image: Jean Yin Jen Wang, PhD, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. view more
Credit: UC San Diego School of Medicine
Jean Yin Jen Wang, PhD, professor of medicine and biology in the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, was elected today with 211 other distinguished scientists, scholars, writers, artists, business and civic leaders to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Wang, who is also associate director for basic research at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center, studies how normal cells recognize and respond to external and internal signals calling for growth, quiescence, differentiation and apoptosis (cell death) and how cancer cells ignore, circumvent or eliminate these normal regulatory pathways, leading to uncontrolled growth and spread of the disease.
Wang joins an esteemed list of scientists in the newly elected 2011 class, among them: astronomer Paul Butler, discoverer of more than 330 planets; public health specialist and former Mexican Minister of Health Julio Frenk; geographer Ellen Mosley-Thompson, who has led expeditions to Antarctica and Greenland; David Page, whose genome sequencing work has advanced understanding of human reproduction; theoretical computer scientists Avi Wigderson; and Nobel laureates Ei-Ichi Negish (chemistry) and H. David Politzer (physics).
The 2011 class will be inducted at a ceremony Oct. 1 at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and others. Among its members: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. Current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.