AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize
2015 Award Recipients
The 2015 Newcomb Cleveland Prize was awarded to Bi-Chang Chen, Wesley R. Legant, Kai Wang, Lin Shao, Daniel E. Milkie, Michael W. Davidson, Chris Janetopoulos, Xufeng S. Wu, John A. Hammer III, Zhe Liu, Brian P. English, Yuko Mimori-Kiyosue, Daniel P. Romero, Alex T. Ritter, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Lillian Fritz-Laylin, R. Dyche Mullins, Diana M. Mitchell, Joshua N. Bembenek, Anne-Cecile Reymann, Ralph Böhme, Stephan W. Grill, Jennifer T. Wang, Geraldine Seydoux, U. Serdar Tulu, Daniel P. Kiehart, and Eric Betzig for their outstanding research article "Lattice light-sheet microscopy: Imaging molecules to embryos at high spatiotemporal resolution," published in Science 24 October 2014.
Animation defines life, and the three-dimensional (3D) imaging of dynamic biological processes occurring within living specimens is essential to understand life. However, in vivo imaging, especially in 3D, involves inevitable tradeoffs of resolution, speed, and phototoxicity. Chen et al. describe a microscope that can address these concerns. They used a class of nondiffracting beams, known as 2D optical lattices, which spread the excitation energy across the entire field of view while simultaneously eliminating out-of-focus excitation. Lattice light sheets increase the speed of image acquisition and reduce phototoxicity, which expands the range of biological problems that can be investigated. The authors illustrate the power of their approach using 20 distinct biological systems ranging from single-molecule binding kinetics to cell migration and division, immunology, and embryonic development. The authors created and successfully applied a fundamentally new method that can be utilized in various fields.
The 2014-2015 Newcomb Cleveland Prize Selection Committee included Marcia McNutt, the Science Editor-in-Chief as well as Robert H. Grubbs, Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology; Gary King, Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor and Director of the Insitute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University; Susan Rosenberg, Ben F. Love Chair in Cancer Research and Professor of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine; Ali Shilatifard, Robert Francis Furchgott Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine; and Michael S. Turner, Bruce V. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago.
Please click here for a list of past recipients.