Horwitz Prize Awardees

Zhijian ‘James’ Chen, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA. He is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Chen received his BS degree in biology from Fujian Normal University, China and completed his PhD degree in biochemistry at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Medicine, USA.

Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, is a professor of bioengineering and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, USA. He is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Deisseroth received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, and completed his PhD and MD from Stanford.

Dr. Karikó has been senior vice president of BioNTech SE since 2013. She also is adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, where she worked for 24 years. She received her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Szeged in Hungary in 1982. Her research for decades has focused on RNA-mediated mechanisms with the ultimate goal of developing in vitro-transcribed mRNA for protein therapy. Her groundbreaking investigation of RNA-mediated immune activation and her co-discovery that nucleoside modifications suppress immunogenicity of RNA unlocked the opportunity for the therapeutic use of mRNA. She and Drew Weissman co-invented and patented the use of nucleoside-modified mRNA, a key discovery that made possible the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines developed by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna/NIAID. 

Dr. Fettiplace studied at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, obtaining a BA in medical sciences and a PhD in biophysics, then joined Denis Baylor at Stanford University for postdoctoral work on turtle photoreceptors. In 1976, he returned to Cambridge University and continued research on turtles but switched to studying auditory transduction. With Andrew Crawford, he described the sensitivity and frequency tuning of auditory hair cells and discovered that individual turtle hair cells were electrically tuned to specific frequencies arranged along the cochlea like keys of a piano. He and Jon Art showed that a hair cell's electrical tuning frequency is determined by the number and kinetics of its Ca2+-activated K+ (BK) channels, implying that distinct kinetic forms of the BK channel encode different frequencies. He first used photodiode imaging to track the nanometer motion of hair bundles, enabling description of their mechanical properties and spontaneous oscillations. In 1990, Dr. Fettiplace became the Steenbock Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he researched the properties and location of the mechanically sensitive ion channels underlying sound transduction. His research culminated in providing evidence for the contribution of the transmembrane channel-like protein, TMC1, as the mechano-transducer channel in mammalian cochlear hair cells. Dr. Fettiplace is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with A. James Hudspeth and Christine Petit.

Dr. Cantley is professor of cancer biology in medicine and the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. He has made significant advances in cancer research stemming from his discovery of the signaling pathway phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) in 1984. The author of more than 400 original papers and 50 book chapters and review articles, Dr. Cantley is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine, and a member of the European life sciences academy EMBO. He graduated summa cum laude with a BS in chemistry from West Virginia Wesleyan College and obtained a PhD in biophysical chemistry from Cornell University. He conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University, where he was appointed assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. In 1985 he left Harvard to became a professor of physiology at Tufts University but returned to Harvard Medical School as professor of cell biology in 1992. He was appointed chief of Harvard’s new Division of Signal Transduction and later a founding member of its Department of Systems Biology. He also served as the director of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center from 2007 to 2012, when he joined Weill Cornell Medicine as the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center. Among his accolades are the ASBMB Avanti Award for Lipid Research (1998); Heinrich Wieland Preis for Lipid Research (2000); Caledonian Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2002); Pezcoller Foundation–AACR International Award for Cancer Research (2005); Rolf Luft Award for Diabetes and Endocrinology Research from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm (2009); Pasarow Prize for Cancer Research (2011); Breakthrough in Life Sciences Prize (2013); Jacobaeus Prize for Diabetes Research from the Karolinska Institute (2013); AACR Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship (2015); Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine (2015); Canada Gairdner International Award (2015); AACI Distinguished Scientist Award (2015); Hope Funds Award of Excellence in Basic Science (2016); Wolf Prize (2016); and NCI Outstanding Investigator Award (2016).

Pierre Chambon, MD, presently Professor of Molecular Genetics at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Strasbourg University, is Emeritus Professor at the Collège de France (Paris) and Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of Strasbourg University. He is the founder and former Director of the Institute for Genetics and Cellular and Molecular Biology (IGBMC), and of the Institut Clinique de la Souris (ICS/MCI) in Strasbourg, France.

His scientific achievements are inscribed in a series of discoveries in the field of control of gene expression in higher eukaryotes, most notably discovery of multiple RNA polymerases (1969) and the discovery of animal split genes (1977). For his contributions to our understanding of the control of gene expression, he was awarded, with two others, the 1999 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize.

His studies on the structure and function of nuclear receptors have changed our concept of signal transduction and endocrinology. He markedly contributed to the discovery of the superfamily of nuclear receptors (1987) and to the elucidation of their universal mechanism of action which, linking transcription, physiology, and pathology, have revolutionized the fields of development, endocrinology, and metabolism, and their disorders, pointing to new tactics for drug discovery. They have important applications in biotechnology and modern medicine.

Pierre Chambon, author of more than 900 publications, has been ranked fourth among the most prominent life scientists during the 1983-2002 period. He has received numerous international awards, including the 1979 Médaille d’Or du CNRS, the 2004 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, and the 2010 Gairdner Foundation International Award. He is a Member of the French Académie des Sciences, of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Howard Cedar was born in New York in 1943. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics from M.I.T. and then went on to do an M.D. and Ph.D. in microbiology under the tutelage of Dr. James Schwartz at N.Y.U., graduating in 1970. He carried out postdoctoral research with Dr. Eric Kandel at N.Y.U. and then with Dr. Gary Felsenfeld at the N.I.H. in the framework of the Public Health Service. In 1973 he immigrated to Israel where he joined the faculty of the Hebrew University, becoming a full professor in 1981. Dr. Cedar was elected to EMBO in 1982, received the Israel Prize in 1999 and became a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences in 2003. He received the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2008, the Emet Prize in Life Sciences in 2009, the Gairdner International Award in 2011 and the Rothschild Prize for 2012. Dr. Cedar studies the molecular biology of DNA methylation. His research has provided the foundations for understanding how epigenetic information plays a role in gene regulation, development and disease.

Dr. Cedar and his wife, Zipora, have 6 children and 22 grandchildren.

John O’Keefe is professor of cognitive neuroscience and director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London. He was born in New York, where he received a bachelor's degree in psychology from City College of New York, which he followed with a doctoral degree in physiological psychology from McGill University in Montreal. He joined University College London in 1967 as a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow and has been there ever since, becoming a professor in 1987. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has been awarded the Feldberg Foundation Prize for work in medical and biological science, the Grawemeyer Prize in Psychology, the British Neuroscience Association award for Outstanding Contribution to British Neuroscience, the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) EJN prize, the Gruber Neuroscience Prize, and the Ferrier Prize Lecture for his pioneering work in cognitive neuroscience.

Dr. O’Keefe discovered that hippocampal pyramidal cells respond selectively to an animal’s spatial location. The discovery of "place cells" suggested that this part of the brain might function as a cognitive map. The cognitive map theory is now one of the dominant theoretical paradigms in the study of hippocampal function. The discovery of cells with such abstract cognitive properties and the formulation of the cognitive map theory were important early milestones in the development of the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Joe Lutkenhaus is a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas Medical School. He was born in a small farming community in Iowa and developed an interest in chemistry in high school, which led him to Iowa State University where, in 1969, he received a BSc in organic chemistry. He entered UCLA and received a PhD in biochemistry in 1974. Interested in seeing more of the world, he went to Edinburgh University to pursue postdoctoral studies on bacterial cell division with William Donachie. He followed his studies at Edinburgh with a postdoc at the University of Connecticut Health Science Center before joining the faculty of the University of Kansas Medical Center. He became a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2002.

Dr. Lutkenhaus initiated his studies on the genetics of bacterial cell division in the model organism E. coli in Edinburgh, where he discovered several essential cell division genes, including ftsZ. He showed that FtsZ was rate limiting for division and the target of various inhibitors, including SulA, produced following DNA damage; and MinC, a component of the Min oscillatory system that contributes to spatial regulation of division. Along with Erfei Bi, he showed that FtsZ assembled into the cytokinetic Z ring, a cytoskeletal element, which he showed is used for cytokinesis by most prokaryotic cells. This finding led to the realization that bacterial cells, like larger eukaryotic cells, have exquisite internal organization. The Z ring is functionally analogous to the contractile ring used by animal and fungal cells for cytokinesis. Subsequent work showed that FtsZ is the ancestral homologue of eukaryotic tubulin, thus revealing that cytoskeletal proteins had their origin in prokaryotic cells. Lutkenhaus continues to study the mechanism and spatial regulation of bacterial cytokinesis.

Jeffrey Hall putatively became a geneticist during his college and grad-student years. During a subsequent postdoctoral stint he made a lateral move into behavior- and neuro-genetics (much as a duck might make a lateral move à l’orange). This apprenticeship led to a faculty position at Brandeis University, which Hall held from 1974 though 2007. He retired, at last, after tenuously clinging to a 2-year teaching position at the University of Maine (ending late 2009)—unfortunately not then instructing in the area of his almost first love (a Civil War subject, with reference to a course Hall taught at in the history department at Brandeis, 1990s into the aughts).As a post-doc and faculty-level researcher, Dr. Hall, along with co-workers, and collaborating investigators, performed research in areas revolving round the genetics and molecular-neurobiology of reproductive behavior in Drosophila. During the late 1970s, a discovery in Hall’s lab that an element of fruitfly courtship is rhythmic stimulated him to expand his genetic inquiries into chronobiology—studies that continued in parallel with the reproductively based ones. Both kinds of investigations encompassed isolation of novel behavioral mutants; identification of mutationally defined genes; and manipulations of the latter, aimed at elucidating the neural substrates of courtship behavior and that which is governed by Drosophila’s circadian clock. Because the molecular side of behavioral genetics points to the products of pertinent genes, elements of Dr. Hall’s and associates’ research entailed analyses of the mechanisms supported by such molecules—which in turn support neural functions that underlie reproductive and rhythmic behaviors. Many of the latter studies at Brandeis were performed via collaborations between the Hall lab and that of Michael Rosbash (located then and now at the same university west of Boston).

Dr. Hall is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He is a recipient of the Genetics Society of America Medal (2003) and, along with Rosbash and Michael Young (Rockefeller University), the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience (2009).