics and pathology in the department of molecular biology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lee is a graduate of Harvard University and earned a medical degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Margaret Levi, Victoria Lundblad, Renu Malhotra, Catherine Murphy, Eva Nogales, and Lalita Ramakrishnan

Margaret Levi is a professor of political science at Stanford University in California. She also serves as director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at the university. Dr. Levi is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University. Professor Levi is the co-author of In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism (Princeton University Press, 2013).

Victoria Lundblad holds the Ralph S. and Becky O’Connor Chair and is a professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Dr. Lundblad is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Renu Malhotra is a professor and chair of the department of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona. She joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in 2004. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Dr. Malhotra earned a Ph.D. in physics at Cornell University.

Catherine J. Murphy is the Peter C. and Gretchen Miller Markunas Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois. She also serves as associate director of the Materials Research Laboratory. Dr. Murphy is a graduate of the University of Illinois and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Eva Nogales is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the faculty at the university in 1998. Professor Nogales is a graduate of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Keele in England.

Lalita Ramakrishnan is a professor of immunology and infectious diseases in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge in England. She is a graduate of the Baroda Medical College in India and holds a Ph.D. in immunology from Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Jennifer Richeson, Sara Seager, Lisa Tauxe, Leslie Vosshall, and Hao Wu

Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum is the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in medical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jennifer A. Richeson holds the  John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair in psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She also serves as professor of African American studies at the university. Professor Richeson has been on the faculty at Northwestern since 2005. Previously, she taught at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Dr. Richeson is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University.

Sara Seager is a professor of planetary science and physics and holds the Class of 1941 Professorship Chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Seager was a 2013 winner of a so-called “Genius Award” from the MacArthur Foundation. She has been on the faculty at MIT since 2007. Dr. Seager is a graduate of the University of Toronto. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University.

Lisa Tauxe is a Distinguished Professor of Geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Her research is focused on Earth’s geomagnetic field. Professor Tauxe is a graduate of Yale University and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Leslie B. Vosshall is the Chemers Family Professor at Rockefeller University in New York City. There, she is also the director of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior. Professor Vosshall joined the faculty at the university in 2000 and was promoted to full professor in 2010. She is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University.

Hao Wu is the Asa and Patricia Spring Professor in the department of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. She is a graduate of Tsinshua University in Beijing, China, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.