May 13, 2004
Five UW faculty elected to society for world-renowned scholars
Five UW faculty members were among those recently elected as fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the highest honors accorded to scholars in the United States.
New members include: Michael Hechter, professor of sociology; Edward D. Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering; Thalia Papayannopoulou, professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology; George Stamatoyannopoulos, professor of genome sciences and medicine; and Robert H. Waterston, professor and Gates Chair, genome sciences. Stamatoyannopoulos and Papayannopoulou are husband and wife.
Hechter earned his doctorate from Columbia University in 1972 and is now on his second stint as a UW faculty member. He was on the faculty from 1970 to 1984, starting as an assistant professor of sociology. He returned to the UW as a professor of sociology in 1999. He is a political sociologist who is interested in the underlying dynamics of social order. Among other things, his research has contributed to an understanding of the importance of ethnicity and nationalism in modern societies.
Lazowska was selected by the White House last year to co-chair the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lazowska has been a member of the UW faculty since 1977. In 1998, he was given the UW Outstanding Public Service Award. He chaired the UW Department of Computer Science & Engineering in the College of Engineering from 1993–2001, and in 2000 was named the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair.
Papayannopoulou first came to the UW in 1965 as a postdoctoral trainee in the Department of Pathology, working in cell biology and tissue culture. She joined the faculty as an assistant professor of medicine in hematology in 1974 and became a full professor in 1984. She earned her medical degree and a doctor of science degree from the Medical National University of Athens in Greece. Papayannopoulou’s laboratory focuses on the stem cells that form blood cells, called hematopoietic stem cells, and how they work and move within and out of the bone marrow. She also has an interest in how genes regulate hemoglobin production.
Stamatoyannopoulos heads the Department of Medicine’s Division of Medical Genetics and the Markey Molecular Medicine Center. He earned his medical degree and a doctor of science degree in Greece at the Medical National University of Athens and, after postgraduate work there, came to the UW Department of Medicine as an instructor in 1964. He became a full professor in 1975 and head of the Division of Medical Genetics in 1989. He is also an adjunct professor of pathology. He is the editor of The Molecular Basis of Blood Diseases, and is known for his work on treatments for sickle cell disease and his studies of blood-forming stem cells and genetic controls for blood cells.
Waterston came to the UW in 2003 from Washington University in St. Louis, where he led the genetics department and directed the Genome Sequencing Center. At the UW, he also holds the William Gates III Endowed Chair in Biomedical Sciences. Waterston has an M.D. and a doctorate in pathology from the University of Chicago and earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Princeton. Waterston led sequencing of the genome of the worm C. elegans, the first complete animal to be sequenced. His contributions to large-scale DNA sequencing were central to the success of the Human Genome Project, with his lab constructing the physical map used as a framework for the international effort. But he has not abandoned the worm, and his lab now includes several comparative genetics projects to increase understanding of gene expression across species.
Those elected to membership, according to the Academy, are among the finest minds and most influential leaders of their generation. Past members have included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill.
The Academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” The Academy conducts interdisciplinary studies on international security, social policy, education, and the humanities, drawing on the range of academic and intellectual disciplines of its members. The current membership of over 4,500 includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners.
