Joan A. Steitz, the Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has been chosen to receive the 2012 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize from Rockefeller University in New York. The prize, which comes with an honorarium of $100,000, was made possible by a donation by Rockefeller University Professor Paul Greengard of his cash award from his 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine to the university. The donation was made in honor of his mother, who died giving birth to him. The prize will be presented at Rockefeller University in November.
Dr. Steitz will also receive the 2012 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science from the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is being honored for her research and her commitment to advancing the careers of women in the sciences.
Professor Steitz, a pioneer in the field of RNA biology, focuses her research on lupus and other autoimmune diseases. She is a graduate of Antioch College. She earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University and did postdoctoral research at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge in England.