Four medical school professors elected fellows of AAAS

Russ Altman, Sanjiv Gambhir, Michael Snyder and William Talbot have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Russ Altman

Four professors at the School of Medicine have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The honor is bestowed on AAAS members by their peers for meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications.

Russ Altman, MD, PhD, professor of bioengineering, of genetics and of biomedical informatics research, was elected for contributions in the field of bioinformatics, particularly for analysis of targets for drug action and of the impact of human variation on drug responses. Altman, who holds the Kenneth Fong Professorship, is interested in the analysis of protein and RNA structure and function, as well as in applying systems biology concepts to pharmacology and personalized medicine.

Sanjiv "Sam" Gambhir

Sanjiv “Sam” Gambhir, MD, PhD, professor and chair of radiology and director of the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection at Stanford, was elected for his work in multimodal molecular imaging of living subjects.

In his work, Gambhir, who has a particular interest in cancer biology and gene therapy, combines advances in molecular and cell biology with those in biomedical imaging. He holds the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professorship in Cancer Research.

Michael Snyder

Michael Snyder, PhD, professor and chair of genetics, was elected for contributions to the field of genomics, particularly for inventing or pioneering chromatin-immunoprecipitation sequencing, RNA sequencing, tiling array, protein microarray and personalized medicine technology. Snyder, who is the Stanford W. Ascherman, MD, FACS, Professor in Genetics, has been deeply involved in international, multi-institutional efforts seeking to understand and compare the DNA elements controlling gene expression in humans and other model organisms, such as mice.

William Talbot

William Talbot, PhD, professor and chair of developmental biology, was elected for his work using zebrafish to understand the development of myelinated axons in the vertebrate nervous system. This process is associated with many human diseases, including multiple sclerosis. He and his lab have used genetic screens to identify several genes with specific functions in myelination, and are working to understand their functions at a molecular level. They hope to define new zebrafish models of important myelin disorders in humans and new therapies for myelin repair and prevention of axonal damage after demyelination.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu.

2023 ISSUE 3

Exploring ways AI is applied to health care