School Notes: School of Medicine
September/October 2012

Pioneer in protein folding wins Shaw Prize

In May, Arthur L. Horwich, Sterling Professor of Genetics and professor of pediatrics, was named a winner of the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, along with his longtime scientific collaborator Franz-Ulrich Hartl of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany. Horwich has devoted his career to understanding protein folding—how chains of amino acids are formed into three-dimensional, functional structures. Misfolded proteins have been implicated in many diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The Shaw Prizes carry a monetary award of $1 million (US) and are given by the Hong Kong–based Shaw Prize Foundation for achievement in the life sciences, astronomy, and mathematics.

Endowment supports student research on heart surgery

In the 1960s, when cardiac surgery was still a young field, Horace C. Stansel Jr. was already making his mark at Yale School of Medicine as a skillful, innovative pediatric heart surgeon. A member of the YSM faculty until his death in 1994, Stansel built a reputation as a consummate physician, researcher, educator, and mentor. To carry on Stansel’s legacy, the Stansel family recently established an endowment that will provide support to Yale medical students conducting research in cardiac surgery. Known as the Horace C. Stansel Jr. Research Fund, the endowment will provide one- and two-year fellowships to students with financial need, allowing them to pursue research projects in both laboratory and clinical settings. The new fund provides important backing for the unique “Yale System” of medical education, which places great emphasis on original research by students.

Two inducted into American Academy

Two Yale scientists have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Richard P. Lifton, chair and Sterling Professor of Genetics and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and John R. Carlson, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, were named fellows of the academy in April and will be formally inducted at an October ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The academy was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution. Today it is an international society whose 4,600 fellows and 600 foreign honorary members are drawn from multiple disciplines.