UC Davis’ New AAAS Fellows
- Peter B. Moyle, wildlife, fish and conservation biology
- Wolf-Dietrich Heyer, microbiology and molecular genetics
- Neil Hunter, microbiology and molecular genetics
- Simon Cherry, biomedical engineering
- James B. Ames, chemistry
- Dean J. Tantillo, chemistry
- Francisco J. Samaniego, statistics
Seven UC Davis faculty members are included in the newest class of fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS Council recently voted in 391 fellows in all for 2016, in recognition of their efforts to advance science or its applications.
Founded in 1848, the AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society. Membership in the nonprofit association is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education and public engagement. AAAS publishes Science and other journals.
The 2016 class of fellows will be inducted in February during the society’s annual meeting, to be held Feb. 16-20 in Boston.
Here are brief profiles of the UC Davis inductees:
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Peter B. Moyle, distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, and associate director of the Center for Watershed Sciences — Honored for contributions to ecology, management and conservation of freshwater and estuarine fishes and for greatly improving the teaching of fish biology worldwide. Moyle is author or co-author of more than 225 publications, including the definitive Inland Fishes of Ƶ (2002). He has served on numerous advisory bodies, including the Ecosystem Restoration Program Science Board of the Ƶ Bay-Delta Authority and the National Research Council Panel on the Klamath River.
College of Biological Sciences
Wolf-Dietrich Heyer, professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics — Honored for “clever genetic, molecular and biochemical analyses leading to important contributions to mechanisms of recombinational DNA repair, and its regulation by DNA damage checkpoints.” He serves as co-leader of the Molecular Oncology Program at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, coordinating campuswide basic cancer biology research. And he’s the director of the National Cancer Institute-funded training grant on oncogenic signals and chromosome biology, working with the next generation of cancer research leaders.
Neil Hunter, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator — Honored for seminal insights into the mechanism of chromosome recombination during meiosis, the process by which cells divide to form gametes (sperm and eggs). Defects in meiosis can cause infertility and are responsible for a large percentage of the more than 1 million miscarriages each year in the United States. Meiotic errors also are a leading cause of congenital disease in humans. Hunter’s lab has defined fundamental aspects of the DNA exchanges that occur during chromosome recombination, and the regulatory pathways that govern this essential cellular process. Hunter is affiliated with the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and also has an appointment in the Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy, School of Medicine.
College of Engineering
Simon Cherry, distinguished professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering — Honored for his work in pioneering new medical imaging technologies to improve cancer detection and treatment, especially in positron emission tomography, or PET. In 2015, the National Institutes of Health awarded Cherry and his colleague, Ramsey Badawi, a $15.5 million grant to develop the world’s first . This scanner allows all tissues and organs to be imaged simultaneously with 40 times more sensitivity than existing combination PET/CT scanners. It also reduces a patient’s radiation exposure dramatically. Cherry was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2016.