AAAS and its partners have named 10 researchers and science leaders as winners of a series of prestigious prizes for 2009. The prizes are awarded for exemplary work in a range of fields, from trailblazing research to international science cooperation to mentoring undergraduate and graduate students.
The winners:
Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award: Dr. Nancy Olivieri, University of Toronto, “for her indefatigable determination that patient safety and research integrity come before institutional and commercial interests;”
Philip Hauge Abelson Award: Francis S. Collins, M.D., director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and former director of the Human Genome Project, in honor of "his extraordinary skills as a scientist, as a spokesperson for the ethical and responsible use of science, as a communicator with the public and policy-makers, and for his pioneering leadership of major, highly successful federal scientific initiatives.”
Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award: May R. Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for her "extraordinary" and "inspirational" work to communicate her research on insects;
Lifetime Mentor Award: Diola Bagayoko of the Southern University at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for his efforts to significantly increase the number of African-American Ph.D.s in physics and chemistry;
Mentor Award: Luis Colón, chemistry department chair at the State University of New York at Buffalo, for work leading to an increase in Hispanic-Americans receiving Ph.D. degrees in chemistry;
Newcomb Cleveland Prize: Articles by Christian Marois and colleagues and another article directed by Paul Kalas that focused on planets beyond our solar system;
International Scientific Cooperation Award: Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, immediate past director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, for “his role as a transformational leader of an international research center that promotes cutting-edge science by bringing together the brightest minds from nations within and beyond the developing world.”
Joshua E. Neimark Memorial Travel Assistance Endowment: Michele A. Korb, a new faculty member in the Department of Teacher Education at California State University, East Bay, for an unusual program to spark young children’s interest in insects; Kim Har Wong, a University of Massachusetts Boston graduate student, for an effort to fine-tune DNA analysis; and Timothy D. Panosian, a Vanderbilt University graduate student, for a strategy that might someday suggest a way to lower the cost of a key HIV medication;
The honorees will receive their awards during a 20 February ceremony at the 2010 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Diego.